Decoding Your Weather Forecast 🌦️

Welcome! This page helps you understand the different parts of the 5-day weather forecast you see on our main page. We get information from powerful computer programs called weather models to predict what the weather might be like.

Finding Your Location 📍

Search Bar: You can type in any town or city name and press "Go". If the computer finds multiple places with that name, it will ask you to pick the right one.
Target Button (🎯): If you're on a phone or computer that knows its location, pressing this button will try to get the forecast for where you are right now.

Weather Alerts ⚠️

If there's important weather information from the National Weather Service (like a storm warning or heat advisory) for your chosen location, you'll see a colored bar near the top.
You can click on this bar to read the details about the alert. If the bar says "No weather hazards," you're in the clear! (Alerts currently only work for US locations.)

Current Conditions 🌡️🌬️

For locations in the US, this box shows the actual weather happening right now at a nearby official weather station.
It includes the temperature, what the sky looks like (for example, "Cloudy"), wind speed and direction, and humidity. This is real data, not a forecast.

5-Day Summary 📝

This section gives a quick overview, written in plain language, of what to expect over the next five days.
It talks about general temperature trends (getting warmer or cooler), chances for rain or snow, and if it might get windy.
For US locations, you might see a "More Information" link. This opens a summary of the detailed discussion written by human meteorologists at the local National Weather Service office (we use AI to make it easier to read!).

The Charts 📊

This is where you see the forecasts from different weather models side-by-side. Think of it like getting opinions from several different experts!

Model Colors: Each colored bar or line represents a different weather model (like GFS, EURO, GEM, etc.). The key below the chart shows which color belongs to which model.
Average Lines: The dashed black lines show the average prediction from all the different models combined. This gives you a good middle-ground idea.
GEFS Range (on Temp chart): This special gray bar on the Temperature chart shows a likely range of temperatures predicted by a group of models called the GEFS ensemble. The bottom of the bar is the 10th percentile (P10 – meaning 90% of the possibilities are warmer than this) and the top is the 90th percentile (P90 – meaning 90% of the possibilities are cooler than this). It helps show how much uncertainty there is.

Chart Types (Use the Icons to Switch)

🌡️ Temperature: Shows the predicted high and low temperature for each day. The bars represent the range from the low (bottom of bar) to the high (top of bar).
💧 Precipitation: Shows the total amount of rain (or melted snow/ice) expected each day, usually in inches or millimeters. Taller bars mean more expected precipitation.
❄️ Snowfall: Shows the amount of new snow expected to fall each day, usually in inches or centimeters.
🌬️ Wind: Shows the predicted maximum wind speed for each day. The colored bars show the sustained wind (the steady speed), and the little white circles on top show the possible gusts (short, faster bursts of wind).
☁️ Cloud Cover: Shows the average percentage (%) of the sky expected to be covered by clouds each day. 0% means clear skies, 100% means completely overcast.

Clicking on a Day (Hourly View) 🕰️

If you click directly on one of the days within any chart, the view will change to show an hourly forecast just for that specific day.
This lets you see how things like temperature or rain chances might change throughout the day (for example, warmer in the afternoon, rain starting in the evening).
Click the chart again to go back to the 5-day view.

Back to Forecast