As the South Florida rainy season begins, we’ve received a few viewer messages lately asking about words on the 7-day forecast describing rain chances.
Specifically, the questions revolve around what the difference is between “scattered storms” and “isolated storms”.
To help give you a visual idea of what the difference is between the two, imagine a spectrum with rainy and stormy weather on the left and sunny, dry weather on the right.
With this example, rain chances would be considered to be very high on the left and very low on the right. If you’re a numbers person, put the chance of rain at 90% or greater on the left and 10% or less on the right.
In the case of our team’s 7-day forecast at NBC2 News, we would likely use the phrase “rain and storms” on the 7-day forecast for the expected weather on the left as rain chances exceed 90%.
This means that much of our viewing area has a high chance of rain, above and beyond what we would see on just a typical summertime afternoon.
However, if we’re expecting a sunny and dry day like on the right side of the spectrum with no rain at all, we’d likely just go with the sun icon and not bother with applying any text to it.
The thing is though is that in Florida during the summertime, the weather is rarely only on one extreme or the other. Most summertime rainy season days (days where we’re not being influenced by the tropics) are somewhere in the middle, where though we do see storms, but also enjoy plenty of sunshine as well.
To account for this, the phrases “isolated storms” and “scattered storms” can be helpful to describe the expected coverage of rain.
On days where we’re expecting storms, with about half of the area seeing rain and the other half not, the phrase “scattered storms” will likely be used.
This is the most-used phrase during the rainy season. If you’re a numbers person, associate a 50% chance of rain with the phrase.
Using our weather spectrum, a situation with “scattered storms” would be closer to the rainy day than it would be to the sunny and dry day.
You may have noticed in Southwest Florida over the last four days, we have not seen many storms in our community.
Thanks to ridging in the atmosphere and nearby swaths of drier air above us, the coverage of storms we’ve had since Monday has been much less than 50%.
It’s days like today (and the last four days) that the phrase “isolated storms” better describes the weather than anything else would.
For the numbers-oriented people in the crowd, affix a mental note of 30% to the term “isolated storms”. This means that yes the chance of a storm is there, but not for everyone.
What develops is expected to have less rain coverage than what we normally see during a typical summertime day.
There will on occasion be other terms used on our 7-day forecast during the rainy season. We mentioned before that on particularly rainy or stormy days you might spot “rain and storms” on the 7-day forecast.
On afternoons where the active weather looks to be exclusively east of Interstate 75, you may notice the day marked with the phrase “inland storms”.
On occasions where the widest coverage of storms is expected west of the interstate you may read “coastal storms”.
During times when we’re focused on something in the tropics, you may notice “watching the tropics” appear to help give you an idea on timing.
Regardless of what’s happening, count on our team to do our best to explain and teach you about the weather using our collection of graphics in weathercasts on TV and online.
Watching a complete weathercast will give you a more complete picture of what the weather forecast is so you know not only what to expect, but the reasons why.
The post Viewer question: What’s the difference between isolated and scattered? appeared first on NBC2 News.
