Weather Forecast

[newbie_mke]

I was looking up at the Extended Forecast for the month in Accuweather.com for ANC, Juneau, Skagway during the time period 19th - 15th and it changes everyday. It changes from Sunny to Thunderstorms within a day. Is there a best cut-off time when it gets reliable? May be a week in advance?

[Potstech]

To accurately predict the weather in Alaska ask someone what the weather was like yesterday. You then might be up to 85% accurate. Weather changes by the minute up there and is unpredictable with any accuracy.

[Putterdude]

Beyond 72 hours weather predictions are useless, in fact after 24 hours the reliability of the forecast diminishes. Alaska is its own weather factory.

[sherryf]

You can never get a truly accurate forecast, but you can watch trends. I watch the weather for the 10 days before my cruise, on several sites, for each port on the day I will be there. Usually, at the beginning of that 10 days, the reports are all over the board. Different sites have different weather for the same port and day. Over the course of the 10 days, the predictions will start to settle out. Temperature fluctuations from day to day are less, the sites start to agree more. If the sites are vastly different for any given port, or if the prediction for that port changes significantly each day even on the same site, I know the prediction is not very accurate. By the time I cruise, I have a pretty good average estimate of weather for each port, and generally it's pretty close. Of course, I do this because I'm a cruise obsessed data analyst, so probably most people don't go this far. :o

 

It helps if you understand what some of the terms mean in terms of Alaska weather. Like "showers" can mean a little drizzle in the morning and nice the rest of the day, or could mean rain off and on all day. Reading "showers" on the forecast every day makes some people freak out, thinking it will rain their entire trip, when they might get nothing more than a little drizzle here and there. :cool:

[AKStafford]

The key to Alaskan weather: Hope for the best, be prepared for the worse and have fun no matter what. It's been said there's no bad weather, just being badly dressed for the weather.

[CruiserBruce]

Worked with weather people for many years. To a person, they hated going more than 5 days out, but due to public and media pressure, 7 day forecasts have become required.

 

They would agree after 5 days, you are reading trends and samples from models, not really predicting much.

[Budget Queen]

Don't even bother wasting your time, trying to figure it out. :) Even the same day forecast is iffy.

 

Be well prepared in your attire for a wide range of weather- all that matter. :)