Weather app giving a not-so-accurate forecast? Here’s why.

CALGARY – When you search for weather apps on your phone, you’ll no doubt get hundreds and hundreds of results, but a lot of them just don’t work well.

That’s because several of those developers and companies don’t hire meteorologists, they just scalp data from other sources like a weather tower or websites like Environment Canada.

Several apps may have told you to expect hot sunny days over the last week, not considering the wildfire smoke blowing into Calgary which caused lower temperatures and bad weather conditions.

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“Weather apps can only be so accurate, there’s no human input,” said Meteorologist Michael Kuss.

“The most accurate forecasts are still created by humans by meteorologists. It’s difficult for computers to pick up the nuances in forecasting for specific regions.”

He added that some of those computer models have gotten better, but it won’t beat out a meteorologist who can tweak inputs manually and consider things like smoke, fog, and other nuances.

“A good meteorologist not only has the atmospheric science background, they also need a long memory,” Kuss explained.

“You have to be able to recognize a pattern and remember when you saw something similar in the past and what happened in that event. You can then incorporate that into your forecast, and that type of manipulation, you’re never going to get in a weather app.”

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“Not all weather apps are created equally,” tech analyst Carmi Levy told 660 NEWS.

“There are really good ones and there are a lot of not so really good ones.”

He says you need to dig and look at the developers behind the app. His recommendation is installing an app that has meteorologists working for them.

Levy uses WeatherCAN by Environment Canada.

“We’re all taxpayers, we pay money so Environment Canada can develop this app, employ the meteorologists, and have a national network of sensors and weather stations from coast to coast to coast,” Levy said.

You can catch the latest weather forecast on air on 660 NEWS every 10 minutes on the ones.