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That NOAA forecast saved my roof job last spring
I had a job lined up in Bend to strip and reshingle a 40-square ranch house. Old timer at the supply yard told me to stop trusting the 10-day forecast and only look at NOAA's hour-by-hour wind data. I ignored him at first and almost lost 8 squares of shingles when a sudden 35 mph gust hit. Now I check that wind graph every morning before I send my crew up.
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simons2816d agoMost Upvoted
That's a solid point about the wind data, but what really changed my approach was noticing NOAA updates their forecasts way more often than the regular weather apps, sometimes every hour when a storm is brewing. Your mileage may vary but I found that's where the real value is, not just graphs but the frequency of updates.
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Man you nailed it with the update frequency thing. I was stuck on a ridge job last fall and NOAA flipped their forecast three times in one afternoon, saved me from sending the guys up into a mess.
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the_jenny2d ago
Right on, that update frequency is the whole game honestly. The other apps will give you a morning and evening forecast and call it a day, but when you're watching a low pressure system spin up, NOAA might refresh five times in a span of two hours. That saved me last March on a job near the coast where the wind sheer was all over the place. The hourly model runs catch things like a sudden cap change or a dry slot forming that the 6-hour forecasts completely miss. Once you get used to checking the timestamps and seeing a 2 PM update vs a 6 PM update, you can't go back to the basic apps for real decisions.
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