Plaincast — the National Weather Service forecast, decoded into plain English

Plaincast decodes the National Weather Service's Area Forecast Discussion — the real forecast, written 3 to 4 times a day by the meteorologist on shift — into plain English. The discussion is where a forecaster explains their reasoning: which models disagree, what they are watching, and how confident they are. Below is the current edition for Duluth, with its shorthand expanded. The full experience — an AI plain-English summary beside the annotated original — loads with JavaScript, and every one of the 68 forecast offices has its own edition.

Area Forecast Discussion · National Weather Service Duluth (DLH) · issued Saturday, October 24 at 6:45 AM CDT.

Messages

Showers and isolated thunderstorms are expected today. Rainfall totals generally less than a quarter of an inch, but locally higher amounts possible.

Colder weather moves in Sunday into Monday.

An active weather pattern will bring several rain chances next week and possibly a little snow Tuesday morning.

Update

Showers are passing through tonight, and they will continue up the North Shore and Northwest Wisconsin through this morning. A cold front and upper-level trough aloft will trigger a line of showers and possibly some embedded non-severe thunderstorms through today. Potential instability is not much. maybe a few hundred J/kg, and any storms should be elevated. Strong storms are not expected. Rainfall amounts will likely be less than a quarter of an inch, but locally higher amounts are possible with any thunderstorms.

On Sunday, dry weather is still in the forecast with humidity values falling into the 25-35% range. Winds are not expected to be exceptionally strong with gusts to around 15 mph for most places, except to around 20 mph in the Arrowhead. Fire weather conditions may be slightly elevated.

All other aspects of the forecast remain relatively unchanged with this update. Please see the previous discussion for more information.

This is the plain-text edition, decoded without AI so it loads anywhere. Read the whole Duluth discussion at /o/DLH/, see what changed since the last one, or open The National Desk for where the weather is today.