Plaincast

What the forecast actually says

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

What is an Area Forecast Discussion?

Area Forecast Discussions are the real forecasts, written 3 to 4 times daily by NWS meteorologists reading the models and interpreting what they mean for your area. They offer far deeper insight than any weather app, but they're written in dense meteorological shorthand. Plaincast uses Anthropic's Claude to summarize them into plain English, side by side with the annotated original.

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 Cincinnati, 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 Cincinnati (ILN) · issued Sunday, August 23 at 2:04 PM EDT.

What has changed

Increased precipitation chances into this evening and also added patchy fog in for overnight.

Messages

Scattered showers and isolated thunderstorms will be possible into this evening across parts of the area.

Dry and cool to start the week on Monday, Thunderstorm chances return for Wednesday night into Thursday.

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