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

Plaincast

What the forecast actually says — NWS Area Forecast Discussions, 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 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 Saturday, October 24 at 12:15 PM EDT.

Messages

Dry conditions will persist though much of next week.

Discussion

A blocky pattern characterized by a mid level ridge extending from the western Gulf to the western Great Lakes will shift slightly east into the early part of the week. Surface high situated east of the area will remain through the weekend. This will offer mainly clear skies and light winds which will lead to river valley fog overnight.

A weak surface front will sag south across the area Monday evening into the overnight hours. With a dry airmass - only expect some increase in clouds. The front will wash out as another surface high moves from Ontario to the northeast Atlantic coast.

The mid level ridge gets slowly suppressed south, breaking down by mid week as a short wave lifts out of the southern Plains and up the Ohio Valley into the Great Lakes.

This pattern will offer an extended period of dry conditions which will persist well into next week. Temperatures look to be above normal.

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.

Data from the National Weather Service. Translated by Claude. About · For developers & agents · Subscribe: RSS feed for this office · Source on GitHub