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 St. Louis, 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 St. Louis (LSX) · issued Saturday, October 24 at 11:57 AM CDT.

Messages

A stagnant pattern remains in place keeping warm and dry conditions through the end of the week.

Short Term

A slow moving upper-level ridge remains over the central CONUS keeping dry and seasonably warm conditions in the Mid-Mississippi Valley through the weekend and into Monday. As a result, very little change in the weather day-to-day is expected. The only change is the presence of some upper-level clouds. The stubborn ridge continues to drive high temperatures into the mid to upper 70s, with some areas possibly exceeding 80 on Sunday depending on the thickness of the clouds. Dry air will allow for radiative cooling overnight keeping low temperatures in the upper 40s to low 50s, with the 40s predominately being in the river valleys and southeastern MO and southwestern IL. This is due to the presence of fewer clouds in that region, which will allow for more efficient radiative cooling overnight.

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