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 San Francisco, 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 San Francisco (MTR) · issued Saturday, October 24 at 9:16 AM PDT.

Messages

Near normal temperatures this weekend, cooling to slightly below normal through the remainder of the upcoming week

Coastal flooding due to astronomical high tides and thermal expansion this weekend through Thursday

Update

Offshore winds are diminishing across the Mayacamas and Vaca mountain ranges with Mount Saint Helena gusting to 40 mph currently (peaked at 63 mph at 1:10 AM PDT). Aside from some patchy fog in the southern portion of the Salinas Valley, skies are clear across much of the region. No updates anticipated this morning as the ongoing forecast remains on track.

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