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 Seattle, 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.
An upper level trough will continue to move east of Western Washington today. Drier and warmer weather Monday and Tuesday as an upper level ridge builds over the Pacific Northwest. An upper level low will approach the area around midweek, bringing increasing onshore flow and cooler temperatures to Western Washington for the second half of the week.
An upper level trough continues to push across Washington this afternoon. Partly cloudy skies this afternoon with high temperatures in the low to mid 70s across the interior and mid 60s along the coast. An upper level ridge will build over the Pacific Northwest on Monday, with the ridge axis east of the Cascades on Tuesday. This will bring warmer and drier conditions. The warmest day will be Tuesday. High temperatures are expected to peak in the mid 60s/low 70s along the coast. Across the interior, temperatures will climb into the 80s and low 90s in the Cascade valleys. This will reintroduce widespread areas of Moderate HeatRisk for the Everret-Seattle-Tacoma Metro and Cascade valleys.
Additionally, surface flow will transition more northerly to easterly Monday and Tuesday, resulting in wildfire smoke being transported from nearby fires in British Columbia and Eastern Washington into Western Washington. 29
This is the plain-text edition, decoded without AI so it loads anywhere. Read the whole Seattle discussion at /o/SEW/, see what changed since the last one, or open The National Desk for where the weather is today.