Was weather more fun 20 years ago, with older technology?

[wxman57]

Or back in the 1970s when I was in college. The internet didn't exist. We had no personal computers. We relied on thermal paper to print satellite images and radar images - both quite poor resolution. We did have the MRF model that went out 48 hours. There was the 60-hr PE model that went to 60 hrs and we could get a 72 & 84 hr 500mb prog.

I worked in the A&M weather station under Charlie Brenton, plotting Skew-Ts for the junior/senior analysis and forecasting classes. Our desks consisted of light tables so we could layer one map atop another to compute thickness values.

Ah, yes, those were the good ol' days...

[wxman57]

I don't think weather forecasting was more fun back then. It was certainly a lot harder. I like having all the data that we do now, and the internet.

[Ptarmigan]

I don't think weather forecasting was more fun back then. It was certainly a lot harder. I like having all the data that we do now, and the internet.

We still get forecasts wrong despite technology and data.