the local weather forecast has been having a lot of issues over the last few months. it gets the right idea, but has difficulty nailing a scaling factor, and consistently misses timing by several hours. it may forecast a warm up, but be off by five degrees, or a cool down and by off by five degrees. they have generally been better at this over the last many years. what's going on?

the forecasts this week make it clear to me what is happening.

- today, it was dark and rainy. they correctly forecast the rain, but the high is about five degrees lower than predicted.

- the days before that were sunny and warmer than seasonal, although pretty blicky cold still. they got the idea right, but the actual high was about five degrees higher than forecast.

it's fairly clear that the factor they're missing is sunlight and that the sun is affecting the weather right now more than usual.

this might be partially due to blackbody radiation on the earth and the cold surface temperature releasing less heat overnight or when it's cloudy while the ground remains frozen, but the factor is the sunlight.