Plaincast — the National Weather Service forecast, decoded into plain English

Plaincast

What the forecast actually says — NWS Area Forecast Discussions, 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 Pittsburgh, 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 Pittsburgh (PBZ) · issued Friday, September 11 at 7:39 AM EDT.

What has changed

Update to Key Messages and Aviation Discussion.

Messages

Widespread rain and isolated thunderstorms expected early Saturday with new disturbance

Monitoring the potential for strong to severe storms Sunday evening with a cold front

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

Data from the National Weather Service. Translated by Claude. About · For developers & agents · Subscribe: RSS feed for this office · Source on GitHub