Why can't noaa get it right?

Anyone notice the how wrong the weather forecasts have been lately?  It's almost as if you will get a better forecast if you take the opposite of the actual forecast.
Today was supposed to be cloudy with showers, 2-6 inches of snow.  But it was bluebird.
Same for last Saturday.
The weekend before that, a dry partly cloudy forecast for the east side actually meant light rain and dense fog.

Does the farmer's almanac put out a daily forecast  ??? Maybe I'll start using it instead...

For today at least, it can be tough to forecast during the cold, postfrontal, possibly unstable conditions we have right now. I think there was just a little less moisture or a little more stability than expected. Last Saturday was surprising though.

spooling radar, and putting my nose to the wind, seem to complament nws quite well. Some of the local weather folks do drift a bit from the noaa predictions, more snow is always better. At the bottom of Noaa home page there is a thing about computer models and the nature of the world, its pretty interesting

I actually thought last Saturday's forecast was pretty good. True, the day was clearer than I expected, but they had been talking for several days about a "dirty ridge" and how Saturday would be the best day of the weekend. They also predicted a system to arrive Saturday night with plunging snow levels, which was right on the money. Apparently the ridge was more pronounced than they expected, which resulted in bluebird weather Saturday instead of mixed clouds, but the overall trend that they predicted was accurate.

Go to: www.atmos.washington.edu/~cliff/cliffpage.html read the papers under 'Weather Prediction'.

Does anyone out there use aviation forecasts for short-term trip planning? A prediction of cloud base elevation would be useful, since there is a big difference between "Mostly cloudy" with cloud bases at 10,000', for example, and "Mostly Cloudy" with clouds at 3000'. Cloud levels are mentioned occasionally in the aviation section of the forecast discussion. I looked at the NOAA aviation weather page ( www.wrh.noaa.gov/sew/aviation_air.php ), but didn't see anything. A cloud forecast for the flight path between Seattle and Wenatchee, for example, would be very useful. Does something like this exist?

Jayson