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Ready to have your mind blown? "chance of rain" doesn't mean what you've always thought It did

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The phrase "mind blowing" gets thrown around a lot on the Internet . . . but this truly deserves it.

There's a TikTok video going viral right now from a woman who said she just found out the "chance of rain" in a weather forecast doesn't mean what we have always thought it means.


30% does NOT mean there's a 30% chance it's going to rain.

That 30% is based on what the chances that it's going to rain are multiplied by the percentage of the area that will get the rain.

So "50%" in the forecast doesn't mean there's a 50-50 chance it will rain.  It means there's a chance rain will happen in the area, multiplied by how much of the area will probably get that rain.

So if a meteorologist is 50% sure there will be rain that will cover 80% of the local area, that would come out as . . . 40% on the weather forecast.