Martha Johnson - San Jose A. Guilty as charged for getting caught up in the jargon and assuming I was making sense. Unfortunately, forecasting skills are still not good enough to make a categorical statement one way or the other. For example, if you are a building contractor and it rains, you have to shut your job site for the day. If you know ahead of time, you can save your workers their unnecessary commute to the job, and you save having to pay them for showing up. You can also cancel shipments of materials and supplies, or you can cover parts of the job site so materials are not damaged.
Businesses can get rain insurance to cover potential losses.
The company bought rain insurance to cover the cost if the event were canceled. But because I forecast that rain would most likely be light, the company got a limited policy with a significantly reduced premium. Unfortunately, the terminology of the National Weather Service may be getting more complex. There is a proposal not only to keep the probabilities but also to issue probabilities for a specific amount of rain. Consequently, you might see a 60 percent chance of a tenth of an inch of rain and a 20 percent chance for a half-inch.