The tropics for instance have somewhat more consistent and predictable patterns over, say, a couple of months, including deviations to the "normal" climate. This is because the weather is heavily influenced by cyclic phenomena such as El Nino (you may have heard that name in the media) that have worldwide repercussions.
On the other hand the weather in the mid-high latitudes is much more chaotic and hardly predictable beyond 2 weeks. The atmospheric patterns are similar to waves. Depending on you being at the bottom or the top of the wave, you may experience warmer or colder weather, or more or less rain. Also if some place has a negative temperature anomaly, chances are that another place a couple thousand km away (that the scale we are talking about) has just the opposite.
The waves are moving spatially (usually west to east). So to some extend after a rainy event you can expect sun to come back. The problem is that waves can also be stationary (e.g. due to a high pressure area acting as a roadblock), and generally we struggle to predict how they will move beyond these two weeks.
SaltarL t1_j3lr2sz wrote
Reply to Are short term weather patterns generally related to each other or more random? by nbapip
It depends on the region.
The tropics for instance have somewhat more consistent and predictable patterns over, say, a couple of months, including deviations to the "normal" climate. This is because the weather is heavily influenced by cyclic phenomena such as El Nino (you may have heard that name in the media) that have worldwide repercussions.
On the other hand the weather in the mid-high latitudes is much more chaotic and hardly predictable beyond 2 weeks. The atmospheric patterns are similar to waves. Depending on you being at the bottom or the top of the wave, you may experience warmer or colder weather, or more or less rain. Also if some place has a negative temperature anomaly, chances are that another place a couple thousand km away (that the scale we are talking about) has just the opposite.
The waves are moving spatially (usually west to east). So to some extend after a rainy event you can expect sun to come back. The problem is that waves can also be stationary (e.g. due to a high pressure area acting as a roadblock), and generally we struggle to predict how they will move beyond these two weeks.