LINCOLN - Everyone is affected by the weather, and meteorologists usually hear from the public when they get it wrong. On Saturday, the National Weather Service in Lincoln hosted an open house, giving the public an opportunity to see just what goes into forecasting the weather.

"The accuracy of forecasts has improved greatly over the past several years," said Chris Miller, Warning Coordination Meteorologist. "I think what sticks out in people's minds are those times when we don't forecast rain, and then it rains on their picnic. Those times lead them to believe we get it all wrong."

In Central Illinois, that happens roughly 6 times per year, or less than 2 percent of the time. And, almost 90 percent of the time, the temperature forecasts for the following day are accurate within five degrees.

For the past two years, the Lincoln office has been a test-bed for a system which allows the weather service to issue warnings for specific towns or areas within a county. That program will begin nationwide on Monday.

"In McLean County, for example, we could issue a warning for the western portion of the county, and people in Saybrook wouldn't be affected by that warning," said Miller. "By minimizing the warning area, we reduce the number of people warned by 70 percent."

"Reducing the number of people warned helps schools, hospitals, and other entities that have to react to those warnings in a specific way," Miller said, adding that they also hope it will help people take the warnings more seriously.

Other technological advances on the horizon will also help with severe weather prediction. Miller says within a few years, there will be software improvements that will allow them to track the storms in 3D.

And, in the next five years, hardware improvements will allow them to look at a storm vertically, so that they will be able to look at a winter storm and determine if it will produce snow or sleet.

Some of the improvements don't depend on technology at all but on ordinary people who volunteer to collect weather data, using thermometers and rain gauges that haven't changed much over the past fifty years.

Much research and many models are based on routine observations that are made by participants in the Cooperative Observer Program. "Some of those volunteers have been going out every morning at 7 am for 30 years," said Ernest Goetsch, Meteorologist-in-Charge at the Lincoln station.

"Big decisions get made by the Congress and the president about things like global warming," based on the data collected by those volunteers.