Regional forecasts are actually pretty accurate. (See: How Reliable Are Weather Forecasts?)
But very local, small scale forecasts have additional variables. For example, Boston is a waterfront city and so is subject to various effects that apply only to the immediate coast. A distance of a few miles/KM can make a huge difference in temperature, wind, cloud cover, and so on.
Boston is also near the confluence of two major weather tracks — the general west-east continental track, and the general south-north coastal Atlantic track. The intersection of those tracks can lead to unusual, near one-of-a-kind events — like the record-setting 1991 “Perfect Storm,” when high continental pressure forced a raging nor’easter to merge with an entirely-separate hurricane that was coming up the coastal track. The energy of the two combined storms was phenomenal. (See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1991_Perfect_Storm)
Nate Silver’s statistics site, FiveThirtyEight, analyzed weather forecasting for the US, and lists Boston as the #8 hardest-to-forecast city, among the US’s top 50 cities by population. (Info.)
Pity the folks in cities #1–7: Kansas City, Missouri; Oklahoma City; Minneapolis; Cincinnati; Indianapolis; St. Louis; Birmingham, Alabama. Their local conditions make them even harder to forecast than Boston!
And envy the folks in Honolulu, HI, and San Diego, CA: the two US cities with the most predictable weather!
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