> I'd be shocked if weather forecasting is ever precise to less than 1-2 °C
That's not a forecast .. actual forecasts for a region are often more accurate than that wrt "mean tempreture" for that region.
Where I live the BoM (Bureau of Meteorology) cannot "accurately" predict the upcoming daily tempreture and rainfall for the town that I'm in.
They do very accurately predict the mean temp. and rainfall for the wider region.
Doppler RADAR gives a very accurate measure of the amount of moisture held by rain bearing clouds, stable wrt broad area winds give a good path for that moisture's travel in the next 12-24 hours, experience + data give solid predictions for the amount of water to be shed, along with bulk cooling from shade and water fall + evaporation.
The difficulty rarely lies in the bulk parameters for a broad area, the devil is in the small details which are inherently turbulent.
To measure the accuracy of forecasting it first has to be ring fenced by what area you intend to predict the mean attributes for, the timescale you intend to project for, etc.