Predicting weather isn’t an exact science. Here’s why many forecasts miss

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00:00weather is a crucial part of daily life we make constant decisions like if we

00:10should mow our lawns or water our plants to bigger choices like whether we should

00:13host a barbecue with huge advances in technology though there is more data

00:18than ever before for weather forecasters so why do we get different forecasts

00:22from the weather app on our phone our favorite meteorologists and the literal

00:27reality of walking outside weather has become a little bit more extreme you could say across

00:36uh the the country and with the changing climates and all that stuff it's it's all it's never been

00:42more important to have that kind of local expertise you could say that actually lives in your community

00:48right nick jansen is the chief meteorologist with ktTC in rochester minnesota about 90 miles southeast

00:54of minneapolis like many weather professionals jansen's passion started at a young age obviously

01:00growing up in the 90s the movie twister right was was one that was always on in the background

01:06um in my household when i went from elementary school to middle school so in illinois that was

01:17fourth grade to fifth grade um and they asked on there you know what do you want to do when you

01:20grow up and i actually wrote down you know meteorologists my mom still has that that that piece

01:26of paper for meteorologists across the globe delivering forecasts is about more than getting

01:30to promise a sunny day or letting you know you might need a light jacket i grew up in billings montana

01:35tornado warning i was a kid running outside looking up at the clouds and that's exactly what i did i

01:40saw my first funnel cloud as a meteorologist the goal of the whole science uh is definitely to save lives

01:48and property to give people information to make choices for their business for their daily activities

01:53meteorologist hutch johnson's trajectory went from research meteorology to broadcast in weather

01:58hot spots like fargo north dakota there will also be thunder for for the people in the southeast

02:04have you done this before william a little bit before going independent with hutch's weather

02:11meteorologists do their best to be ahead of major weather events but things can change really quickly

02:17it's safe to travel from san antonio to fredericksburg i would wait a little bit you know

02:21you're going to encounter a lot of flooding in july flash floods ripped through texas hill country

02:26the floods claimed more than 100 lives including at least 27 at camp mystic a christian summer camp

02:31as the state responded to the catastrophic flooding texas's emergency management chief explained how

02:36different forecasts can be from reality the original forecast that we received on wednesday from the

02:42national weather service predicted three to six inches of rain in the concho valley and four to

02:48eight inches of rain in the hill country and the amount of rain that fell in this specific location

02:53was never in any of those forecasts in 2025 offering coverage for warning systems to the vast american

02:59landscape is still a challenge many many people lost their lives because they did not receive critical

03:07warnings that were issued by the national weather service but i grew up in connecticut and the first

03:12storm that really ignited my interest back was the blizzard of 1978 so kind of dating myself i was a

03:18little kid back then but also hurricane gloria in 1985 and those two storms really helped me kind of

03:24ignite my interest in meteorologists brian lamar recently retired from the national weather service

03:29after 30 years he launched inspire weather a consulting agency to help organizations from media to

03:35emergency management better understand weather data it's important to remember local tv reporters are

03:41members of the communities they serve and they have as much at stake as viewers heads up if you live

03:45along massachusetts or wisconsin avenue can't you everybody yeah all right hey man i want you to uh

03:50get down in the in the basement we got a tornado warning in recent years broadcast meteorologists

03:55have made headlines for alerting their families to inclement weather all right thanks zach uh for that

04:00sorry i just had to text my wife baby was sleeping well tonight so that's that's gonna be over with then

04:06what made that day a little different than regular days is that it we knew that you know we would have

04:12strong storms well after sunset and after bedtime for a lot of people jansen caught some guff from

04:18viewers for taking time out to warn his wife about the coming storm his facebook post in response

04:24made it a somewhat viral moment so i not only had my my wife at home with the baby but also my mom

04:30so i made sure that they knew hey you know if this rolls in at 10 30 11 o'clock you know make sure

04:36that you have your your phones on and stuff like that so um you know either you can get the alerts

04:41or i can shoot you um a quick text message it wasn't the first time jansen had ruffled some feathers

04:46by telling his wife to take a shelter during severe weather but he says despite some negative comments

04:52the response was overwhelmingly positive meteorologists have access to a massive treasure trove of data

04:57information is reported through a real public private partnership so basically the the public

05:03side is a government national weather service noaa and the private side is private weather companies

05:09consulting companies media and we're all using that same data to provide forecasts when a tropical storm

05:17is set to hit the east coast you'll often hear about the american and european models which can have

05:22slight differences numerical weather prediction models crunch numbers to simulate and predict future

05:27atmospheric conditions they grab real-time temperature moisture and wind conditions from

05:32satellites weather balloons and sensors on the ground there are a lot of models out there and more

05:37are being developed as ai becomes more prevalent meteorology is not an exact science touching on that

05:44you go to the doctor and it's like it hurts when i do this and they say well number one don't do that

05:49and then let's take a look many sciences are not exact so ultimately um your weather app is deriving

05:57the information from some model it's either inputting some some weather one specific weather

06:04model or sticking a blend of weather models matt lanza is another former broadcast meteorologist

06:09based in houston texas he now works with space city weather and the eye wall which he co-founded to

06:15enhance understanding of tropical storms and extreme weather and lanza explains these weather models can

06:20have bias that skews the data so good examples of this are like the american model what we call the gfs model

06:26it tends to have a bias where in um urban heat island areas areas that are well built up there

06:33will be some sort of extreme temperature um that it that it uh adjusts for so it's instead of saying

06:39like uh on a day where it's supposed to be about 100 degrees it might say it's going to be 107 108 degrees

06:45there's people that you form some trust with in your local area that know different things like these

06:50models don't always understand the local differences weather can make oh we just got four inches of rain in this

06:56community because of that it's not going to get quite as hot because the sun energy is going

07:01into evaporating rain all of those factors come into our forecast as we kind of model them and when

07:07it comes to the private side of things weather observers strewn throughout the local area can

07:11measure anything from temperature to the amount of precipitation and that can introduce another set

07:15of biases so i know in the past i would call a weather observer or a school wherever that location

07:21is that's reporting that data i'm like by the way where is your thermometer and they're like oh it's in the

07:26parking lot i'm like okay well thank you very much you know so uh that right there tells me that it's

07:31heating up a lot faster it might be good in the winter time might be really bad in the summer time

07:36each individual weather app has its own process for reporting current conditions the weather app

07:41native on all iphones receives data from the national weather service and noaa and similar

07:46government agencies from around the globe it even mines proprietary data from private entities the

07:50likes of the weather channel and brisometer which gathers air quality data but some weather

07:56apps are just sharing raw data rather than refining it they're not really doing much with it and

08:01that's a little bit of a dangerous game to play because you're just relying on that model being

08:05right all the time in one place still the best place to go according to these experts is your local

08:11expert everything is based on people's experience based on what you know as a forecaster based on

08:17what you know from model biases and where you've just had success really in using one model versus

08:22another instead of saying snowfall forecast i will often put the term snowfall potential because

08:31models show us a high end and a low end and to communicate that more clearly i will say now it

08:37shows the heavier stretch of snow here but it very easily could shift 50 miles one way or the other

08:44all the meteorologists who spoke with san note that watching your local tv station for the weather

08:49isn't as popular as it once was but there are ways to keep yourself safe in the event of severe weather

08:54it's really important for people to have a no weather radio you know for people to have also

09:02a weather app on their phone that they trust it could be a tv station it could be a mercy management

09:07fema also has a weather app the national weather service doesn't have an app of its own at this time

09:12but lamar explained the agency helped develop fema's app for straight arrow news i'm brend jabor for

09:18more in-depth reporting head to san.com or download the straight arrow news app

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