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

00:13should host a barbecue. With huge advances in technology though, there is

00:17more data than ever before for weather forecasters. So why do we get different

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

00:26the literal reality of walking outside? Weather has become a little bit more

00:33extreme, you could say, across the country and with the changing climates and all

00:40that stuff. It's never been more important to have that kind of local

00:44expertise, you could say, that actually lives in your community, right? Nick Jansen

00:50is the chief meteorologist with KTTC in Rochester, Minnesota, about 90 miles

00:54southeast of Minneapolis. Like many weather professionals, Jansen's passion

00:58started at a young age. Obviously growing up in the 90s, the movie Twister, right, was

01:04what was one that was always on in the background in my household.

01:08Gentlemen, the extreme! It's the extreme! When I went from elementary school to

01:15middle school, so in Illinois that was fourth grade to fifth grade, and they

01:19asked on there, you know, what do you want to do when you grow up? And I

01:21actually wrote down, you know, meteorologists. My mom still has that

01:25piece of paper. For meteorologists across the globe, delivering forecasts is

01:29about more than getting to promise a sunny day or letting you know you might need a

01:33light jacket. I grew up in Billings, Montana. Tornado warning. I was a kid

01:37running outside looking up at the clouds, and that's exactly what I did. I saw my

01:41first funnel cloud. As a meteorologist, the goal of the whole science is

01:46definitely to save lives and property, to give people information, to make

01:50choices for their business, for their daily activities. Meteorologist Hutch

01:54Johnson's trajectory went from research meteorology to broadcast in weather

01:58hotspots like Fargo, North Dakota. There will also be thunder for the people in the

02:03southeast. Have you done this before, William? No, but a little bit. Before going

02:10independent with Hutch's weather, meteorologists do their best to be ahead of

02:13major weather events. But things can change really quickly. It's safe to travel

02:18from San Antonio to Fredericksburg. I would wait a little bit. You know, you're

02:21gonna encounter a lot of flooding. In July, flash floods ripped through Texas

02:25Hill Country. The floods claimed more than 100 lives, including at least 27 at Camp

02:30Mystic, a Christian summer camp. As the state responded to the catastrophic

02:33flooding, Texas's emergency management chief explained how different forecasts can

02:37be 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

02:46Valley and four to eight inches of rain in the Hill Country. And the amount of

02:51rain that fell in this specific location was never in any of those forecasts. In

02:552025, offering coverage for warning systems to the vast American landscape is

03:00still a challenge. Many, many people lost their lives because they did not receive

03:06critical warnings that were issued by the National Weather Service. But I grew up in

03:10Connecticut and the first storm that really ignited my interest back was the

03:15blizzard of 1978. So kind of dating myself. I was a little kid back then, but also

03:20Hurricane Gloria in 1985. And those two storms really helped me kind of ignite my

03:25interest in meteorologists. Brian Lamar recently retired from the National Weather

03:29Service after 30 years. He launched Inspire Weather, a consulting agency to help

03:33organizations from media to emergency management better understand weather data.

03:37It's important to remember, local TV reporters are members of the communities they serve,

03:42and they have as much at stake as viewers. Heads up if you live along Massachusetts or Wisconsin

03:46Avenue. Can't you there, buddy? Yeah. All right. Hey, man, I want you to get down in the

03:51in the basement. We got a tornado warning. In recent years, broadcast meteorologists have

03:55made headlines for alerting their families to inclement weather. All right. Thanks, Zach, for that.

04:00Sorry. I just had to text my wife. Baby was sleeping well tonight. So that's that's going to be over

04:05with. And what made that day a little different than regular days is that we knew that we would

04:11have strong storms well after sunset and after bedtime for a lot of people. Jansen caught some

04:17guff from viewers for taking time out to warn his wife about the coming storm. His Facebook post in

04:23response made it a somewhat viral moment. So I not only had my wife at home with the baby, but also

04:29my mom. So I made sure that they knew, hey, you know, if this rolls in at 1030, 11 o'clock, you know,

04:35make sure that you have your phones on and stuff like that. So, you know, either you can get the

04:40alerts or I can shoot you a quick text message. It wasn't the first time Jansen had ruffled some

04:46feathers by telling his wife to take a shelter during severe weather. But he says, despite some negative

04:51comments, the response was overwhelmingly positive. Meteorologists have access to a massive treasure

04:56trove of data. Information is reported through a real public private partnership. So basically,

05:02the public side is a government, National Weather Service, NOAA, and the private side is private

05:08weather companies, consulting companies, media, and we're all using that same data to provide forecasts.

05:16When a tropical storm is set to hit the east coast, you'll often hear about the American and

05:21European models, which can have slight differences. Numerical weather prediction models crunch numbers

05:26to simulate and predict future atmospheric conditions. They grab real-time temperature,

05:31moisture, and wind conditions from satellites, weather balloons, and sensors on the ground.

05:35There are a lot of models out there, and more are being developed as AI becomes more prevalent.

05:40Meteorology is not an exact science. Touching on that, you go to the doctor and it's like,

05:45it hurts when I do this. And they say, well, number one, don't do that. And then let's take a look.

05:51Many sciences are not exact. So ultimately, your weather app is deriving the information from some

06:00model. It's either inputting some one specific weather model or sticking a blend of weather models.

06:06Matt Lanza is another former broadcast meteorologist based in Houston, Texas. He now works with Space

06:12City Weather and the Eye Wall, which he co-founded to enhance understanding of tropical storms and

06:17extreme weather. And Lanza explains these weather models can have bias that skews the data.

06:22So good examples of this are like the American model, what we call the GFS model. It tends to

06:27have a bias where in urban heat island areas, areas that are well built up, there will be some

06:33sort of extreme temperature that it adjusts for. So instead of saying like on a day where it's supposed

06:41to be about 100 degrees, it might say it's going to be 107, 108 degrees. There's people that you've

06:46formed some trust with in your local area that know different things. Like these models don't

06:51always 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 into

07:01evaporating rain. All of those factors come into our forecast as we kind of model them. And when it

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

07:11can measure anything from temperature to the amount of precipitation. And that can introduce

07:15another set of biases. So I know in the past I would call a weather observer or a school,

07:20wherever that location is that's reporting that data. I'm like, by the way, where is your thermometer?

07:25And they're like, oh, it's in the parking lot. I'm like, okay, well, thank you very much.

07:28You know, so that right there tells me that it's heating up a lot faster. It might be good in the winter

07:34time. It might be really bad in the summertime. Each individual weather app has its own process

07:39for reporting current conditions. The weather app native on all iPhones receives data from the

07:43National Weather Service and NOAA and similar government agencies from around the globe.

07:48It even mines proprietary data from private entities the likes of the Weather Channel

07:52and Breezometer, which gathers air quality data. But some weather apps are just sharing raw data

07:57rather than refining it. They're not really doing much with it. And that's a little bit of a dangerous

08:02game to play because you're just relying on that model being right all the time in one place.

08:07Still, the best place to go, according to these experts, is your local expert.

08:11Everything 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

08:30models show us a high end and a low end. And to communicate that more clearly, I will say now

08:36it shows 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 S.A.N. 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 NOAA 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

09:06management. FEMA also has a weather app. The National Weather Service doesn't have an app

09:11of its own at this time, but Lamar explained the agency helped develop FEMA's app.

09:16For Straight Arrow News, I'm Brent Jabbour. For more in-depth reporting,

09:19head to S.A.N. dot com or download the Straight Arrow News app.

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