00:00Weather doesn't just shape forecasts, it can shape court cases.
00:04From slip-and-fall lawsuits to insurance claims and even criminal investigations,
00:08weather data can play a critical role in determining what really happened.
00:12That's where forensic meteorology comes in.
00:15AccuWeather meteorologist John Lavin leads the company's forensic meteorology team,
00:19helping reconstruct past weather conditions for legal and insurance cases.
00:24But essentially what we're doing is we're looking back in time to see what happened
00:29at a particular time and location, what the weather was.
00:33And this comes up actually quite often in many different types of legal cases,
00:37as well as various other interests in the insurance field as well.
00:43Forensic meteorologists analyze temperature, precipitation, and storm timing,
00:47sometimes weeks or months after an event.
00:50In many cases, there may not be a weather station nearby.
00:54That's when radar and satellite imagery become critical,
00:57helping experts fill in the gaps and reconstruct conditions down to the hour.
01:01In some investigations, tiny details can make a big difference.
01:05In one criminal case, investigators noticed dew on one parked car but not on another.
01:11Weather analysis showed the car without dew had been driven overnight, helping disprove an alibi.
01:18For Lavin, the work isn't about speculation.
01:20It's about facts, using science to clarify what the weather was doing when it mattered most.
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