As a meteorologist it's my job to figure out what the weather will do each day. It's a great job, different every day and extremely challenging. Meteorologist Bob Ryan has a great quote about the challenges of forecasting, check this out:
"Imagine a rotating sphere that is 12,800 kilometers (8000 miles) in diameter, has a bumpy surface, is surrounded by a 40-kilometer-deep mixture of different gases whose concentrations vary both spatially and over time, and is heated, along with its surrounding gases, by a nuclear reactor 150 million kilometers (93 million miles) away. Imagine also that this sphere is revolving around the nuclear reactor and that some locations are heated more during one part of the revolution and other locations are heated during another part of the revolution. And imagine that this mixture of gases continually receives inputs from the surface below, generally calmly but sometimes through violent and highly localized injections. Then, imagine that after watching the gaseous mixture, you are expected to predict its state at one location on the sphere one, two, or more days into the future. This is essentially the task encountered day by day by a weather forecaster."
I tell people as a meteorologist I'm essentially a "professional guesser!" Each day I gather as much information I can on the conditions of the atmosphere. Not just at the surface but 10,000, 20,000 even 50,000 feet up in the air. What's happening up there can and will have an impact at the surface.
As you might expect, forecast accuracy decreases with time. I tell people to never cancel Saturday plans based on a Monday forecast. Data several days ahead isn't too reliable so I try to watch for trends in the long term data to tweak my forecasts a little each day if necessary.
It's far from an exact science, I tell folks the day I'm able to forecast each day with 100% accuracy is the day I'm working outside television making a lot of money!! I hope this gives you a sense of what goes into the forecast we deliver each day. You can always get more
weather information from my facebook page.
Thanks for reading, have a great weekend.
