Meaning meteorologists reporting on local weather for local radio & TV stations.
Are these people doing any of their own tests and measurements, or are they just relaying predictions by the national weather service or some similar entity, and just adding some educated color commentary by virtue of their education?
[I’m aware that some stations just have DJs or newreaders with no weather training reading weather predictions. I’m not talking about these guys.]
the station will have local instruments and maybe radar (tv station) for presentation of that information.
the tv station will get data, forecasts, multiple radar and satellite images from the National Weather Service (USA). they can go with this or modify the forecast. there are dozens of data collection locations that cover an area that is a number of counties. tv stations will also have a number of viewers that will regularly send in their measurements.
tv stations do have business relationships with other stations in the region and might share data and radar with them.
The answer is almost certainly ‘it depends’, since some cities have the resources to hire professional meteorologists and can afford Doppler radar and other measurement equipment, while some cities are so small they may not even have a dedicated weatherperson.
I think in general they all start with the national weather maps and forecasts and then drill down to provide a more accurate local forecast.
The ones around here seem to know what they are talking about when they ad lib so they probably aren’t just reading someone elses stuff.
I don’t think any TV channel other than Weather.com has a “professional meteorologist” in the sense of someone who has a Ph.D. in meteorology. Most “weathermen” on TV have had specialized training in meteorology and can explain basic stuff. Most news channels giving weather reports have local radar of some sort. They can contact professional meteorologists at NOAA or at NWS, and probably are on a first name basis with many of them.
How about facts, not speculation. I personally know of local stations with “meterologists” who are glorified forecast readers, and at least two stations that employ experienced professional meteorologists, some with advanced degrees, who are unafraid to supersede the national-generated local forecast when their own experience tells them something else is more likely to occur – and usually make the right call in such situations. And I have little doubt everything between those extremes exists somewhere.
Prior thread on the topic. Apparently a good rule for checking out the bona fides of your local TV weather personality is to see if he or she has Mississippi State on their bio page on the station’s website. If so, they majored more in how to talk pretty then how weather works.
A large of any scientific experiment is interpreting the data. Even if they’re using data gathered by somebody else, it takes years of experience and training to translate that data into a forecast for the stations entire coverage area.
Here in western Washington, the combination of multiple mountain ranges converging weather systems and other local terrain features make weather prediction over a major metropolitan area extremely iffy.
I know one of our local weather guys (that’s been doing it for decades) actually wrote a book explaining some of the oddities of local weather (e.g. why it’s always sunny in a particular region, why it seems to always be rainy on weekends and sunny during the week, why temperature predictions always end in a 9). So at least one weatherman is more than just a talking head.
At least one prominent TV weather guy around here (Dick Goddard) bases his predictions partly on the color patterns of the caterpillars he sees. And he has a better track record than the rest.
Well, we don’t care how good a runner he is.
There are also private weather service companies that provide the reporter and the weather report for hundreds of television and radio stations. The local channel generally won’t specifically mention the fact that the reporter isn’t local at all when he or she reads his report. The anchor for the news will introduce the reporter as if he or she was in the same studio. Sometimes the same reporter will do, live or recorded, reports for dozens of stations each day. The station won’t lie about the fact that the reporter isn’t local, and they will mention the name of the company each time, but they won’t go out of the way to discuss the fact that the reporter isn’t local. One such company is AccuWeather:
Our local weather stations all have meteorologists on their staff with at least a Bachelor of Science in the subject.
Usually, they take the national weather service information and come up with their predictions, which are often different from both other services and each other.
The MSU certificate isn’t always a dead giveaway. James Spann in Birmingham is one of the most respected meteorologists in the country. He’s been doing it for over 30 years and he really knows the science as much as anybody and has won numerous awards and accolades. His entire educational background was a Certificate in Broadcast Meteorology from MSU. He has a podcast named Weatherbrains which has various guests every week and some of them have a MSU certificate, but in addition to other training or background.
The National Weather Association and American Meteorological Society issue seals of approval for meteorologists. The NWS doesn’t require a scientific degree but requires a written test, 3 years of time on the air and they review a person’s tapes. The AMS requires a degree in meteorology or a physical science but only requires 3 days experience so they can have a tape to look at. Most people will work towards getting both seals. People who either have a degree in meteorology or who hold a certification such as the MSU course plus have a few years experience and obtain the seals are generally considered to be meteorologists.
The MSU course seems to be well regarded for getting a person ready for TV. If a person only has that certificate, they’re either the sports anchor who got the bare minimum to do weather or they’re at the beginning of their career. If they have that plus NWA/AMS certs, they’re most likely ok.
Back to the original question. Other than radar, most meteorologists probably have little need for their own tests and measurements. The local weather is dictated by things that come in from hundreds of miles away so national weather maps and models are the mainstay of forecasting. The only place to get those is from large entities that have huge computing power and vast data collection. Weather models can also be ran from regular computers, I run one on my home PC, but they have limited output and use the same initialization data as the big models. I honestly don’t know why I run it, but it’s cool. Once a forecaster gets the models and maps they try to predict how everything will play out in their area.
Anyone who is interested in weather and has a little training can come up with a forecast, so I’ll say that generally anyone who has more than a basic meteorology certificate will be making their own forecasts. They may check other forecasts and factor those into their own, but they probably are making their own forecasts. On the other hand, the guy that was doing sports last month, got his MSU certificate and has been doing weather for a week is probably not.
ETA: I’m no meteorologist, I have less qualifications than the aforementioned sports guy. These are just my impressions.
don’t know about those “girls” but, oddly “hot weather boys” gets us nothing. apparently they are men.
It depends on where you are. I was quite shocked the first time I saw the “weatherpersons” in other parts of the country. I had no idea they actually hired pretty faces to stand up and just read out other people’s forecasts.
Let’s see, one of our local meteorologists was involved in the development of Doppler radar. He brought in the first radar system designed for television, and had the first radar-based on-air tornado warning. He’s credited with a number of other ‘firsts’ in addition to that.
If your area has ‘First Tracker’ or ‘Storm Warning’ or you’ve used ‘I-News’ online - you’ve used his stuff. All that pretty stuff they use on the Weather Channel? Yep, he helped develop most of that, too.
The major channels have 4 to 7 meteorologists each (and by that I mean people with at minimum a degree in meteorology - most have higher level degrees, national certifications, etc.). Many of them are actual storm chasers, several do independent research, and a number have gained national recognition for their work.
Even the little independent UHF channels have their own meteorologists.
Of course, we also have the National Weather Center and NOAA’s Severe Storms Lab just down the road, too.
No, no, no.
This guy Spann might be a good forecaster in Alabama after doing it for 30 years, but he is not respected nationally. His Evangelical Christianity defines his views, such as that Global Climate Change is a myth, and that Creationism is true.
He might be loud and outspoken, but respected? Not a chance.
Pull this guy out of Alabama and plop him down in Denver or Buffalo or Chicago where the weather is complicated and requires the scientific knowledge that dictates geographically influenced weather and he’d be completely lost.
Wow I never knew that. I listen to his podcast and they have guests from all over the country and they seem to have a lot of respect for him, as do people on weather forums I visit. I’ve never heard him mention religion and I always wondered about his views on climate change because it’s a forbidden subject on the podcast. I thought it was because it was a hotbutton issue and people would argue about it. The other people on the podcast (who mostly work for him at his private company) seem to accept climate change.
I’m trying hard to imagine how belief/non-belief in climate change or Christianity could possibly influence anyone’s views on short term (5 days or less) local weather forecasts.