It’s Weatherman’s Day today. Or Weatherperson’s Day, to be more politically correct. Celebrated mainly in the US, today is the day to recognise people working in the field of meteorology and weather forecasting – those people partaking in the massive task of trying to forecast the weather patterns which, let’s face it, are getting more and more crazy and chaotic each year. The date of 5 February was chosen because it is the birthday of John Jeffries, one of the first weather observers in the US – he collected daily weather data from 1774 to 1816.
Weatherperson’s Day links up thematically with World Meteorological Day that we celebrate in May, but where that day focuses on the weather itself, today we focus on those working to forecast it.
From predicting whether it’s going to rain tomorrow, to developing seasonal weather forecasts, weather forecasting is a hugely complex and computationally intensive endeavour. As such, weather services are often some of the main users of supercomputers around the world. Weather forecasting activities include gathering raw weather data, analysing the data and developing intricate computer models to simulate natural weather systems. One of the (many) challenges of weather modelling is that natural weather and atmosphere systems are near-chaotic – small changes in boundary conditions can result in huge changes in outcome.
These difficulties, however, do not deter the good guys and gals at weather services around the globe who continually strive for more accurate and more timely weather forecasting. According to the US National Weather Service, for example, “lead time for flash flood warnings improved from 22 minutes in 1993 to 78 minutes in 2008. Accuracy over the same time period increased from 71 percent to 91 percent. Lead time for tornado warnings has increased from 6 minutes in 1993 to 13 minutes today. Tornado warning accuracy increased from 43 percent to 72 percent. Winter storm accuracy in 2008 was 89 percent with an average lead time of 17 hours. Since 1990, the Tropical Prediction Center’s 24 to 72 hour tropical storm forecast track errors have been reduced by more than 50%.”
These improvements are quite significant, and can potentially be the difference between life and death for communities in the path of an extreme weather event.
So spare a thought today for all the weather people through the ages who have dedicated their working lives to the holy grail of accurate weather forecasting. After the scorchingly hot, dry weather we’ve had for weeks now, they predicted rain for this week, and lo and behold, it has rained! 🙂