For some meteorologists, one of the biggest challenges of their jobs is when they have to explain what they do for a living to non-science minded people.  Recent meteorology grads are fresh from being tested on words such as adiabatic, ageostrophic, vorticity, etc.  I speak from experience when I say that it’s hard to return to describing the weather in simple terms fresh out of school.  On my first day on the air at Weather Eye Radio Network, one of the radio hosts that I spoke with live asked me to explain the Santa Anna winds to an audience in Dickinson, North Dakota.  That request not only took me by surprise, but it took me a minute to find a way to explain them without using technical terms that very few in that small town in western ND would understand.  I was pretty proud of myself when the live hit was over, but the episode reminded me that with all of my new found vocabulary came a new responsibility: explaining science in plain English.

If you think of this responsibility as a war on weather ignorance, broadcast meteorologists are on the frontlines of this battle.  The National Weather Service is right there with them.  Most people get their weather forecasts from the TV and radio.  Some have their local NWS website bookmarked.  Others look up Weather.com or one of the many news related sites for their local forecast.  While reading the forecast is an important part of a person’s day, very few people think about what goes into creating it.  All they want to know is will it rain?  How warm will it be this afternoon?  Do I need a jacket?  Then, if the forecast is a bust, we all hear how worthless meteorologists are.  We mets know better, but there can be some hurt feelings involved in that assessment depending on who is making it.

The American Meteorological Society has been focusing on this idea of communicating science to the public in recent years.  There are so many different aspect of the weather forecast that we take for granted, but are not so easily understood by the general public.  Take for example, precipitation probability forecasting or severe weather probabilities.  We see 20% and call it a slight risk.  The public sees 20% and assumes there’s no risk.  After all, in most cases in other aspects of daily life, 20% isn’t worth betting on.  How often has a 20% chance of thunderstorms produced the pop-up style, summer time, convective storms with heavy rain and plenty of lightning?  The joke there is that if you’re under one of those, your chances of getting wet go up considerably from 20% to 100%.  Joking aside, explaining the percentages and risk categories is our responsibility.

Aside from explaining statistics to our users/viewers/readers, what else can we do to help them understand the weather?  Explaining some basic definitions is a good start.  No, I don’t mean the “rain is water from the sky” kind of basic.  I’m talking about things like the difference between hail and sleet, a watch and a warning, a shower and a sprinkle.

When we define terms in a simple manner, everyone starts from the same page.  I’ve seen a few local meteorologists do a great job of explaining why a winter storm system may drop freezing rain or sleet depending on the temperatures in the different levels of the atmosphere.  It seems like a difficult thing to explain, but with the use of good graphics, it’s possible to sum it up in 30 seconds.  When the audience sees why it’s so hard for us to pin down whether we’ll get sleet or enough ice to snap power lines two days out, they might give us more credit when we get the forecast right, or at least cut some slack when it’s not perfect.

Still, the point of this blog entry isn’t credit or blame.  The point is helping everyone to understand the forecast and what it means to them in their daily lives.  They’re looking for the answer to whether or not to grab the jacket, the umbrella, gloves, or sandals.  They need to know if they should set their NOAA weather radios to alert in case of severe weather or flash flooding.  They need to know if they should consider moving valuables to higher ground.  If we arm them with the definitions of terms like “watch,” “advisory,” or “warning,” then we give them a better opportunity to be proactive.

This is a battle that we’ve been fighting for years, and it probably won’t end any time soon.  However, if we keep at it and reach a few people each day, we’re doing our jobs.