A World of Weather, Edition 3: Chapter 16 Introduction

CHAPTER 16

MID-LATITUDE V: OPERATIONAL WEATHER FORECASTING
In the late 1980s, a group of retired All-Star baseball players gathered in Washington, DC to play in an Old Timers' Game. Tip O'Neill, then Speaker of the House, invited the players to a luncheon at the Capitol. During the luncheon, Warren Spahn, a pitching ace for the old Milwaukee Braves and the winningest left-hander in baseball history, took the floor and delivered the following message to O'Neill and his congressional colleagues:

"Mr. Speaker, baseball is a game of failure. Even the best batters fail about sixty-five percent of the time. The two Hall of Fame pitchers here today (himself and St. Louis ace Bob Gibson) lost more games than a team plays in a full season. I hope you fellows in Congress have more success than baseball players have."

Like Warren Spahn's humble assessment of baseball, there's a sense among some members of the public that weather forecasting is also a game of failure. In baseball, there's little doubt about what's failure and what's success for a hitter or a pitcher. But what qualifies as success and failure in weather forecasting? It's not as clear-cut as baseball.

As an example, suppose you're in Philadelphia and you hear the following forecast in late May: "Clear this morning followed by increasing clouds, with rain developing later this afternoon. High of 76oF. Southeast winds at 5 to 10 mph."

Now suppose that the day did indeed start out clear. Then clouds rapidly increased, but rain arrived shortly after 1 p.m. The mercury topped out at an official 69oF and winds registered within forecasted limits. Do you deem such a forecast a success or a failure? That's a tough question, isn't it? Some folks might chalk up an "F" for "failure" because the weather didn't turn out exactly as forecast. But there was some useful information in the forecast. Granted, the timing was off, but it did rain and the sequence of weather occurred as predicted.

Before you hand down your judgment, it might be helpful to know the methods that forecasters use to create weather forecasts. It would also be helpful to know the limitations of those methods. Now that you have a feel for how computer guidance works, you should be able, by the end of this chapter, to make your very own weather forecasts - first by accessing and studying computer progs (easily accessible on the web) and then by applying the strategies presented in this chapter.

Some of the methods we will discuss may seem like "inside baseball" - things that only forecasters think about and consider. But, by giving you the inside story, you will gain a better appreciation and understanding of weather forecasting as well as insight to better use the forecasts that you regularly hear on television or radio.

Leading off - the tools available to forecast temperatures.