Weather or not he’s right, he’s got a sunny outlook
Meteorologist's head is in the clouds
Robert Thompson talks up a storm. As meteorologist in chief at the National Weather Service, weather isn’t just a water cooler topic but literally a matter of life or death. He’s all too aware that the forecasts released by the Taunton office affect not just people’s golf games or fashion attire but also, as he likes to put it, “the protection of life, property and even the economy.” Thompson heads up a team of 10 forecasters who work 24/7 as well as a technicians, warning coordinator, research liaison and others; NWS releases not just weather reports for the public but also marine, aviation and hydrologic outlooks. Thompson spoke with Globe correspondent Cindy Atoji Keene about parsing through updates from computer models, balloon launches, radar, and storm spotter information to predict whether the sun will shine or not.
“I’ve always been a weather geek and started here over four decades ago. You knew you were walking into a weather office then by the click-clacking of the teletype. There were some rudimentary computer models and a fuzzy feed from the radar. The warning program was very hit or miss in those days. Today, in contrast, we can slice and dice storms and get a three-dimensional look at them in real time. But computers have limitations and that’s where our judgement and experience comes in. Computers are not currently capable of assimilating diverse – and sometimes subtle – signatures of a storm’s attributes. Our forecasters, for example, were able to improve upon snowfall probabilities for a storm last winter, potentially saving communities huge sums of money.
“What will the weather be? Due to the complexity of what we deal with, the answer has a degree of unpredictability in it. I enjoy, to an extent, this element of uncertainty; I might get bored if weather forecasting was like, for example, computing the trajectory of a space vehicle. Although anticipating a forecast’s outcome can be akin to the nervous tension of waiting for a sports score, it’s also fun to see our forecasting capability increase: Hurricane track forecasting is now as good or better at day three than it used to be for day one in 1990.
“When folks question our accuracy, I like to lightheartedly point out that the meteorology profession has made progress – as witnessed by the fact that people were put to death for weather forecasting in 17th century England. And if the expected weather looks to be unpopular, I will sometimes remind people not to shoot the messenger. I suppose we are remembered more for those wrong forecasts than the right ones. I had a dentist once quip that I’m in a profession that gets paid to be wrong. I reminded him that I thought economists blazed that path before meteorologists.”
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