Weather Forecasting

LftS: Weather Forecasting

9/18/2018

Here in North Carolina, we are continuing to recover from Hurricane Florence. A 400-mile wide behemoth that crawled across the Carolinas at a whopping 10 miles per hour. The storm dropped records amounts of rain and here in Charlotte we experienced rain fail for nearly 30 hours straight, people died and the flooding is catastrophic. Not to be outdone by Americans, China and Hong Kong experienced even more brutality at the hands of the weather over the same period as Typhoon Mangkhut ripped through Asia (Typhoons, hurricanes, and cyclones are all the same thing receiving their label based on where they originate).

But the commonality of both of these storms besides them both being the same thing was how we heard about them and how much stock we placed in the person delivering the news. Meteorologists are the scientist involved in weather forecasting and understanding, they are also tasked with delivering the bad news about a 400-mile wide force of nature carrying 150+ mph winds and tons of gallons of water directly towards you and your family. But they aren’t always accurate according to many and things are almost never as bad as they make them out to be, again, according to many. In this episode of Lessons from the Screen we are going to take a look at weather forecasting, when did it start, how did it become a part of the news, what they are actually doing, and why they seem to be hyped for nothing.