Tuesday, October 26, 2010

How To Do Weather Reports

Ask NOAA's National Weather Service or The Weather Office's Environment Canada and their advice will be to read their official pronouncements verbatim, word for word.

And, lots of us do just that, making every radio station's forecasts almost identical:
"Partly cloudy today, some clouds tonight and considerable cloudiness tomorrow."

What the heck am I supposed to do with that info?

Then there's Canada:
"a mix of sun and cloud." Now, there's a forecast that has to be 100% correct at least 12 hours every day!
  1. Please, people, read those formal and official weather predictions from your government officials and carefully understand what they mean to your listener in the next few hours.
  2. Put the written forecast away and tell me in your own words - as few words as possible - what I need to do about what the meteorologists are saying is going to happen out there.
  3. Unless there's a major weather emergency, brief and clear is better. I can boot up my computer and get to weather.com before the meteorologist gets it out.
Can we just say "Sunny today 78, Clear 55 tonight and Sunny maybe 80 tomorrow"??

One sign that you're doing weather correctly: it should take about six seconds versus the 30 or more the average personality (and, I do mean "average" in the worst possible way) takes to do it.

2 comments:

Facebook Thread said...

Tony Hayes
Good one Jaye. The thing that drives me crazy is when I hear a jock say something like "currently OUTSIDE it's...." Outside? Really, hello!

Tim Day
Guilty. But not since I said 'mix of sun and cloud' while my PD was standing in the control at the time. ya, that was dumb.

Audra Briner
Funny, Jaye!! :-)

Buzz Jackson
When I worked in Orlando I was leaving the station when a guy on a country station in a nearby market came on and read the entire National Weather Service thunderstorm warning. The whole thing. Verbatim. As in, "the watch area is north of a line 10 miles south of Lakeland to 30 miles south of Deland, and south of a line 15 miles north of Crystal River to Flagler Beach...."

Bob McNeill
I call it "people speak".

James Rabe said...

I agree 100%!

Most often, shorter = better.

No need to say, "Sunny skies" since, a) sky is singular and ii) what else is going to be sunny? The ground?

I also dislike "currently." I would hope you aren't giving me old temps.