On November 20th, Josh Judge, WMUR Weatherman, author of “Be Nice to the Weather Guy”, addressed the Rotary Club of Nashua, regarding predicting weather in the New England. Mike has been with WMUR over 16 years. He is a lifelong New Englander and loved broadcasting all his life. He has been involved in improving the technology currently in use in broadcasting on TV to make the weather reports more understandable. He is also an author of two other books related to meteorology.
The process of predicting weather in the New England environment is a challenge. Trying to predict the future is difficult at best; trying to do it accurately 80% of the time is almost impossible.
He described our recent day of yo-yo weather with a start at 30, moving to 50’s, adding rain, then dropping to the 40’s while wind….you know how New England weather changes. This was a great example of our rapidly changeable weather.
He also discussed the issues related to being a recognizable TV face while living in his viewer’s community. His typical day often starts at 1 am in the morning for a morning shift. He not only has to do the forecasting part of the weather, but also the graphics and regional variations. And he does his own hair, wardrobe and makeup.
A difficult challenge happens when snow potentially affects school being cancelled. This is particularly stressful when snow has not started by the time school transportation is supposed to start.
In the rare event that a forecast is erroneous, going out in public can be daunting. Everyone notices and is quite happy to point out your error. A thick skin is needed. He always reviews his ‘misses’ to learn from the models consulted and interpretation presented. The models are generally created and controlled by large government institutions. Weather balloons, local airports, and other local weather spotter reporting helps support other data used to make a forecast. It takes very large computers almost 2 hours for the computers to generate new or revised forecasts.
He reviews about 10 different computer models to generate his forecast. Each model is slightly different, but sometimes, the range is significant from a foot of snow to a storm just brushing the area. There is no consistent best model that can be used. Also, the size of Nashua, allows for significant snowfall variation geographically from the north end to the south end.
Technically, computers do a lot of data approximation to deal with these geographic variations in snowfall, rainfall, wind gusts, etc. Experience gained over years of forecasting help evaluate the most likely pattern that will happen. Storm tracks and variations due to our unique NH geography are very different than storms in the middle of the country.
He frequently gets to do live “storm” broadcasts that are carried on both WMUR and occasionally on other regional stations, when storms are bigger. There are only 4 fulltime broadcasting forecasters/meteorologists in NH.
Cellphone apps with forecasts have helped revive people’s interest in the weather. The hour-by-hour forecasting has become much more of the norm with local conditions be a prevailing interest.
The Farmer’s Almanac predicts the weather 6 months in advance. They frequently hype their accurate predictions and make no mention of their errors.