I’ve been a weather forecaster for almost 30 years and I was an observer for 6 years before that. I love weather, and I love taking pictures of weather (the one above is one of my favorites). I’ve been lucky enough to have a job that I enjoy for pretty much my entire adult life. Seriously, I like coming to work!
Funny thing though, when I was 20 years old and having hitch-hiked to the Air Force recruiters office, I didn’t have any idea that I wanted to be a weather forecaster for the rest of my life. I just knew I didn’t want to keep working on the grounds crew at the golf course I where I was employed at the time. When I went to MEPS (military entrance processing station), I didn’t know what I wanted to do, but I had good ASVAB scores and knew I wanted a guaranteed job. They gave me a list with career fields which had projected openings. Weather was one of the five that I chose (don’t remember the others), and about 3 hours after I submitted the list, they came back and told me I was going to be a weather guy.
Sometimes the best outcomes weren’t even planned.
Over the years, people have enjoyed teasing me (and pretty much every other weather forecaster) with taunts like:
“It must be nice to have a job where you can be wrong all the time”
“I can forecast the weather too, I just look out my window”
“You guys just guess, don’t you?”
That last one is my personal favorite, mainly because there’s a little bit of truth to it. Yes, weather forecasting is a science with established tools and techniques. But it’s also an art, combined with a bit of random chance.
For my last active duty deployment, I was on an Army COB (contingency operating base) in Afghanistan. I was the Brigade SWO (squadron weather officer), so most of my job was advising the CAB (combat aviation brigade) commander on current and future weather that might impact operations. But I also had some Canadian contract helicopter pilots who would come to me every morning for their daily weather briefs. One day, they thought they were going to get my goat. They walked in the door and said, you can’t give us your weather spiel, but we know you’re just guessing. I remember the surprised look on their faces when I responded:
Yes, I’m just guessing … but I can guess better than you.
… if we arrive at a point where you can consistently guess better than me, I’ll be happy to go home to my family and let you come up with your own weather forecast.
That conversation happened over 15 years ago, but I’ve used and shared it ever since. The thing is, it doesn’t just apply to weather forecasting. Experts in pretty much any field will be “wrong” from time to time, and you (the non-expert) might even be more “right” on occasion. But over any significant period of time, the expert is going to be right much more often than the average Joe off the street.
That shouldn’t be a controversial observation.
But with the rise of the internet and social media, everybody thinks they know something about everything, and many aren’t at all shy about sharing their opinions.
I’ve learned to roll my eyes but otherwise keep quiet when someone proudly announces “I do my own research”.
… but that’s a whole separate post, for a whole other day.
For now, I’m just going to happily go back to getting paid to “guess” the weather. 😁
Til next time,
Todd
If you have your own stories to share, please: