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00:00Welcome to AccuWeather's Ask the Experts. I'm your host, Jeff Cornish. We go beyond
00:16the forecast to give you the how and why on all the cool and interesting things that you've
00:20wondered about and wanted to ask in weather, space, and science. And today, we're going
00:24to cover the forecasting process here at AccuWeather. Many of our viewer questions have been asked
00:29and interested in delving into how we formulate a forecast for any given place, a given time,
00:35or a given medium. So today, we're going to pull back the curtain and let you know a little
00:39bit more about the process. And joining us is our expert today, Senior Director of Forecast
00:43Operations, Dan DePapp. And Dan, thanks so much for being with us here. You know, when
00:47I was working in local TV, I had no idea how much of the human touch went into the AccuWeather
00:53forecast compared to some of the other national apps out there. So we're glad that you're
00:58joining us and interested in talking more about this here today.
01:01Yeah, happy to be here, Jeff.
01:02Well, Dan, we often like to begin some of our questions with those who we work with
01:08all tied to the weather and how you got into the passion of meteorology. So how did that
01:12happen for you?
01:13So I think a lot of people, not everybody, but a lot of people who are in meteorology
01:18become interested when they are a young child. In my case, my parents tell the story of me
01:23pointing out all the weather vanes in the car. I called them va-vas when I was two years
01:28old. So that was sort of the beginning, I guess. I didn't even know what weather was,
01:32but I was interested in something about weather vanes when I was two. And then from there,
01:35it took off with a variety of weather events. When I was a kid, I grew up in New Jersey
01:39during the 90s. So we had the blizzard of 96, where we had about 30 inches of snow at
01:44our house. And then we had a microburst a few years later and tropical storm Bonnie
01:48in 98. I was down at the beach in New Jersey. So trying to figure out whether to evacuate
01:52the Jersey Shore or not. So that was sort of three events in a very short amount of
01:55time really inspired me to continue that as a passion.
01:58Very good. And you know, I was on the other side of the Delaware River. Also, the super
02:02storm, the blizzard of 96, I should say, brought about 30 inches to my backyard too. So we
02:06were in a similar boat there. Influential story. Some of you remember that as well.
02:10And it's safe to say that weather runs in your family, even in your married life. So
02:16your wife is a meteorologist who spent a good chunk of time working with us here at AccuWeather.
02:22Is weather and topics tied to big storms, does that tend to come up at the dinner table?
02:27Yeah, we love weather. And even though she's not still on the forecasting side of things,
02:30her background is in meteorology. And we talk about the weather all the time. I'm actually
02:33really glad I married to a meteorologist because it makes our conversations even more interesting
02:37I feel like. We just this past weekend had a good thunderstorm in the area. We drove
02:42up to the local church nearby that has a great view and saw the storm come in. And it's pretty
02:46special to be able to do that with your spouse. And also you get a chance to talk about what's
02:49coming up in the weather and whether it's going to snow and take some bets sometimes
02:52on how much it will snow or what the weather forecast will be.
02:56I like it. I like it. Pretty good stuff. When it comes to forecast operations here at AccuWeather,
03:02you help to manage that operation. I don't think many people realize how much of a human
03:09touch still goes into what we do here at AccuWeather in an age when a lot of our competition basically
03:15has just computer-generated forecasts with an icon that's slapped out there with no human
03:20intervention. So what's it actually look like? Do you guys say, you know, the end user is
03:24looking at maybe a seven-day forecast for New York City. Does somebody sit down and
03:28make a seven-day forecast for New York City? Or how does that work?
03:32Yeah, so that's a great question, especially with all the computer technology out there
03:36these days. Like, how does a human play a role in the creation of a forecast? And really,
03:39I mean, the forecast is always out there, right, through apps and websites. The forecast
03:44is sort of this living, breathing thing that gets updated at any time throughout the day.
03:50And so from a forecast standpoint and from a forecasting team here, our expert meteorologists
03:54are always looking at – we always sort of ground ourselves in what's happening right
03:57now. And if you don't know what's happening currently, it's hard to have a good understanding
04:00of what can happen in the future. So we start with what's happening now with satellite,
04:04radar, observations from all these different data sets that we look at. And then we look
04:08at all the different model guidance. We have over 190 models and different types of data
04:12that we look at for what the forecast can be in the future. And then we really combine
04:16that. It's not just models, though. We don't just like to use models, but it's how our
04:19understanding of those models evolved over time by looking at them, what are their biases.
04:24We combine that forecast guidance with our expertise. Many of our team has been working
04:29for at least several years, if not even several decades. So combining those expertises to
04:35issue a forecast or to update a forecast, and that can be anywhere from the next couple
04:39hours to making sure it's as accurate as possible, or even to the next several days.
04:43And in some cases, our customers on the business side get forecasts out several months.
04:47And I know that the product that you are modifying, you know, obviously pulling away from just
04:54a computer-generated product, then populates a lot of things in a very efficient way, all
05:00the way down to the weather graphics that we use on the air. So if we're showing a regional
05:04three-day forecast with the next three days for all the north-central U.S., I'm not physically
05:08typing in, or our graphics team's not typing in Omaha's forecast for next Monday, Tuesday,
05:13and Wednesday. That automatically populates into our system from your forecast team's
05:18work, which is great.
05:19Absolutely.
05:20And there are other things that AccuWeather does to add more value. For example, the old-fashioned
05:26wind chill or the heat index. We have a super product called the AccuWeather Real Field
05:31Temperature. And what are some of these other things that we do? It might be the local storm
05:36max to provide a little more value beyond the typical nuts and bolts of a forecast.
05:40Yeah, the AccuWeather Real Field Temperature is really to be the only thing out there that
05:43gives the user an appreciation for what it actually feels like, no matter what the season
05:49is. It's not just the heat index, it's not just the wind chill, it's a combination of
05:52other factors, how sunny it is, whether it's precipitating outside, how high the sun is
05:57in the sky as well. So that goes into the AccuWeather Real Field Temperature. And then
06:02the AccuWeather Local Storm Max is designed to give an idea of what is the conceivably
06:07highest value from a storm, whether it's a wind speed, or a rain amount, or a snow amount.
06:13Trying to give the idea of how bad is this storm in one spot, or how much could it produce
06:18from a wind or rain standpoint.
06:20Kind of a worst-case scenario. Sometimes for a winter storm, it's going to be way up on
06:24some high elevation spot near Snowshoe, West Virginia, or something like that for a mid-Atlantic
06:28system.
06:30We do have our first viewer question here, which is coming from Kevin in Michigan. And
06:34Kevin writes, is there a location or a particular city that's more challenging than others to
06:39put together a weather forecast for?
06:41So I think it's generally in places where the terrain is varied. I guess there's a couple
06:46things that make it more challenging. One, it's a place, from a personal standpoint,
06:50if you're not as familiar with that area. So familiarity with the area certainly helps.
06:54But certainly a place that has complex geography, places that are mountainous regions have pretty
06:58complex weather because there's a lot of geography and terrain really impacts, whether
07:03it's near a coast or not, it really impacts the weather. And also I would say places that
07:07don't have a lot of data are also challenging. Either a lack of observations for what it's
07:10doing currently, lack of radar in a lot of parts of the world that don't have good radar
07:13data. Or even in places like the west coast of the U.S. or even Alaska, there's a lack
07:17of sensing about what's happening over the Pacific Ocean. We know a lot less about what's
07:21happening over the Pacific compared to what we do about what's happening over the U.S.
07:25So the west coast can be a bit more challenging too.
07:27Okay. I spend just enough time on the forecast operations floor that sometimes the phone
07:32rings or I hear some of you on phone calls with some of our business clients. We work
07:37with more than half of the Fortune 500 companies across the country. In some cases it might
07:42be keeping rail interests, trains safe from tornadoes. But sometimes some of the things
07:48that we're working with when it comes to other companies are not quite as obvious as just
07:53severe weather safety for a moving piece of transportation. So when you are doing some
07:59of these consulting conversations with big business companies and business interests
08:04or maybe DOTs or school districts, what kind of decisions are on the line that you're helping
08:08them wade through?
08:09Yes. I mean, that can be a decision as sort of, I mean, maybe simple as whether to close
08:13school or not. It's a little different now with remote learning days post-COVID, but
08:17the schools still care about whether to go remote or have an in-person session. So there
08:20is still a decision to be made there. So we work with a lot of school districts along
08:24lines of those decisions. We also work, especially in the winter, with departments of transportation
08:29about how much snow will fall. But really the important things are the timing of the
08:32snow, what type of snow is going to be wet or is it going to be dry snow, what will the
08:36rate of the snow be. The start and stop time is really important to understand if it will
08:40happen during a commute time period. What's the temperature? What's the temperature of
08:43the road? There's a lot of different parameters that departments of transportation care about.
08:47And even outside of the winter, it can be during the spring and summer storm season.
08:52For instance, in the Northeast, will trees or leaves clog drains from a flooding standpoint?
08:59Flooding can be much worse in the fall if there's a lot of leaves that have clogged
09:02storm drains. So those are just some of the things we work with our customers to help
09:06them with.
09:06Sure. And then there are some other things that we do with other businesses that are
09:09maybe not as immediate, but if there's a big correlation between the need for restaurant
09:14staffing on a huge scale and weather, some of those things are just baked into some of
09:19these other relationships that we have that may not involve the conversation on the operations
09:22floor at any given moment.
09:24Sure. I mean, I think the range of what we provide is really from where minutes matter
09:29from a tornado, flash flood, hail standpoint, all the way toward months or even a year plus
09:34in the future of understanding how weather will impact the supply chain or the logistics
09:38of a certain company.
09:39Okay. Very good. Very interesting stuff. What are some of the career path options for somebody
09:43who wants to be in the weather business?
09:46So I think it's exciting because it's only expanding. When I graduated school, I felt
09:50like I only knew about forecasting, broadcasting, working for the government at the National
09:54Weather Service or doing research through academia. But now there's so many private
09:58companies who are looking for meteorologists. There's a lot of climate jobs out there, whether
10:02it be climate resilience or risk analysis. Emergency management is obviously a growing
10:07field, knowing how weather impacts different events and providing support for those events.
10:11So there's really just a growing area, especially in the private sector, of careers for meteorologists.
10:16All right. Very fascinating stuff. Dan, we're looking forward to talking to you more about
10:20some of these other topics that will come up here in our next block after the break.
10:24Also coming up a little beyond that, we're going to look at three amazing women and the
10:28popular inventions that they helped create so we can better deal with the worst of the
10:33nature. And that's all part of our weather-wise segment that will be coming up as well.
10:37But after the break, we're going to give you more of a behind-the-scenes look at the forecasting
10:41process here at AccuWeather. There you can see our forecast operations floor from the
10:46top down. We're going to answer more of your viewer questions with Dan DePodwin when Ask
10:50the Experts returns.
26:41Welcome back to AccuWeather's Ask the Experts. I'm your host, Jeff Korn.
27:11I'm Jeff Kornish. And in this episode, we've been talking about how we prepare forecasts
27:15here at AccuWeather with Dan DePodwin, Senior Director of Forecast Operations. And Dan,
27:19again, the AccuWeather app, it involves a lot of human intervention with that end product,
27:25which, again, is very different from most other apps out there that have a national
27:29or international weather footprint. How many meteorologists do we have here at AccuWeather?
27:34Yes, one of the things we're really proud about at AccuWeather is the people behind
27:36the forecast and our expert team. We've got 45 operational meteorologists in our State
27:40College World Headquarters, and we've got another 30 in our Severe Weather Center in
27:44Wichita, Kansas. And they both teams focus on sort of slightly different things as their
27:48main focus, but they coordinate really well together. So it's about 80 or so operational
27:53meteorologists, along with probably 20 or more who are in other parts of the company.
27:56So it's about 100 or so meteorologists across the entire company of AccuWeather.
28:00It's been interesting to see where people go. I graduated with one who was an operational
28:06forecaster, got into human resources then after a little bit of additional education.
28:11And among our on-air team, those of us who you see on the air, we also have studied meteorology
28:17and have bachelor of science degrees in meteorology as well. And others, friends here at AccuWeather
28:23who have done things with map integration and data, Ethan Docky and many other people
28:28have moved on to other things, but they're meteorologists as well, and they use some
28:33of that information and knowledge to leverage their other skills outside of forecasting.
28:37Now, obviously, we don't always agree on every nuance of the forecast. You mentioned that
28:42with even your own wife. So talk about the consensus concept here and how that drives
28:47a lot of what we do.
28:48Yes, so the forecast consensus concept is really, I think, it was sort of pioneered
28:52by Dr. Joel Myers who founded AccuWeather when he was a professor at Penn State, learning
28:56how to work with his students and the understanding that the best forecast over time is the combination
29:02of many different inputs from many people. And that doesn't necessarily mean everyone
29:05gets one vote, but it means that you have the input from those people, and then there's
29:09different leaders on our shifts who have a certain skill set of either listening ability
29:13and forecasting ability and experience to combine those ideas and come up with a decision
29:20about, well, what should our forecast be or how should our forecast change?
29:24So it's really combining the ideas and how people approach forecasting, which is different
29:29by everybody. So it's combining all those together and coming out with sort of an output
29:33that's greater than the sum of its parts, which is really exciting about what we do
29:36at AccuWeather and why our forecasts over time are quite accurate and also providing
29:41more information than what generally you can find elsewhere.
29:43It's a very data-driven approach, and it's interesting to me, and I've known this for
29:47a long time in the weather business, that a really good forecaster will have a difficult
29:51time repetitively, consistently outsmarting and outbeating or beating the true consensus
29:57forecast among a group of many good forecasters.
30:00Absolutely. I mean, you can really see it in the data. I used to be in the weather challenge,
30:05which is a collegiate forecasting competition, and it was very unusual for a forecaster over
30:11the entire competition to always win. Consensus almost always over the long year of the contest
30:17would be the best-performing forecast.
30:19And obviously there are going to be moments, especially during a high-impact weather event,
30:23maybe it's a tropical system, maybe it's an East Coast winter storm that may go out
30:28to sea or may stick a little farther west and bring high impacts to I-95. Are there
30:33any particular events that you remember or specific just types of storms where the debate
30:39gets a little feistier out there?
30:41Yeah, I think there's a lot of people here in our State College office who really are
30:44passionate about winter weather, and that's sort of my passion as well. It's what I grew
30:48up living.
30:49Bernie Rayno is right there. He's got opinions.
30:51Yes, he is. And I think a lot of our team certainly has opinions and they're passionate,
30:55but they're also respectful in how they approach that conversation. And I think the conversations
31:00during winter storms really seem to rise to that level. Those are the times we're really
31:03trying to differentiate ourselves to how do we provide information that helps you make
31:07a better decision. We try to tell a story, because stories connect with people and people
31:11connect with people. So how do we do that in a way that allows people to make a better
31:16decision by using our information that has either more context or more impacts about
31:20the weather they can anticipate.
31:22It's a passionate crowd. You're not going to find somebody out there just sitting back
31:25with their arms crossed saying, I don't care. That's not how we roll here at AccuWeather.
31:28There are strong opinions and a lot of passion behind the forecast that we produce for you.
31:35We do have another viewer question. This one is from Lori in AccuWeather's home state of
31:40Pennsylvania. So Lori, what would you like to ask the experts?
31:44Do you have a favorite or least favorite time of the year to put a forecast together?
31:50That's a good question. I think it depends on the person generally. Personally, I love
31:54winter weather. I think snow to me and snow storms in the northeast are very interesting
31:58and there's a lot of different factors like where will the rain snow line be? What's the
32:01temperature? Will it fall during the night time or the day time? Because that can impact
32:05how much snow will accumulate. Will there be ice? Will there be wind? Because a lot
32:08of nor'easters produce wind. So that's to me very interesting. I also think the summertime
32:12with convection and sort of where the individual thunderstorms will be or will there be a big
32:16complex of thunderstorms. Our modeling and our forecast guidance has come a long way,
32:20but still the sort of the small scale weather events like thunderstorms are some of the
32:25more difficult ones for our model guidance to get a good handle on the exact placement
32:29of. Like we can know generally, this will be an area of thunderstorms, but exactly where
32:33that will be, we still have a long way to go there. So I think summertime convection
32:37is another area that's just very fascinating to me.
32:39That's a tricky one from a communications standpoint as well. We know there will be
32:43big storms in a regional area, but whether you have that in your backyard or it's 10
32:48miles north, south, west, or east, that makes all the difference to the end user.
32:52Briefly, another weather question comes from Joanne in Kentucky. And Joanne writes,
32:57Was there a weather event as a kid that got you interested in the weather? You mentioned
33:02the big storm in 96 and some other events. In adulthood, maybe since we kind of already
33:07quasi answered that one, maybe what's the biggest weather event that you have worked
33:11that was the most significant in your career?
33:13Yeah, I think it has to be Sandy, Hurricane Sandy in 2012. It actually personally impacted
33:19my family where I grew up in New Jersey. My parents lost power for over two weeks and
33:24they just had tree damage all over the place. So that, to me, I was pretty early in my career,
33:28but it was a very impactful experience and one that I will always remember forecasting
33:32and helping people, giving information to people that could help them either save lives
33:37or protect property during that really historic storm.
33:39Absolutely. All right, Dan. Well, we talked about the forecast process. Unfortunately,
33:43in this process, we have now come to the end of our time to talk, but I'm sure we'll be
33:47talking with Dan again in the future. Dan, thanks again so much for joining us here.
33:51Dan DePauwen, Senior Director of Forecast Operations here. Next up in WeatherWise, we're
33:56going to go from the windshield wiper to the car heater. We'll have the story behind these
33:59amazing inventions and the women who helped create them. We'll be right back.
34:03Welcome back to AccuWeather's Ask the Experts. It is now time for WeatherWise. And today
34:12we have three weather inventions and these were all created by women. First, we can thank
34:18Lydia Fairweather. We love the name. When you shovel your driveway. In 1889, she was
34:24awarded one of the first patents for a shovel that could scrape and scoop snow. Next, when
34:30you're driving in the cold but are warm behind the wheel, we can thank Margaret Wilcox. In
34:351893, she patented her idea to use the engine's hot air and direct it toward the car's passengers.
34:42Pretty smart. While her invention had no way to regulate the air entering the cabin, her
34:47idea is still the basis for car heaters even today. And finally, the windshield wiper.
34:52In the early 1900s, on a trip to New York City, Mary Anderson watched a street car driver
34:58struggling to clear rain using his arm to wipe down his windshield. There had to be
35:03a better way, so back home in Alabama, she came up with a window clearing device using
35:08a single swinging metal arm controlled by a lever inside the car. So sadly, her idea
35:14didn't really take off until after her 1903 patent had expired and the windshield wiper
35:20was eventually adapted for automotive use in the 1920s. Thanks so much for joining us
35:25here on AccuWeather's Ask the Experts. I'm Jeff Cornish. Don't forget, when you have
35:30a question about weather, space or science, you can write us or send us a video question
35:34at AsktheExperts at AccuWeather.com. You can also call us at 888-566-6606. Thanks for
35:42joining us. Have a great one.
35:55Transcribed by ESO. Translated by —