How can high salaries for weather presenters & meterologists be justified?

Question

i know it isn't their fault, but in britain the weather forecast is a running joke. i don't know anyone who believes it, and in fact i usually interpret their predictions to mean the polar opposite - more often than not rightly.

in most other jobs, consistent and unremitting failure and inaccuracy would surely not result in a "professional" salary. a basic forecast of heavy rain would suffice, with an update a few times yearly for occasional flashes of sun. the job could be voluntary, with expenses paid. does that sound fair?

Answer 1

MILWX spoke my mind again, but I have a side note. So many times I have heard layman complain about the forecasts and it was THEY who did not have the forecast correct. I honestly believe that the general population has such a lack of meteorological understanding that they do not even understand the forecast for their region. First of all, the forecast is just that- FOR THE REGION. Forecasting for a region is not the same as forecasting for Joe's back yard. The fact that isolated showers are expected and none occurred over your head does not make the forecast wrong.

Did you check the radar? Possibly what was forecast DID occur in the forecast area (which is a region) and it was you who was actually incorrect. Most of the time, the general population does not know what is occurring in the sky around them. Folks don't even know enough to look up and see that, indeed, there is what looks to be a shower off to the west about 25 miles away.

Most of the time that is the REAL story.

Look- it goes like this- individuals who have an understanding of the dynamics of weather are not the ones complaining about perceived inaccuracies. If you want to take the time to complain about a subject, instead use that time to LEARN about the subject. If you really want to understand a process, try to change it and see what result you get. You'll often find that you could do it no differently.

Education is so, so valuable.

NOTE- In proofreading this I realized that I sounded irritated and I apologize for that.

Answer 2

The truth is that as a weather forecaster you do learn some intense things the most important of which is that weather is in no way an exact science. We can go through every rule and isolate every detail that would make it rain or snow or anything that might happen and the exact opposite happens. You try working in a job when 2+2=30. Of course that's a bit of an exaggeration but I think you get my drift. But to finish this off, what you might think is incredibly simple has thousands of tiny details that sometimes a skilled forecaster will miss, and before I actually started doing this I felt the same. Whatever the local forecaster said the opposite would happen but the truth is Weather Forecasting is one of the only jobs were as long as you wrong the right way, and that is that you checked the tiniest of details, it’s OK. So unless you what to do the job and understand its complexity I don't think you have a right to say anything of the sort. By the way I hit at least 80 percent of my forecasts and I also make roughly 20k a year in USD which is not much so we don't all get paid that generously. Oh and different organizations have a different forecast are I.E when the National weather service they forecast for a let’s say a 20 mile radius and when the say 10 percent chance of rain it means that 10 percent of that area will see rain. That might be why you don’t always see rain while the military forecasts for a 5 nautical mile radius and have to give specifics of when a storm will start and stop and exactly how much wind, how big the hail is, and in some cases how much precip they will get. Even the military makes fun of forecasters so you can imagine after a while we don't care what you think.

PS It’s called orographic lift that why one side is always cloudy on one side max m, and there is a study on how accurate we are so we can improve and that’s usually in our own organization. Also the reason why the long range forecast changes is because Meteorological models start to drastically lose their accuracy, if they are even handling it well, after 24 hours.

Answer 3

It would be an interesting study to see if weather forecasters were really able to predict any better than rolling a die with six weather conditions on it.  What is more interesting is the fact that the longer range forecasts change from day to day and if they say it will rain in three days time, the next day they say it will be sunny in two days time.

Where I live, there is a large hill and if on the west side it is cloudy, it will be sunny on the east side and vice versa.  It is therefore impossible for weather forecasters to predict for the whole of the area at any one time.

So to answer the question, no salary for weather presenters or forecasters is justified.  Full stop.

Answer 4

Yes it does but we live in a crazy crazy world of celebrity and when one presenter becomes popular there are so many hits on that forecast that they can command these salaries.  They are however trained but I'm still not sure they warrant the level they get.  Especially when you think that the BBC is the public broadcasting service of this country so its your spondulicks they are paying out (take Note Mr Ross who has millions of it)

They also earn outside of the broadcasting by doing personal appearances.  They dont seem to last long though so maybe it is a case of making hay whilst the sun shines.

But I'm available if anyone would like to hire me : 'Today I predict we MIGHT get a few showers due to the cloud build up I can see out of my window'.  See!  Its easy once you know how!!!!!!!!!

Answer 5

They justify it by the fact that while a moron can look out the door and say it's raining, these guys went to school for a specialist's degree.

Okay so Britain has what 6 seasons? Rainy, foggy, snowy, brisk, warm, and hot. Hot being only about 10 days annually, right?

On a serious note, its just as big a joke in the US. Forecaster came on and said there was a 10% chance of rain for the day and we most likely wouldn't see any. I looked outside and the streets were flooded from all the rain that fell over a 3 hour period.

Answer 6

I agree, I could give you a giant speech about this but I don't think you'd understand it cause I live in the Humid Continental climate... which is much different than in the United Kingdom... but I think forecasters are just there to appear charismatic and look pretty. I suppose it's the station's fault for paying their salaries, though.. o_o