Forecasting Cycles
Listen in RealAudio
Email your weather question

Hi, I'm Dave Thurlow for the Mount Washington Observatory and this is The Weather Notebook. It takes a team of volunteers, many megabytes of data, and an army of meteorologists to bring you the daily weather report. Montana Producer Barrett Golding decided to track the path the weather information takes on its way toward becoming a weather forecast:

"We can predict the future. People do it all the time."

TV Weather Person: "The snowstorm came through about an hour ago. More on the way, so don't put away those snowtires just yet."

"Predicting the weather is kind of like the weather itself. Drops of data flow downstream and collect in supercomputers. Then they're released into the air as charts and maps. And via satellite, those numbers return to the earth."

"The first thing we'll do is take a look at the maximum temperature today. Believe it or not, it was just 25 degrees. Pretty chilly. And then the windspeed, this needle - well, we're getting a real heavy blast there for a second. Should have brought my gloves out here."

"There are thousands and thousands of observation points like this one in Bozemon, MT. Everyday at 4pm, volunteer Paul Brown, a retired USDA scientist, comes down and checks the instruments."

"We know exactly what happened here in the last 24 hours. We've been taking readings at this particular location for over 50 years. And I'll go home and I'll call a US weather service in Great Falls and I'll call the 2 TV stations and then that will go on the air for the report from Bozeman. So, that's the situation. Sound OK?"

Tomorrow on The Weather Notebook, the TV weatherman. Our show is underwritten by Subaru, the beauty of all wheel drive.