Weather Forecasting
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In weather forecasting, as in medicine, there's a science and an art to the discipline. Certainly satellites and computer imaging have radically changed meteorology over the last generation, boosting precision and accuracy.

But technology will never replace the fine art of interpretation. That's according to Forecaster Ted Fathauer ("FATH-HOUR") of the National Weather Service in Fairbanks, Alaska. He says that the newest generation computers (with all of their fancy and impressive graphics) cannot do the job that a person, with all of his or her experience, can do. This, says Fathauer, is known as the art of weather forecasting.

"A beautifully analyzed chart really is not only a work of not science and physical insight and pattern recognition, it's also a matter of art, of drawing lines smoothly and beautiful, because all the real patterns in nature are the basis for art, whether it's a portrait or a landscape or even an abstract. I would argue that any one of these has its basis in nature. So to reorder that logic, that reasoning, any well-drawn weather chart will not only be accurate, have a lot of insight, but it will have some beauty, some of that beauty which is in nature is transferred by a good analyst with a good hand to the chart".

That's Ted Fathauer, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Fairbanks, Alaska. Thanks today to correspondent Amy Mayer for her assistance. The Weather Notebook is a production of the Mount Washington Observatory. It is underwritten by Subaru. Thanks today to executive producer Peter Crane.