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| Are weaather apps "just as good" as television meteorologists? I don't think so, but some people do, and the debate is on. |
Yet the can of worms the two opened up is a healthy one. At least for weather geeks. And the general public who consume weather information, i.e. practically all of us.
Ana Kasparian is the executive producer for the public affairs channel "The Young Turks" on YouTube. She recently tweeted "Blows my mind that local news still does weather. What are you guys doing? I can look p the 7 day forecast on my phone."
Now, that's a great way to raise the hackles of meteorologists everywhere. A stupid, amateurish phone app that relies on algorithms to forecast the weather is not as good as a real life meteorologist, right?
Well..........
Cappucci is a young, smart television meteorologist for Fox 5 in Washington DC and is also a writer for the Washington Post's Capital Weather Gang.
So he looked at this, in depth, for Capital Weather Gang.
As Cappucci notes, meteorologists immediately took umbrage with Kaparian's tweet.
Response to Kasparian's tweet were swift from the weather community, and often quite pithy like this one from Bryan Wilson (@Dual Doppler)
"Blows my mind the Young Turks still does politics. What are you guys doing? I can look up current events on my phone."
It got even worse when Kasparian doubled down when somebody noted that people watch The Weather Channel religiously.
She said: "Exactly...there's an entire channel dedicated to weather. Can we actually get some reporting on news in the community that matters? People bragging about the weather report being the highest rated part of local news is not the flex they think it is."
As many meteorologists pointed out, Kasparian lives in southern California, where it's rarely anything other than sunny and in the 70s. Most of us live in the real world where temperatures crash from the 70s to below freezing in a flash. Tornadoes, floods, hurricanes, blizzards, hail storms and other nasty stuff intrude constantly. Especially in the "fly-over" states.
A lot of us caught a real whiff of elitism in Kasparian's weather app tweets.
Plus there's practical issues with apps. Especially in emergencies.
An app can't tell you exactly which neighborhood the tornado will hit next, how high the hurricane storm surge will get, whether the Volkswagon-sized hail will hit or miss Farmer John's fields, and whether the ice storm will keep your power out for a day or a week.
Television meteorologist can do all that and often do. Meteorologists held up as an example James Spann, the folksy, veteran Alabama television meteorologist who's credited with saving hundreds, maybe thousands of lives over recent decades as he guided viewers through the state's regular and disastrous tornado outbreaks, including the epic April, 2011 outbreak, among the worst in American history.
However, we can't get away from the fact that a tornado doesn't go through your neighborhood every day, a hurricane won't blow away your city this week, and chances are your house will not float away in a massive flood the day after tomorrow.
The television meteorologists also give us context. Why is it snowing so hard at the other end of the state and now here? Why wasn't that rainstorm yesterday as bad as predicted? And most important these days, was that awful storm last week boosted by climate change?
Most of the time, though, local television meteorologists end up telling us that temperatures will be seasonable today, but there's a chance of showers so bring your umbrella!
Yawn. You can easily argue your weather app can handle the fact it will be 52 degrees with a 40 percent chance of showers.
This is where Cappucci musters a bit of sympathy for Kasparian's arguments. He writes:
"Kasparian certainly could have phrased her tweet differently or exhibited better understanding of what TV meteorologists do. But there's some truth to the uncomfortable point she's making: Weather apps to a big part what has historically been a local meteorologists's job."
It's true that local meteorologists have enormous value, but Cappucci introduces a yeah, but:
"Weather apps are becoming pretty darn good, and in an era that features machine learning, it won't be long before weather models and apps eclipse the abilities of human forecasters. Nowadays, we even get wireless emergency alerts delivered to our phones that can wake us up and tell us to seek shelter."
Cappucci argues that television meteorologists need to be, well, punchier.
"Local TV meteorologists can't expect to survive just standing in front of numbers, panels and day-part graphics. That's like just narrating what the app produces. Viewers don't need someone standing and pointing at the same thing their phone can spit out. Sure, the forecast from your local TV station might be 5 or even 10 percent better than that of a high-quality weather app, but odds are viewers won't notice the difference."
Ouch. So do we need a song and dance during the 6 o'clock weather segment on your local Eyewitless newscast?
Your local TV meteorologist is a scientist, not an entertainer. We expect Lady Gaga to awe us with her singing voice and concert performances. We don't expect Lady Gaga to explain how orographic lift is enhancing snow showers around Jay Peak.
Which means we shouldn't expect our local TV meteorologists to put on that song and dance. That's not their job. We just want them to tell us whether I can mow the lawn tomorrow before the scattered thundershowers arrive.
Even so, Cappucci argues:
"I firmly believe that for the industry to survive and to serve audiences effectively, we have to be either more or different. Gone are the days of simply putting together a weather forecast and standing between a green screen and a TV camera to present it. The market is saturated with decent forecasts, and why would people watch TV at a designated when they can just access the same thing on their phones. That's where more or different comes in."
Easy for Cappucci to say. The dude is loaded with personality, even if it's on the endearingly geeky side. That's not a slam against him. It's honestly refreshing when a weather person comes off as well, a person.
Most television weather people seem personable enough. You need a sense of humor in that business anyway especially when the foot of snow that was supposed to fall on Killington failed to materialize.
Luckily, local television news directors, at least in my opinion, seem to be giving their meteorologists more leeway so that they can explain technical meteorological science and climate change in a way that a distracted, tired and non-geeky person can understand, even enjoy.
I don't think the big debate between Kasparian and her weather app and the meteorologists is settled. I for one, am old school, and would rather have a good television weather personality explain to me what's going on out there.
Weather apps have their place, for sure. But frankly, if Kasparian ever wants the full weather story, she's definitely missing out with her app.
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