Weather or Not

According to Green, the tools of forecasting have improved greatly over the past decade -- among them better and more useful Doppler radar, which he says works best "when you've got a storm right on you. It shows right where everything is and lets you put out more accurate bulletins, watches and warnings."

More important from a long-range perspective are assorted computer models offered by a variety of vendors, including the U.S. Air Force and the U.S. Navy. But having extra options isn't always a blessing. "There may be four to six different models that come down in a day," says Green, "and you have to figure out the biases of each model. For example, one model might be biased toward bringing precipitation into the area, and another one might be biased to pressure changes that would affect temperature."

These biases are present even though all of the computer models are using pretty much the same information. "The National Weather Service provides data to any forecaster in the country," Green points out. "I wouldn't want to say we're stuck with them, because they're a very valuable outfit. But they're the only game in town."

To complicate matters further, each computer model decodes the data differently, putting forecasters in the position of interpreting the interpretations. "We have to take these little pictures and put it together to make a mosaic," Fraser says. "And it's up to us to not only learn, but understand these computer biases. I'll bet if you put the five of us in a room, each of us would come out with a slightly different forecast. There would be subtle differences, because each of us will have reached a conclusion because, in certain situations, we trust one model more than another."

There's also the matter of the Denver area's size and scope. The city's official temperature readings are recorded at Denver International Airport, which is practically in another state and frequently experiences vastly different conditions than more populous parts of the city. During a late March broadcast, Fraser noted that the temperature at DIA was a stunning 19 degrees colder than the reading at Channel 2's Tech Center facility. And because of variations in altitude and level of development (concrete tends to hold heat), the temperature in, say, Highlands Ranch will almost always be considerably different from the temp in Evergreen. Stations deal with this discrepancy through the use of maps showing projected temperatures in many suburban locales, but most eventually summarize their forecasts using just one figure. "You don't want to have too many numbers on the screen," Nelson says.

This may come as news to Denver viewers. After all, local stations appear to love flashy imagery that may make little sense to the average layman but suggests a level of expertise among forecasters that reinforces their reputation as all-seeing, all-knowing weather experts.

Consider the March 19 weather segment at Channel 9. It began with a wide shot of Nelson and anchors Adele Arakawa and Jim Benemann before cutting to a "mystery time lapse" -- flashing lights against a dark backdrop that turned out to be illuminated slope groomers at Vail ski area. Next followed a map of Colorado labeled "Highs" onto which numbers flew in from all directions. A video dissolve to a state map labeled "Satellite" replaced the temperature readings with approximations of clouds and fronts; a second dissolve to the "FutureCast" included flocks of animated arrows intended to simulate wind direction. An instant later, Nelson appeared in the "9 Back Yard" only to be covered by a time-lapse shot of Denver that was overlaid with graphics labeled "Statistics" and "Currently at DIA." After a cut, Nelson was seen in front of a series of maps of the continental U.S. and Colorado on which digits and representations of weather systems whipped back and forth like fireflies. Finally, one more batch of graphics -- "Tonight," "Tomorrow," "Planning" -- preceded a goodbye from Nelson, wrapping up a presentation that took just over three minutes. Whew.

Coniglio gets about the same amount of time as Nelson does for his weather segments, and he says it's not enough to go into many details. "You begin and end with a little chitchat, which people say they hate, but it's just a natural segue from one thing to another. So you lose thirty seconds there, and you lose another thirty seconds doing 'Today' and 'Tonight' -- the stuff you absolutely have to do. That leaves a minute and 45 or two minutes to talk about a state that covers 104,000 square miles -- and to talk about the weather over a period of seven days."

Channel 7 is the only Denver station that offers forecasts seven days in advance, and Coniglio readily grants that its spot on the dial has everything to do with the reason why. But since the reliability of forecasts goes down with each passing day, particularly during volatile seasons like winter and spring, this feature regularly tests Coniglio's mettle.