In writing this essay, I was more amazed with the forecasting of weather than I was of actual tornadoes. Excuse me if I run off of subject, but the things I found on predicting storms, and of course, tornadoes, were overwhelming. After going through much information and reading an abundance of articles on weather forecasting, I can only come to one conclusion. That when all is considered the best forecasters can only give an educated guess of what is in store for weather and when tornadoes will come. Through the many means at their disposal, such as satellites, ships at the ocean, infrared, radio, and radar transmissions even with all of these techniques no prediction is 100% accurate. .
One question that I asked myself was "when was the first weather forecasting ever done?", I found out that in 1863 in Britain there was a united forecasting system headed by Captain Robert Fitzroy. Captain Fitzroy would send ships around Britain to warn people of tornadoes storms and such. However, he was often wrong and criticized and therefore, committed suicide. Since then there have been many other services, but the largest one currently is the National Weather Service. The National Weather Service gives predictions for the entire world through satellite imagery for all countries. Also in recent history many local television and radio stations have made private forecasts for small areas. .
Meteorologists are people who interpret the weather and vicious tornadoes, such as the one we watched in class today. The reason I don't say predict the weather is because even though all forecasters have the same information and data at their fingertips, the way that they interpret what is in front of them can be different. Meteorologists receive information from various sources, but their interpretation of the data determines the accuracy of their prediction. .
Someone might ask, "If forecasters have so much information on a particular area; how could they predict a flawed forecast?" The answer to that question lies in the fact that any one of a number of weather conditions may ruin a forecast.