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Climate change is causing more extreme weather across the U.S., and weather forecasters are feeling the heat. NPR's Rebecca Hersher explains.
REBECCA HERSHER, BYLINE: Weather forecasters are seeing a lot of record-breaking heat waves, intense wildfires and other dangerous weather these days. Ken Graham is the director of the National Weather Service.
KEN GRAHAM: What's interesting - you start looking at the data - 7 out of the last 10 Atlantic hurricane seasons were above normal.
HERSHER: Above normal, meaning there were more storms than average. And there's been a similar trend with heat waves and floods.
GRAHAM: In 1985, we had about 30 flash flood events a month. In 2020, we had 82. And we project 2025 to have 90 flash flood events. So you think about it - it's tripled since 1985.
HERSHER: And every time there's an extreme weather event, weather forecasters have to predict exactly what will happen and warn people so they can stay safe. The sprawling National Weather Service is the government agency responsible for the data behind basically every weather warning you get, whether it's on the nightly news or on your phone. They have more than a hundred offices around the country. And as the weather gets more dangerous because of climate change, the stakes of their work get higher. Bill Bunting runs the Weather Service's Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Okla.
BILL BUNTING: There's just a desire to know as much about the danger as possible. How bad will it be? How much time do I have to prepare? And so I've seen a steady increase in our ability to provide that information.
HERSHER: Forecasts have gotten better, he says. Satellites send real-time information about what's happening in the atmosphere. Powerful computer models allow forecasters to see weather patterns more clearly, even as those patterns change. People get more accurate, more frequent weather forecasts today than they did a decade ago, even though the weather service hasn't grown in that time. But all those warnings come with their own challenges.
GRAHAM: We call it warning fatigue. You know, you get so many of these things.
HERSHER: People end up getting a lot of weather warnings, Graham says, because there's a lot of dangerous weather week after week. If you get a warning but then the weather doesn't end up being that bad where you are, it can make it feel like the warning was a false alarm. But that's not the right takeaway, Graham says.
GRAHAM: There really aren't these false alarms that are perceived because, you know, if you get a tornado warning and it happens 20 miles away, you might not see a whole lot, or the flash flood was, you know, 30 miles away, but you were actually in the danger zone where it could have happened.
HERSHER: And next time, your house or your neighborhood might be the one that is affected. The weather service is working with social scientists to make warnings more specific and more useful so people don't tune them out, Graham says. And this summer is expected to bring record-breaking heat and hurricane activity to the U.S. once again.
Rebecca Hersher, NPR News.
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