When a storm rolls through your area, odds are you’ll have days of warning and hour-by-hour information about what to expect. That accuracy is thanks to a global data network that turns real-time measurements into forecasts that can stretch weeks. But it wasn’t always this way.

Clare tells Teo how weather went from a guessing game to a precise science, saving lives in the process.

Have a question about how our world works? Want to know more about weather forecasting? Email the Control F team at controlf@kuow.org

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Sources in this episode:

• Archival copies of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer on October 12 and October 13, 1962
• Why an ‘exact date’ weather forecast headline isn’t what it seems, Met Office of the United Kingdom, 2023
• How Reliable Are Weather Forecasts?, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
• Operational Weather Forecasting, Peter Michael Inness and Steve Dorling, 2013
• A Deadly Wind: The 1962 Columbus Day Storm, John Dodge, 2018
• Interview with Reid Wolcott, warning coordination meteorologist at the National Weather Service, Seattle
• Interview with Ted Buehner (a.k.a. Tornado Ted), meteorologist at the National Weather Service (retired)
• Interview with Cliff Mass, meteorologist and forecasting researcher at the University of Washington

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