Conveying Uncertainty through Graphical Forecasts

Today's weather forecasts are often viewed through social media platforms on mobile devices. From that standpoint, in many cases meteorologists have only a matter of seconds to convey weather information to the end user. Forecast uncertainty and confidence are two key components necessary to motivate people to take action, especially for high impact events. This presentation highlights a few methods for conveying uncertainty, some of which are effective, and others which are not. The use of animations will be shown to have several advantages over still images or text products for effective communication of complex information. A case study of the 23 February 2017 snow storm across the Upper Midwest will be presented in detail to showcase the difficulty of hazardous weather communication for a high impact event. This case will be compared to messaging from winter storms in 2018 to demonstrate the positive outcomes from the lessons learned the previous year.