Oil and Weather do Mix

April 20, 2010, the British Petroleum Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion in the northern Gulf of Mexico kills eleven people. The disaster soon creates the largest oil spill in the Gulf in 30 years. Broadcast TV meteorologists were called into action as "station scientists" to cover a topic that none of us had considered or prepared for. We were expected to deliver daily perspective, satellite views and forecasts of the oil leak, while instantly becoming hydrologists, geologists, oceanographers, and marine scientists. Resources and data were scarce and not routinely available.

Attempts to explain what was happening to the general public and to our news departments were made even more difficult by lack of timely "official" information. There was no available daily estimate of the boundaries and motion of the oil. Trajectory forecasts by NOAA were helpful but not necessarily accurate.

News anchors and meteorologists broadcast assumptions about what was happening and what was expected to happen early on in the disaster. In some cases we erroneously drew parallels to tropical storm predictions and motion.

This presentation is a PowerPoint and video overview of how the weather team at WKRG-TV covered the events in Mobile, Alabama, 100+ miles from the center of the disaster. From a science communication perspective we examine what worked, what didn't work, and what lessons we learned.