Imagining a world without modern weather forecasting
For all the flack meteorologists get for being “wrong,” Canada and the rest of the world would be a very different place if it weren’t for today’s weather forecasting.
Checking the forecast is a part of everybody’s daily lives—it determines what your plans are going to be for the day, what you should wear, and so much more. And, no, the forecast isn’t always going to be spot-on; the weather is dynamic–it’s constantly changing and in motion, and that’s hard to predict correctly 100 per cent of the time.
But what if we didn’t have today’s weather forecasting? How would our lives in Canada, and even the United States, differ?
The Royal Meteorological Society defines modern weather forecasting as forecasting “based on the application of computer models that describe the way the atmosphere changes using mathematical equations.”
With this definition of modern weather forecasting in mind, to imagine an alternative present without it, we must look to the past.
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A brief history of forecasting in Canada
Weather forecasting has existed in Canada since the mid-nineteenth century, with daily forecasts being released to the public since 1876.
Those initial forecasts, however, were very simple and vague, being limited to the weather for the next 24 hours. Otherwise, people would simply rely on old adages that had been passed down through the generations, such as “red sky at night, sailors delight; red sky in the morning, sailors take warning.”
Tornado warnings would come from the tornadoes themselves as they bore down on communities, giving people extremely little time to prepare and seek shelter. Similarly, hurricanes that made it up the East Coast took Maritimers by surprise, resulting in far more casualties than we see today.
A screenshot of what The Weather Network's radar graphic looked like in 1999. (The Weather Network)
It wasn’t until the World Wars that weather forecasting became more sophisticated thanks to the widespread use of radios and radar technology. After World War II, forecasts were able to be regularly issued across the country multiple times per day, giving folks a heads-up about the weather up to seven days out.
“It wasn’t until the 1950s that there was a realistic way to solve the complex equations that describe the weather. This is when computers ushered in the area of Numerical Weather Prediction,” wrote Chris Scott, The Weather Network’s chief meteorologist, in an article published in 2019.
“The advances were slow but steady for the first few decades. However, in the last 30 years the output from computer models has gone from being a useful tool for meteorologists to being the base of all weather forecasts.”
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Life without modern forecasting
Without the advent of Numerical Weather Prediction, meteorologists would have to manually compute a series of complex equations to create the forecast—which would have to be repeated for every locale in Canada. In addition to the inefficiency of this, human error would significantly decrease the confidence in each forecast.
There would also continue to be a heavy reliance on human observations of the current atmospheric state for each locale, and how those observations follow the general rules of the atmosphere, such as falling pressure indicating an approaching storm, or shifting winds indicating a passing low or frontal system.
As a result, the forecasts would become fairly vague, likely only providing information for a few days out at most, and that would only be thanks to the aid of mundane radar technology. In fact, the use of radar would only work for real-time observations—no future radar simulations would be available, as those are generated by high-resolution computer models.
With climate change increasing the severity and frequency of extreme weather, being able to accurately forecast when and where the weather will happen is more important than ever.
Casualties from extreme weather events would be higher than they are now, as forecasters would have a harder time pinpointing exactly where the bad weather will strike. This would be especially true in the U.S., where deadly tornadoes and hurricanes regularly occur.
Thumbnail image made by Anika Beaudry with Canva Pro.