Shadowshifting Forecasters and Weather Briefing

One of the things I've been doing at work is having a lot of meetings with people and seeing how the research and forecasting enterprise works in Finland. Jenni Teittinen works at FMI as a forecaster and researcher. She has arranged for me to sit in with four forecasters over the next few weeks to see how the different shifts work. The first shift was from 7:00 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. on Friday, and Jenni was the forecaster. You can see her above analyzing one of the surface maps. Her work area is shown below, with radar and satellite on big screens on the wall, as well as hand-analyzed surface and upper-air maps. Most of her time was spent entering and updating marine and public forecasts, including products that will be used on the radio and TV. On future shifts, I'll see the work of the medium-range forecaster, the warnings forecaster, and the commercial-sector forecasters.



Also on Friday, I got to see my first weather briefing. The briefing consists of two components. The first part is a weather briefing given by a forecaster, talking about the recent and forecasted weather. The second part is a short presentation by a researcher on something that people ought to know relevant to both researchers and forecasters. I have been told that this was something that I was responsible for motivating during my interview last November, but the rumblings were already there previously.

One interesting thing about the weather briefing was the attendance. It was standing room only in a room holding about 30 people. The Director of Research and most managers were there, as were the forecasters who could spare the time from their shifts. I was VERY impressed by this. When I commented on this, I was told that the Director General of FMI (he would be Dracula in the earlier picture from Halloween) and his Deputy occasionally come also. So, big kudos to management participation in FMI!