I recently listened to the “What is Original?” episode of NPR’s TED Radio Hour. One of the guests discussed Benjamin Franklin – specifically, that he didn’t patent his inventions. He wanted others to develop them further. The guest added that it was common for people to gather and share ideas in coffeehouses since such locations […]

This is one that’s been gnawing at my brain for some time. A criticism we sometimes face is making a big deal out of routine weather, acting as though something that happens often is noteworthy or dangerous. Here’s the problem: it can be. And is. Take a recent study that showed that falling precipitation increases

One of the obsessions in the meteorological realm over the past few years has been consistency. It’s a wide-ranging thing: consistency in colors of watches/advisories/warnings, consistency in severe weather outlooks, consistency in messaging, and so on. I get the idea that, if our end users are accustomed to seeing the same thing across different mediums/providers/etc.,

I was recently at a store and a Baby Boomer-aged man came up to chat for a moment. “When are you going to hire another woman?” Not an unreasonable question, since our staff has been down by one and our weather team currently consists of four guys. I replied that we happen to have a

I’ve come to the conclusion that, as the difficulty of a weather forecast increases, the challenge in effectively communicating that forecast increases not linearly but exponentially. On November 25, 2018, southern Iowa experienced heavy snow and, in some cases, blizzard conditions. Other places, literally miles away, got nary a snowflake. There was a seven-inch difference

I’m reading Thinking, Fast and Slow right now at the suggestion of a couple colleagues who are social scientists with an inclination toward meteorology. It’s an interesting book on psychology in its own right, but I’m reading it with the intention of gleaning some ideas that can be applied to why people make the decisions

I started writing this post before Monday, February 5 – a day that proved to be terrible on Iowa roads. You can read about the wrecks, including some that were deadly, here, here, here, here, and here. I was filling in on the morning shift that day and knew it was going to be a bad

This past week, our daughter turned three months old. The notion of the “fourth trimester” totally makes sense now. We admittedly had kind of a unicorn baby in those first three months, but that doesn’t mean it was easy. The thing is, a little baby doesn’t really do much other than eat, sleep, cry, and fill its

Okay, so the case can be made that “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” is even worse. That one’s issue is singular – it’s creepy at best and just plain wrong at worst (and let’s be honest, that’s probably the end of the spectrum it’s on). However, “The Christmas Shoes” has so much bad going for it