GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — With a lot of snow and wind expected at the end of the week, you'll be hearing a lot from our 13 ON YOUR SIDE weather team the next few days. We wanted to give you a behind the scenes look at how meteorologists track the storm and put the forecast together.
What the viewer sees on air is a combination of work from forecasters both at a local level and a larger scale as well. They work to translate the science into the direct impacts on your day.
The National Weather Service is one of the places it all begins. At the Grand Rapids branch, they work to localize the large scale forecast.
"You drill down from the big picture, you know, you look at the hemisphere and then the continent," says Ernie Ostuno, lead forecaster at NWS Grand Rapids. "And then you look at, you know, probably on the scale of states, where the surface low is going to track and then on a scale of counties as to where the snow bands are going to line up."
Ostuno says the most difficult part is getting it to that hyper specific level of detail, such as inches of snow in one area vs another. To do that for a storm like this week's, they'll look at bands projected to pass over certain areas.
"We do have higher resolution models now that could give us an idea of where that gradient in snow amounts are going to set up," says Ostuno.
Once the NWS puts out its forecast, 13 ON YOUR SIDE meteorologists break it down even further.
"Get information from the NWS or any other model that comes in and use it in our individual forecast," says meteorologist Blake Hansen.
After all those models are looked at, it's time to break down those numbers into a forecast that's more personalized for anyone watching.
"At the end of the day, it's what impacts are going to be felt," says Hansen. "Can I leave my house? Do I need to hunker inside? And try to bring that all into a nice bow of a message."
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