WHAT WEATHER FORECASTERS KNOW
I. “Broadway for weathermen”
SKILLING: We’re in a very volatile weather regime around Chicago. [Former Chicago meteorologist and Weather Channel cofounder] John Coleman used to call it Broadway for weathermen, and it really is true. If you want a variety of weather to forecast, it does make the job awfully interesting. We’re in a midlatitude atmospheric clash zone where weather tends to change rather precipitously and rapidly. We have the retreating cold of winter fighting with the building warmth of spring and summer. Then, on top of that, we have this little thing called Lake Michigan sitting next to us.
MILLER: Materials have something called specific heat — how they retain heat and how they lose heat. An aluminum pan has a low specific heat. If you’ve got Tater Tots in the oven, you can pull them out and grab the aluminum and you won’t burn your hands, because it dissipates heat quickly. Water has an interesting property: It hangs on to energy for a long period of time. So once a body of water like Lake Michigan cools, it stays cool and takes a while to warm up. In the fall, that keeps the climate milder near the lakefront.
SCOTT: Wind is driven by pressure differences in the atmosphere and starts with the sun, which heats the atmosphere. Moving down a frictionless lake, it gains all of this momentum. And Chicago has these tall buildings, so when we get cold wind off Lake Michigan — which controls almost a third of our weather —
