Tornadoes did not hit the nation’s capital yesterday, and many meteorologists on the internet are extremely sorry. “What a HORRIBLE forecast by meteorologists—especially myself,” Matthew Cappucci, of the weather app MyRadar, posted on X yesterday after the tornado warnings that prompted schools, businesses, and museums to close across the Washington region had fizzled into your average rainy day.
Surely, the weathermen of the world hold some sincere remorse here for a situation that alarmed the mid-Atlantic, sent parents scurrying to retrieve their kids, grounded hundreds of flights, and disrupted daily life for millions of people. But the abject tenor of some of the apologies, following the ominous buildup about the prospect of destructive tornadoes, has become its own minor storm system. When a threat looms and throngs of forecasters and weather fans—some highly credentialed, others less so—all weigh in online, the incentives to make both the forecast and the failings dramatic go up. In the attention economy, who wants to tune in for un-extreme weather?
“Social media certainly drives what I call the ‘hype machine,’” Jeffrey Halverson, an expert on D.C.-area weather and a professor at the University of Maryland Baltimore County, told me. “I think severe-thunderstorm forecasting”—which includes tornadoes—“could benefit from better communication of uncertainty.”…