The Current - Forecasting the weather (and getting people to listen)

Episode Date: November 22, 2024

People in Saskatchewan have long trusted meteorologist Terri Lang to steer them through wild weather, from summer tornadoes to walloping snowfalls. She talks to Matt Galloway about retirement, armchair forecasters and why she doesn't tell people at parties what she does.

In 2017, it felt like drugs were everywhere in the news, so I started a podcast called On Drugs. We covered a lot of ground over two seasons, but there are still so many more stories to tell. I'm Jeff Turner, and I'm back with Season 3 of On Drugs. And this time, it's going to get personal. I don't know who Sober Jeff is. I don't even know if I like that guy.

On Drugs is available now wherever you get your podcasts. This is a CBC Podcast. Hello, I'm Matt Galloway, and this is The Current Podcast. Headed to Saskatoon this weekend for some special programming that you will hear early next week on this program. I keep being warned that it is a whole lot colder and snowier than where I am right now. If there's anyone who knows a thing or two about the weather in Saskatchewan, it's Terry Lang. The snow will start accumulating on the roads. It'll start freezing up. We're expecting blowing snow, probably near blizzard conditions.

Then that's really going to ice the roads up. The vast majority of tornadoes that are seen across the prairies tend to be short-lived, weaker tornadoes. This one was longer-lasting, and we know just from the damage that it was a stronger tornado. It's what we call a supercell tornado. From summer tornadoes to blinding blizzards and walloping snowfalls like Saskatchewan got this week,

Terry Lang has been a trusted voice about all things weather-related for decades. After 36 years, she is retiring from her position as the Warning Preparedness Meteorologist for Environment and Climate Change Canada. Terry Lang joins us from our Saskatoon studio. Terry, good morning. Good morning. It's a dream job for you to be talking about the worst of the weather? Always. I love talking about the weather. I mean, a lot of us like talking about the weather, but we don't end up getting to do that for a living.

How did you fall into this? It was just something that fascinated me as a kid. I was always reading books about weather and the earth, volcanoes, earthquakes, all that kind of stuff, tornadoes, hurricanes. So yeah, it was really a passion. How has the industry that you work in changed over the 36 years that you've been in it? Oh, it's changed so much. The technology has changed incredibly. We used to get our weather

charts from those old machines, you know, that had that purple ink. I think my husband remembered the name, the Gestetner. So if we would, you know, that smell, I remember you would always remember that smell as a kid. And we would print them off and color them and hang them on the wall, and we'd only get them once or twice a day. Now the information is instantaneous, and there's so many different sources of weather information. Even the weather models have changed because meteorology is a fairly young science still. Most of the meteorology started after the wars when they figured out the planes were flying a lot faster if they flew in one direction than the other direction.

So that's when the science really exploded. So it's very young, but it's really taken off. How much more accurate is weather forecasting now than it was when you started it? Oh, my goodness. It's incredibly accurate. You know, a lot of people don't think so, but they only notice when the forecast is wrong. They don't notice when it's right, and it's right most of the time.

A lot of people don't think so. Do they let you know if the forecast is wrong? Oh, they really do, yeah. Do tell. Well, I've got the, you know, nasty phone calls. You know, I just shoveled five centimeters of mainly sunny off my driveway, all that kind of stuff. And people that are planning weddings or whatever in the summer and it rained on their wedding, that's a surprise. All that kind of stuff.

I hear it all the time. How much stock do you put in? I mean, we look at the forecast and it's today, tomorrow. Now you can see upwards of 14 days, maybe even longer. How far out do you trust? That's a very good question. When we're looking out into the longer range, beyond about day three, we look more for trends.

Is it going to be warmer? Is it going to be colder? Is it going to be drier? Is it going to be wetter? As opposed to, you know, sticking a number on something and, you know, said, well, you said it was going to be 15 next week. Well, you know, things can change quite a bit. And boy, you can get a very different set of weather than what you looked at maybe a week ago. So we're always refining that.

I always say you can see out to about 10 days with some amount of confidence, but we've also seen that, you know, absolute exact opposite of what you were expecting. Is there anything particularly challenging about Saskatchewan that makes it difficult to predict what the weather is? I mean, just in terms of geography and big skies, is it at all different there than elsewhere in the country? Everybody thinks it's easier on the prairies because there's no mountains in the way. I worked in BC for 17 years, so there's mountains that dictate sort of which way the wind is going to blow. And on the Atlantic side, they always think, well, you could see it coming off the ocean. In Saskatchewan, we have one of the biggest variations in temperature from winter to summer in the world.

We can go from minus 45 in the winter to plus 45 in the summer. That's a 90 degree difference between those seasons. And you don't get that on the coast just because the oceans have such a moderating effect on the temperature. I think what's the most challenging here is the summer thunderstorms because they can be so violent and we can narrow it down to an area, but we can't narrow it down to a neighborhood. So we always equate sort of when the thunderstorms are popping up to watching a pot of water boil and figuring out where the first bubble is going to come up

and then the next bubble and then the next bubble, right? And we always know what the ingredients are to make severe storms and tornadoes, but we can't identify, you know, exact time that it's going to happen and the exact place it's going to happen. There's so many dynamics going on in the atmosphere on such a small scale that, you know, it's almost impossible to forecast down to the neighborhood. And that's the big difference here in Saskatchewan. The storms can be very, very violent. How have you seen the climate change in your neck of the country

over the time that you've been doing this job? Well, certainly we're seeing, at least I'm seeing, sort of more extremes in the dryness and the wetness. We can go from extremely wet one year and then a couple years later extremely dry. And now we're seeing it sort of less of the wet years and more of the dry years. And just the extreme nature of the dryness as well, like lasting seasons. And that smoke from forest fires now is something that, you know, and the statistics bear it out that, you know, we haven't seen in previous years. And that does have an effect on the weather here

because the smoke can suppress the temperature, it can suppress thunderstorms, which give precipitation, all that kind of stuff. So that's something that, you know, I don't ever remember seeing when I was younger. And that has a real impact on people who live off the land. You think of farmers in particular? Oh, absolutely. The people live and breathe here by the weather. It is a part of every single conversation that you have with people. And the farmers, it's their livelihood.

So it means something to them. It's kind of heartbreaking when you see some of the things happening, the hailstorms or a big washout or anything like that, because you know how much of an impact it has. In 2017, it felt like drugs were everywhere in the news. So I started a podcast called On Drugs. We covered a lot of ground over two seasons, but there are still so many more stories to tell.

I'm Jeff Turner, and I'm back with season three of On Drugs. And this time, it's going to get personal. I don't know who Sober Jeff is. I don't even know if I like that guy. On Drugs is available now wherever you get your podcasts. wherever you get your podcasts. What sort of impact does it have on you when you have to warn people about extreme weather events that are coming their way? You feel it because you know what's coming

and you know what impacts it can have on people's lives and you can't stop it from coming. But every time that you see a big storm coming, like last week we could see this snowstorm coming, and you know that there's going to be people out there that are going to drive in it, you know there's going to be accidents, you know it's going to make people late for things,

people are going to miss important, maybe medical appointments that they've been waiting months or years for. So you do feel that in your soul, just because you know it's coming and there's nothing you can do about it. Let me play you something in terms of feeling it. This is from one of your colleagues south of the border.

It's just an incredible, incredible, incredible hurricane. It has dropped... It has dropped 50 millibars in 10 hours. I apologize. This is just horrific. That's John Morales. He's a Florida meteorologist talking this fall about Hurricane Milton. That clip went all over the world.

Do you understand where he's coming from? Absolutely. Absolutely. Because he knows what that means. Because he knows that hurricane is strengthening so quickly, and it's going to be so destructive. So yeah, I remember that same sense of dread that I had last summer, not this past summer, but the summer before when we could see a weather pattern setting up across British Columbia. There are already a number of fires burning across British Columbia,

but we knew with the weather pattern that was coming that it was going to make all the forest fires take a run, the wind and the heat, And we know what that means. It means that people are going to lose their houses, that, you know, there's more smoke. It puts the firefighters at risk. You know that's coming. It's a real sense of dread. And also seeing now that things that we haven't seen before.

So I think that for him, that's what he was seeing, too. This is something I've never seen before. So I think that for him, that's what he was seeing too. This is something I've never seen before. And there's a sense of being quite scared about that. Do you ever get frustrated with people who don't take what you know as seriously as perhaps they should, the warnings that you're giving them as seriously as they should? It is frustrating. Yeah. And you try not to take it personally because you think, what else could I have done in this situation? How else could I have warned people? Especially now, like we're physically pushing warnings to people's phones. And I know that not everybody has telephones, but it's the next best thing to knocking on their door. knocking on their door. But, you know, we've kind of, you have to accept the fact that you're not going to reach everybody and you're not going to necessarily make people understand what's about to happen. What impact has, I was going to say technology broadly, because, you know, on the

phone that I have, there's all these different weather apps and I can kind of get conflicting streams of information, but also social media. I mean, what impact has that had on you and the work that you do? It's a blessing and it's a curse because we can use social media to get the message out for, you know, storms that are coming. But then there's a lot of noise on there, especially in the past year or so. There's so much noise, naysayers, but also people that sometimes their heart's in the right place, but they know just enough to be trouble. What do you mean? Can you give me an example of that? Some people know a little bit about the weather, so they can find out some information and they'll post that information.

But when we look at the weather, we're not just looking at one weather model. And when you look at, for instance, for this particular storm that we're having, there is a huge range of what the models were going to do. So as meteorologists, you have to look at all of the information, synthesize it, and give your best guess based on what all the models are saying. But armchair meteorologists, we call them, they like to pick the worst-case scenario and then really hype it. And that can be quite damaging because, A, it can scare some people. Because, A, it can scare some people. Plus then if it doesn't work out, which is for the vast majority of the cases, it doesn't work out, then there's credibility that's lost.

It's like that idea of crying wolf, that people eventually get tired of you saying that this terrible storm is coming. And when the terrible storm comes, they tune you out because somebody has been saying this and it hasn't been true. Exactly, 50 other times. Yeah, it can be very, very frustrating. I mean, one of the things with armchair meteorologists and forecasters is that people will use all the language. Pretend, now I'm an expert in bomb cyclones and atmospheric. Does that, when we use that language, does that actually help inform people? Does that tell people what's going on when you say there's an atmospheric river coming in?

We debate this all the time because in some ways it gets people's attention. But if they don't understand the language that is being used, then it can be quite confusing. Or people just say, oh, that's just a bunch of hype. Because like, take for instance, the bomb cyclone, which sounds absolutely horrific. but it's something, it's a real term, it's a real phenomena, but it just sounds, you know, especially with wars going on, it just, it can scare the daylights out of people. And then other people use it for hype as well, right, to get more clicks and that type of thing. So it's a real double-edged sword. What will you miss about this job? Oh, boy. I will miss so much. I love the weather so much, and I'm never going to stop looking at the weather. I think the most rewarding part has been working with emergency managers and

municipalities, the provinces, you know, helping them get ready for weather before it happens and helping them work through emergencies, not even necessarily weather emergencies, but other types of emergencies like train derailments, forest fires, all that kind of stuff, because weather impacts almost every type of emergency. So when you can give informed information to decision makers and you see them go out and make these decisions that impact people's lives in a really positive manner, you feel like you're contributing in a very small way because I have such admiration for these people that, you know, when these emergencies happen, they're the ones that are working behind the scenes.

They're the ones that are running towards the emergency. How would you distill what it is that you love about the weather? It's there every single day of your life. It impacts what you wear. It impacts how you plan your holidays. It impacts everything. And I'm a big sky appreciator, too. I love clouds.

I love everything about the weather. It's just, it's in me. And there isn't, I mean, there's kind of like a Zen approach that some people have that I'm going to not look at the forecast because of a friend who says this. You know, the weather, it is what it is going to be. And if you work yourself up about what the temperature is going to be like tomorrow, whether it's going to rain. It's just something you can't control. You don't buy that at all? No. I know I can't control it.

And it is a bit of a blessing and a curse because you can get yourself, I can get myself worked up into a frenzy or just really be anxious about it. But there's nothing more satisfying than seeing your forecast work out and going, I nailed it. I got that one. So it's just, I don't know. I just love the weather. Yeah, I just love it. Last thing, as you said, everybody loves to talk about the weather, particularly in your part of this country. If you're a party and somebody says, what do you do?

Do you tell them what your occupation is or has been? I usually work around it a little bit. Like, oh, I work for the government. And so then they kind of, you know, if they press a little bit further, I do tell them what I do. And people are absolutely, they look at you. First, they think you study meteors. And people are absolutely, they look at you. First, they think

you study meteors. And then when you, they actually say, no, I'm a weather forecaster. They're absolutely flabbergasted because most people have never met a weather forecaster or meteorologist. There's very few of us across the country. So people have so many questions about the weather. And they like to tell stories, all that kind of stuff. And, of course, yeah, give me a drink and I'll go on forever. Probably best to keep them at bay or else you won't be able to talk to anybody else at the party either. That's exactly. Or then you get a whole crowd around you.

It's fun. It's fun. Congratulations on a great career. There are a lot of people in your province that have relied on your voice and the wisdom behind it to tell them what they need to know when the weather rolls in. Terry, thank you. Thank you for giving me this opportunity to talk about it. And safe drive home because you guys got smoked with some snow. So I hope it's okay out there.

Yeah. Looking forward to getting out to Saskatoon on the weekend. Safe travels and pack warm, okay? Yeah, that's what I'm going to be doing. All the best. You too. Bye-bye. and pack warm, okay?

Yeah, that's what I'm going to be doing. All the best. You too. Bye-bye. Terry Lang is a warning preparedness meteorologist for Environment and Climate Change Canada based in Saskatoon. She's retiring on Monday after 36 years in that job. As I mentioned, I'm heading to Saskatoon on Sunday.

We'll be there next week with two special programs, some great guests that you will hear from, including the great author Guy van der Heegh. He'll be speaking with one of the largest farmland owners in Canada, and some small farmers about how difficult it is to get into farming right now. We'll hear from a Métis community leader, Olympic divers, and then we're doing a show in front of a sold-out live audience at the Broadway Theatre in Saskatoon, featuring local music, comedy, some great conversations as well. One of the things that we have been hearing

over and over again in the lead up to our trip there is that Saskatoon is a city that punches above its weight. It has great, great stories to tell and we cannot wait to tell them to you next week. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.