Is a picture worth a thousand words? It might be! Using focus groups, we learned that people share important misunderstandings about weather forecasts. We think that may be a result of overreliance on text to relay forecasts to the public, AND emerging graphical technology may help to clarify our message.

While meteorologists have improved their forecasts significantly over the past two decades, public perceptions seem to have lagged behind forecast reality. The goal of this project was to gain a better understanding of how people access and assimilate weather information, so that meteorologists can relate it in the most understandable fashion.

Our focus groups were led by graduate students whose task was to discover how individuals in several groups (Farmers, Builders, PTA Parents, Golfers, and Senior Citizens) acquired and used weather information. We assessed the focus group discussions by reviewing tapes of the sessions, and discovered several similarities in how people understand and use weather information. As a result, we have formulated several specific recommendations for improving weather information communications.