Broadcast Meteorologist and Natural Disaster Preparedness Spokesperson, StormPins

>> My name is Cheryl Nelson. I am a broadcast meteorologist, and I'm also a natural disaster preparedness spokesperson. I go on TV. I don't just read the weather. I actually go and do my own forecast. I make the graphics, get ready to go on air, and then you see me. You don't see the green screen but that's behind me and I'm giving the weather. So when you prepare a weather forecast, you have to look at many different things. Current observations, see what the temperature is, the dewpoint, the wind speed. You look at computer models. You hear everybody talking about them on TV. But there are so many different computer models with all these different parameters going into them and they all spit out different information. Then you have to look at satellite, radar, current conditions, take all of that, put it together, and make your own forecast. So it's a very inexact science but a very difficult science. As a TV or broadcast meteorologist, a busy day is any active day where there is severe weather, active weather, snow storm, hurricane, tornado outbreak, what have you. And it's when you come into the studio and already you see thunderstorms on the radar. And you know, oh, boy, because everybody in that newsroom is really starting to get nervous. They want cut ins. They want crawls. They want you on the air. And you are working 24/7. I remember we had a tornado outbreak with a strong EF-3 tornado in southeastern Virginia, which is very unusual. And my chief meteorologist and I were on the air for five hours straight during that outbreak. And that is a busy day.