13NewsNow Chief Meteorologist Jeff Lawson

The Program:  

VP of Programs Laurie Harrison introduced Rotarian of the day – Sharon Laderberg. Sharon has been a member of the club for 14 years. She enjoys the service projects at the Food Bank and MOJO. One of her favorite things about Rotary is the assigned tables because we get to know each other better. Sharon's fun fact is that she describes herself as an "open book," so feel free to ask her anything. 

 

Sharon introduced Jeff Lawson, Chief Meteorologist at TV 13NewsNow. In addition to giving an overview of his career, Sharon told us that Jeff has been married for nearly 30 years to the world's greatest woman; they have three children and a cat. In his spare time, Jeff likes to work out by hiking and cycling. You can email Jeff as well as follow him on Facebook and Twitter.

 

Jeff Lawson has a long-standing and successful career in forecasting weather. Interestingly, he never planned to be on television. He knew he'd work in science at a young age but wasn't sure if he'd become a meteorologist or a chemical engineer. He applied and was accepted to the top school in the country for forecasting – Penn State.

 

While attended Penn State, he worked for the Campus Weather Service, which provided forecasts for radio stations throughout Pennsylvania. One of his most memorable forecasts came when emergency planners, who were handling the Three-mile Island Nuclear Power Plant meltdown, called and asked which areas to evacuate because of the radiation fallout. Jeff spent summers and Christmas breaks working for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the umbrella organization for the National Weather Service.

 

Jeff worked with Dr. Vern Dvorak to develop methods of estimating tropical systems' strength from satellite pictures. The methods they developed are still used exclusively by the National Hurricane Center to assess how strong tropical systems are when they are too far away to be accessed by a Hurricane Hunter Aircraft or are between recon flights. 

 

Jeff's career includes working for Accuweather and Weather Center, where he supplied the forecast for TV weathercasters who were not meteorologists. Once he decided he wasn't too shy for TV, he worked for TV12 in Richmond (four years) and then worked for WTTG, the Fox station in Washington DC as a weekend meteorologist. While in Washington, he met his future wife, who grew up in Virginia Beach; she convinced him to apply to 13 NewsNow, where he has been the Chief Meteorologist for 31 years. 

 

During Jeff's presentation, he explained that meteorology is a very broad field. He estimates that out of 40 people in his meteorology class at Penn State, he bets fewer than five graduates are working in TV news. He thinks a fair number of people went into the military and did forecasting; some people are in research from studying the ozone hole to climate change to modeling the weather computers. He said, "forecasting is part art and part science and part experience." He went on to say:

 

"It's important to have a background in physics and math because that's all the atmosphere is, it's just a series of waves. Atmospheric waves of pressure disturbances of vorticity that spin everything up." He explained, "There are a lot of different variables, and one of the things that have happened over the last 40 years of my career is that computer forecasting has gotten a lot better, it used to be 70 percent experience and 30 percent relying on the computers, but nowadays the computers do such a good job that there are fewer times each year that you can delineate and differ yourself compared to the computers."

 

Jeff went on to review the American Computer Model which has an industry nickname of GFS. GFS stands for "good for s…(fill in the blank)," meaning it's not accurate. Still, it's the only one they have. As the news channel expanded programming, the need for more weather reports grew, so Jeff increased his team at TV13NewNows to accommodate the ongoing thirst for weather updates. He talked about the accuracy and challenges with weather apps and encouraged everyone to use 13NewsNow weather for the best and most accurate forecasts. 

 

Jeff further explained why it is tough to give only one weather forecast for the Hampton Roads region and their viewing area. For example, the weather in Newport News will be very different from that in Elizabeth City.

 

In closing, Jeff suggests during severe weather times to go online to NHC.GOV and click on the "discussion tab" to learn more about what the forecasters are predicting but might not be saying publicly yet. 

 

His last point was climate change; he and other meteorologists know that climate change is happening and that human-made effects cause it. Rotarians had several questions for Jeff. It was a fascinating conversation. 

 

 

 

Jim rang the bell to begin the meeting at 12:31 pm. Bob Heely leads the club in singing Old Lang Syne and This Land Is our Land. Jim led "The Four-Way Test," followed by the Pledge of Allegiance. Joe New gave the invocation, which included Water Flows by Margaret Atwood. 

  

Visitation Report: Joe Massey open this to the floor for visiting updates. Michael Desplaines informed the club that he has recovered from COVID-19. It was terrible, but he is feeling better now. There was no guest’s this week’s meeting.  

  

Announcement and Club Business:  

  

Happy Bucks/Fines   

 

Meeting adjourned at 1:31 p.m.