Lee is the meteorologist in charge for the Baltimore/Washington Weather Forecast Office of the National Weather Service. He’s also a fifth-generation Washingtonian. Before working here, he spent seven years in the Boston forecast office. How did you first get interested in meteorology?
I guess I’ve always been fascinated by thunderstorms and other types of severe weather.
Did you want to be a meteorologist early on, when you were little?
Probably not; it probably hit me more in college. … I’ve always been an outdoors enthusiast, and all my recreational actives hinged on what the weather was going to be like. In college, I got more and more drawn to being able to predict it and assess it.
What does it feel like to make a forecasting mistake?
When we make our mistakes, we like to go back, look at the cases, review data, see what we missed. We take a great deal of pride in our work, and we try to give the public the very best forecast we can get. I’ll give you a [golf] analogy: If a pro misses their putt on a green, they don’t walk away from it; they look at it and embed it in their minds, so the next time they have to make that putt, they have a much better [chance]. Also, we really don’t miss that much. Our winter storm warnings verify at a 90 percent accuracy rate; our average lead time for winter storm warnings is 20 hours-plus.
Is there anything about working in D.C. that makes for more pressure, compared with Boston?
In some ways, there are; this is the capital of the United States — we always have lots of important events going on. For instance, we partner with the National Park Service and provide meteorological support for the Fourth of July celebration. We get calls from Air Force One on occasion for aviation forecasts. We get a lot of tours from international dignitaries that come out who want to see how the U.S. federal government does forecasting, how we save lives and provide accurate forecasts.
Betsy Woodruff
