Have you ever wondered what life is like as a weather presenter on the television? These men and women adorn our screens each every day as part of the news report, to inform us of what the weather will be like in our area in the coming hours and days. In some cases these professionals even become quite famous themselves such as Jim Byrne KCOY Weatherman. We had a chat with Jim to find out more about what is job is like, and what an average day for him looks like.
Early Start
What many people don’t realize about these men and women is that ultimately they are scientists, not just TV presenters who are fed information. This is why Jim generally wakes up each morning at 1am, and gets into the studio for around 2am. The reason for this is because Jim will be presenting the weather reports al morning, and he first needs to do his forecasts. A meteorologist like Jim will be given data by from a meteorology company or in some cases straight from the government agency, but it is then up to him to assess the data and make his own forecasts for the weather for the Santa Maria region. This will take Jim up to 2 hours to crunch though the data and make his predictions.
Preparing the Show
Once the forecasts have been made, Jim will tie up with the editing team to put together the visual weather report which the public will see, based on the forecasts that he has made. This is usually a very quick process because much of the graphics are already in place, they simply need to be put together in a way that supports what the weatherman or weatherwoman is saying.
The Show
Jim will normally appear three or four times each morning, after each news bulletin. For most man and women in this job, their presentation of the weather will take around 3 or 4 minutes. During shows Jim will keep his eye on any new weather reports which are released, to see if anything should change in his predictions.
Additional Work
Jim will normally finish his day at the news studio by around 10am, but his day does not always finish there. Very often meteorologists like Jim will take on extra tasks such as social outreach. Many weathermen and women will go into schools as part of an education about the weather and its impacts, as well as what causes it. For Jim, he tells me that this is his favorite aspect of the job and that he loves spending time with the school kids, showing them how we can predict the weather. Any additional studio jobs will be completed and then it is off to bed early for Jim to prepare ahead of the following day.
And there you have it, an average day in the life of a weatherman.