SOUTH BURLINGTON — Maureen Hastings, a lead meteorologist at the National Weather Service’s Burlington office, pivoted among the five computer screens before her, each displaying a colorful digital smorgasbord of data. Interspersed with spreadsheets, line charts and big blocks of text, eight maps of New York and New England were overlaid with a variety of wavy lines, psychedelic-looking cross-sections of the rainbow and numbers — lots of numbers. 

Indecipherable to most people, the toolset was helping Hastings on that mid-December morning to decide whether to extend a winter weather advisory issued for much of Vermont the day prior and set to expire in 52 minutes. After that, she would turn her attention to the next day’s rainy forecast, helping to assess the worrying threat of floods. 

Hastings’ determinations would be used by commuters, road crews, superintendents, public safety officials, pilots, journalists and anyone impacted by the weather, which most days is most people. These judgment calls are the kind that she and her colleagues make on a routine basis, beamed out to the world from their second-story office at the Patrick Leahy Burlington International Airport.

“It’s a lot of working toward helping people make decisions and then act on those decisions,” Hastings, 45, said in a prior interview. 

Staffed 24/7 by 13 meteorologists in rotating shifts, as well as three scientist-managers, the weather service’s Burlington office occupies an unusual space in Vermont’s public eye. In some ways, its forecasters are semi-public figures akin to spokespeople for the skies, their names peppering news stories before, during and after extreme weather events. They present workshops at grade schools and libraries and host informational tables at events such as the Champlain Valley Fair. Anyone can phone their office to seek their counsel, and the line is used by reporters, random residents and even a few regular callers.

But the meteorologists also spend much of their work hours toiling unseen in the depths of dense scientific calculations. Their closest partners are often behind-the-scenes decision-makers at official entities such as Vermont Emergency Management, and during weather-related catastrophes like floods and storms, they provide one-on-one guidance to state government’s upper echelons.

Several were drawn to their careers following natural disasters in their youth. For Hastings, it was a tornado that tore through her Kansas hometown when she was in third grade. Each has their own non-weather-related hobbies (such as softball, crocheting and video games like Animal Crossing) and night-shift coping methods (black-out curtains, chamomile tea and living with cats who are less likely to care about variable schedules than dogs).

It’s not unusual, they said, to meet people who misunderstand what they do. For one thing, they don’t work in TV. 

“I do notice that when people ask me what I do, and I tell them I’m a meteorologist, they immediately want to know, like, what channel or am I on the radio. And this kind of operational forecaster job kind of runs under the radar,” said meteorologist Jessica Storm, 26. (No, she doesn’t find it annoying when people note her surname. And, yes, she likes weather puns.)

Lead meteorologist Robert Haynes, 32, who chose The Weather Channel over cartoons as a kid, said he’s also often errantly associated with its programming. This job, though, is one of civil service.

“When we kind of tell people, like, no, we’re actually a part of the federal government, that can sometimes throw people for a loop,” he said.

Robert Haynes at the National Weather Service office at Leahy Burlington International Airport in South Burlington monitors several screens of data as heavy rain moves into the area on Wednesday, December 11. Photo by Glenn Russell/VTDigger

Forecasting: A team sport 

The crew in South Burlington — referred to as the Burlington office — comprises one of 122 forecast offices for the National Weather Service, itself one of six branches of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA. Burlington’s coverage area includes part of upstate New York and all Vermont counties except for Bennington and Windham. Those southernmost areas are covered by the office in Albany, New York, with which Burlington works closely, alongside other neighbor offices in Buffalo, New York, and Gray, Maine.

In addition to the meteorologists, whose salaries can range from about $40,000 for entry-level positions to six figures for senior leaders and veterans, the Burlington office employs a hydrologist, a program leader to oversee weather observations, and a handful of technical and administrative support staff. On a busy day, eight employees might roam the halls at a given moment, according to meteorologist-in-charge Gabriel Langbauer, 43, while most overnight shifts require only two. 

“It’s a lot of really smart people who know exactly what to do,” Langbauer said.

Their mission as part of the National Weather Service sounds straightforward: to “provide weather, water and climate data, forecasts, warnings, and impact-based decision support services for the protection of life and property and enhancement of the national economy.”

In practice, it’s pretty complex. On that Dec. 10 morning, Hastings had arrived for an 8 a.m. shift changeover alongside two other staff meteorologists and a third who was onboarding. Across a large open room boasting Hastings’ five-screen workstation and seven others like it, the previous night’s crew shared key updates and intel with the incoming day team. Some stood and chatted while others huddled around the monitors, pointing out bits of data. (As predicted, a snowstorm had been rough on Vermont’s evening commute, contributing to more than 100 crashes and road incidents that required response from Vermont State Police, that agency said.) 

On the wall were yet more screens — two tuned to TV stations and another six dedicated to rotating datasets, all designed for “situational awareness,” said meteorologist Adrianna Kremer, who sat at one of the workstations. She tracked six tabs on one of her screens, eight tabs on another and a range of open windows on the rest, monitoring everything from relevant social media feeds to long narrative reports from her colleagues at other offices.

“This is mild,” Kremer, 26, said of her setup. 

A short time later, the staff hydrologist, John Goff, headed out on a half-day tour of several high-elevation locales, including Camel’s Hump and the Appalachian and Roxbury gaps, because some of the figures in the meteorologists’ snowpack models appeared to be wonky. After a quick detour to grab his snowshoes, he planned to measure the snow’s depths and weight to calculate the amount of liquid contained therein.

He’d use those measurements to update the figures in the modeling, which would help inform Kremer for the seven-day forecast and which Hastings would use to predict the next 36 hours, with a keen eye to how rainfall might melt that snow and affect potential flooding the next day. The data would also be shared more broadly.

Like Hastings, who’s worked for the weather service for 21 years and in Burlington for seven, Kremer cemented her interest in meteorology as a child after witnessing the weather’s worst potential. Growing up on Long Island, she was already intrigued by her parents’ weather-centric jobs as air traffic controllers, an engaging eighth-grade earth sciences class and the relatively mild tropical storm remnants that sometimes rolled through her town. 

Then Hurricane Sandy struck the region as a superstorm in 2012, sparing Kremer’s home but devastating many around it. The family took in friends who had lost their house. 

“It was really hard to believe, was really the way to describe it,” Kremer said. “And then it’s also just like, ‘why,’ right? Like, why was this one so bad?”

Conveying probability — without crystal balls

In part to better understand the answer, Kremer earned her Bachelor’s degree in meteorology from SUNY Brockport in 2020. She worked in New York as a Covid-19 contact tracer and in other jobs before joining the Burlington office in 2022. Now the question of “why” is a regular part of her routine, as the office’s meteorologists gather formally or informally after significant weather events to learn from the successes and shortcomings of their forecasts.

They’re not only analyzing the accuracy of their science, but also the effectiveness of their messages. In other words, Hastings said: “What are people doing when they hear our warnings?”

That’s a key question for Science Operations Officer Pete Banacos, 50, who said much has changed in the 26 years he’s worked for the weather service, mostly in Burlington. As the computer monitors “get flatter and bigger,” he quipped, improved numerical models have allowed today’s forecasters to predict seven days out with the same level of accuracy that was constrained to four at the start of his career. 

Such advancements empower forecasters to fine-tune other elements of the job, like the messaging. The primary approach they’re working on these days, the meteorologists said, is “probabilistic messaging.” That means explaining the probability of various weather scenarios — usually using percentages — so that Vermonters can understand the chance of best-case, worst-case and most likely outcomes. 

State and local emergency officials may be most interested in the worst cases, even when unlikely, so they can get prepared, Banacos said. (After all, he pointed out, a figure like 15% may sound low, but it’s not the same as 0%.) Meanwhile, the average Vermonter might need to know that an unlikely scenario is on the table, but they shouldn’t be surprised if it doesn’t come to pass. 

An individual’s profession may also determine what they want to know about the likelihood of hitting certain thresholds, Banacos said, whether it’s the probability of surpassing a given wind speed, precipitation total or other metric. 

“So we’re getting more into the probabilistic space where we say, what are the chances of, say, 4 inches of snow falling on a particular day?” Banacos said. “And maybe that’s a threshold that’s important to a snow plow driver — they’re going to go out for a 4-inch snowstorm. So they want to know, what’s the percent chance at their threshold of something happening?”

The approach represents a shift away from the hyper-specific forecasts of decades past, said Banacos, who sat in a conference room defined by another huge screen but also displays of antique tools like a wind anemometer and a barograph. He said “tiny little ranges” for predicted snow totals, like 1 to 3 inches here and 2 to 4 inches there, may have been unrealistic and given the public false impressions.

Meteorologists are working such probabilistic phrasing into conversations with journalists, public safety officials and other stakeholders who communicate with the public. For example, Haynes said, instead of saying “you’re going to get 6.7 inches of snow today,” the probabilistic version could sound something like this: “There’s a 50% chance that you’ll get more than 6 inches of snow, or in a worst-case scenario, your high-end range that you could see and should prepare for (is) maybe 10 inches of snow.”

They’re also experimenting with new digital tools, such as the weather service’s “probabilistic snowfall products” on its website. Visitors might see a grid of regional maps, each representing a different snowfall total — one map for 6 or more inches, another for 8 or more inches, and so on — with different percentages of likelihood marked across the towns in each map.

The overall effort is a work in progress, Banacos acknowledged. It’s not always easy to convey nuanced statistical calculations to a population with a range of mathematical inclinations and competing demands on their attention. He’s sensed that some consumers expect near-perfect forecasting in the Digital Age, but that most recognize that scientists have yet to develop crystal balls.

“As a result of such improvement (in forecasts), I think sometimes people expect that level of skill, like, every time,” Banacos said. “And so when those hiccups happen where we miss the mark completely, I think sometimes it does catch people by surprise. … But that’s where the probabilistic messaging can sort of help take the edge off.”

Photo by Glenn Russell/VTDigger

The rewarding work of mitigating risk

Recent years have been busy for forecasters in Vermont, marked by several rounds of serious or catastrophic flooding over the last two summers and in December 2023. Huge swaths of residents have faced extended power outages following major wind and ice events, and advocates for people without housing are getting as worried about extreme heat as they have long been about extreme cold.

Vermont’s natural disasters have generally not been as dire as the hurricanes or tornadoes associated with some of the weather service’s notoriously hectic offices, such as those in Florida or Oklahoma, according to Scott Whittier, 58, the Burlington office’s warning coordination meteorologist. But the recent years’ flooding danger has been significant — killing at least four Vermonters, risking countless other lives, undercutting residents’ mental health and destroying hundreds of homes, livelihoods and infrastructure worth hundreds of millions of dollars. (Banacos encouraged Vermonters to sign up for VT-Alerts to stay attuned to such threats.)

Beyond headline-grabbing events, Whittier said, it’s important to remember that it takes far less than a record-setting flood for Vermont weather to present real danger. A dusting of snow hitting the interstates at an inopportune hour — as it did on that previous evening’s commute — should warrant Vermonters’ attention and caution, he argued.

“Weather kills,” he said.

Tragic weather events can also impact meteorologists’ mental health. There’s a certain adrenaline associated with big weather days and contributing to public safety, Kremer said, but nobody hopes for the devastation that too often follows. 

Wellness is a priority among the staff, said the meteorologist-in-charge, Langbauer, who was previously a civilian meteorologist in the U.S. Army. Signs of staff camaraderie were visible in the break room, which was decorated with employees’ hand-picked inspirational quotes and signups for Secret Santa and potlucks. The kitchen cabinets were labeled precisely enough to indicate one home for an ice cream scoop and another for the waffle maker, while meteorologist Jessica Neiles’ locker sported an assortment of colorful stickers.

More broadly, Langbauer said, the crew is committed to intensive bursts of demanding work, but also periods of recovery. They swap shifts and use other methods to help each other out.  

“There’s days — like we’re ramping up into this flooding — where everyone says, ‘You know what, I’m going to be here a lot, and that’s OK,’” he said in his office. “But they also know then that when this is through, and we have time to breathe, to take care of themselves so that they’re ready for next time. That’s a good skill that this office has shown.”

Kremer said she tries not to pore over weather forecasts off-hours, but it’s hard to avoid talking about the weather — everyone does it. Her wife had to resist the urge to out Kremer as a meteorologist during their honeymoon wine tour, she said, when a guide was opining about chaotic weather’s impact on agriculture. 

Thoughtful gestures make a difference, said Haynes, who’s worked at the Burlington office for nearly seven years.

“You feel very exhausted having run through those extreme events and gotten through on the other side,” he said. “And I think the thing that kind of sticks with me after those events is just hearing and seeing the thank yous and the appreciations, and when people kind of mentioned like, this forecast likely saved lives. … I think those are, to me, the moments where it’s like, OK, what I’ve done was a really big deal, and I’ve been a big help, and makes me feel proud to do the work that I do.”

Much of the time, it’s fun. Several of the meteorologists encouraged young people who are curious about the field to experiment with weather journals, read weather-related books and study lots of math — especially physics. Haynes and Kremer pointed to age-specific educational content, including topical videos on the SciJinks website, that is offered by NOAA and the weather service. Hastings noted that all generations can attend spotter talks, which her parents brought her to when she was young.

Most of the meteorologists interviewed had forecasted professionally in other regions, either for the weather service or other public or private entities. The Green Mountain State is an enjoyable place for the profession, they said, with varied seasons and a wide range of weather events. That helps to keep things more interesting than the pleasant but monotonous climate of, say, San Diego. 

Vermont also boasts some notable topography, Storm said, which can make forecasting here both a challenge and a delight. Its placements of squiggling rivers and tightly clustered mountains make it home to many “microclimates,” she said, which can each experience the same day’s weather differently.

“It’s not like a storm comes through and it rains across the whole area, right? The mountains are there and the lakes are there, and that shapes how much and where precipitation happens,” she said.

Maureen Hastings and Scott Whittier talk at the National Weather Service office at Leahy Burlington International Airport in South Burlington as heavy rain moves into the area on Wednesday, December 11. Photo by Glenn Russell/VTDigger

Snow declines, politics rise

In some ways, the pressures on the job are growing. There’s the looming politics of it all: Federal government shutdowns, like the one narrowly averted the Friday before Christmas, require the weather service’s meteorologists, who are considered essential staff, to work with no pay and less administrative support.

Though the weather service generally enjoys broad congressional support, its parent agency, NOAA, is among the agencies recommended for deep cuts in Project 2025, the ultra-conservative political plan associated with President-elect Donald Trump, a climate change denier. (There are no specific federal budget line items for individual forecast offices, Banacos said, but he calculated each American’s share of the National Weather Service’s most recent $1.3 billion appropriation at less than $4 for the year.)

There’s also the effects of climate change itself. The topic is generally outside of the weather service’s scope, except to the extent that the data it’s constantly collecting is analyzed by other scientists to show broader trends. 

Nevertheless, Vermont’s day-to-day weather — the Burlington office’s purview — is impacted by climate change, and the effects of global warming make for trickier daily forecasting. Vermont weather is trending warmer, wetter and more extreme, according to Whittier, Banacos and Langbauer, with the state more often vacillating between droughts and floods.

Storm, who has worked in Burlington for two years, said some of her veteran colleagues remember days when the winter predictions were mostly snow, but she’s been forecasting plenty of rain and ice. She pointed to the increasing unpredictability of Vermont’s shoulder seasons and the difficult nature of “marginal temperature events,” in which minor temperature fluctuations can affect whether precipitation falls as rain, snow or ice, with outsize effects on the forecast.

Marginal temperatures were historically more typical in the mid-Atlantic region, Storm said, but are presenting more frequently in the Northeast. They contributed to the complexity of predicting the unusual December floods that drenched the state in 2023 — and which were threatening a repeat on that mid-December morning.

A digital clock sits above operations manuals at the National Weather Service office at Leahy Burlington International Airport in South Burlington on Wednesday, December 11. Photo by Glenn Russell/VTDigger

Back at her workstation, Hastings had made the call: The current winter weather advisory would end at 10 a.m. as scheduled. After reviewing regional temperatures, precipitation data and ice accumulation measurements, she decided against an extension.

The five screens around her glowed with the rainbow-colored maps as clouds loomed outside, foreshadowing rain and the potential for danger. With Goff on the road to measure snow, Whittier coordinating with state safety officials and a half-dozen other colleagues buzzing around the office, Hastings jumped in to work on the next day’s forecast.