Gleick, who wrote the “Fast Forward” column on technology for the magazine in the ’90s, explained that computer models for forecasting weather didn’t always translate to useful information to individual consumers — a problem that still exists today. “As information is handed down the line from supercomputer to user, it has plenty of opportunities to be abridged or garbled.” Gleick wrote that weather forecasters relied “heavily on a kind of informed guesswork” and that television stations struggled to communicate this information in their broadcasts to viewers. “What may have begun . . . as a vivid picture of a pivoting cold front on a summer afternoon may have ended up as the week’s fourth consecutive forecast of ‘scattered showers.’”
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