Smartphones, tablets, and computers offer a wealth of digital information about the world and have transformed the ways we live. Our experiences of the world are now so much more mediated by digital devices than ever before. This is especially the case for living with (and under) the influences of our weather and climate. Here, we explore the idea that an ongoing digitalization of weather and climate, vis-à-vis technology, and the evolving discourse about them may be minimizing or obscuring the actual phenomenological experiencing of weather and climate. We first discuss trends in the digital portrayal of weather and climate and then contrast these with embodied experiences of the weather which, together with “old-school” physical observation techniques, we refer to as an analogue experiencing of the weather. In the third section, we discuss the value of integrating both digitalized and analogue experiences of the weather. Finally, we introduce some ways to become more attuned to the weather of one’s place while locating these experiences on the larger landscape of data and digitalized meteorology.

We conducted this study to test for an interaction of media effects and individual differences that could affect hurricane evacuation decision-making. Participants responded in an online, Qualtrics-hosted survey to many demographic and individual difference questionnaires assessing decisions one would make in a hurricane evacuation. Participants were randomly assigned to one of two video conditions (reporter emotionality: high or low) and asked a number of questions about the field-reporting meteorologist they viewed. We predicted an interaction between intuitive thinking (which is faster and more emotional) and emotional reporting such that highly intuitive thinkers would be more likely to evacuate when presented with more emotional hurricane field reporting. This hypothesis was rejected. However, there was a main effect of intuition, whereby highly intuitive people expressed more fear for weather (but not hurricanes). Furthermore, there was a main effect of media condition: People exposed to highly emotional field reporting in general were more likely to evacuate. These results are discussed in light of meteorological communication standards and principles.

Meteorologists are faced with a multitude of stressors in the course of their weather prediction work. There is widespread anecdotal evidence to suggest that these factors are associated with various traumatic stress outcomes among forecasters. Thus, this paper takes an integrationist perspective in discussing and theorizing about emotional processing and the occurrence of job-related traumas in the meteorological workplace. We utilize process-experiential views on emotion for our discussion of emotional processing and merge Adlerian Individual Psychology principles with those of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy to provide insight into mental health coping strategies which might be helpful to meteorologists.