Key Responsibilities and Required Skills for Weather Director

🎯 Role Definition

The Weather Director is the senior meteorology leader responsible for the strategy, accuracy, and presentation of all weather content across broadcast, digital and social platforms. This role combines advanced meteorological expertise, editorial judgment, staff leadership, technical system management, and crisis operations during severe-weather events. The Weather Director partners with news leadership to shape weather coverage, maintain public trust during warnings, and continuously improve forecasting processes and weather product delivery using modern tools and model workflows (GFS, ECMWF, HRRR, ensemble systems, MOS, nowcasting). Ideal candidates hold a degree in meteorology or atmospheric science and have demonstrated experience with broadcast systems, radar/satellite interpretation, and team management.

📈 Career Progression

Typical Career Path

Entry Point From:

Senior Broadcast Meteorologist with demonstrated on-air and technical leadership.
Operations Meteorologist at a television station, regional weather service, or private forecasting firm.
Meteorology Team Lead or Weather Content Producer for digital news platforms.

Advancement To:

Director of Weather & Climate Operations (multi-market leadership, multiple stations or platforms).
Chief Meteorologist / Head of Weather Content for a media group or national brand.
Executive roles combining weather operations with digital product, such as VP of Weather & Data Products.

Lateral Moves:

Lead Atmospheric Scientist for private forecasting or energy/insurance sectors.
Weather Product Manager for a meteorological technology or data company.

Core Responsibilities

Primary Functions

Lead and manage all day-to-day weather operations for broadcast and digital platforms, ensuring forecast accuracy, message consistency, and editorial alignment with newsroom standards.
Serve as the on-call lead for severe weather, coordinating with the National Weather Service (NWS), emergency management, and internal teams to escalate warnings, produce special live coverage, and implement station emergency protocols.
Supervise, mentor, hire and schedule meteorologists, weather producers, and digital weather staff; conduct performance reviews, training plans, and career development coaching to build a high-performing weather team.
Design and implement forecasting workflows and model-interpretation standards (e.g., GFS, ECMWF, HRRR, NAM, ensemble guidance) to improve forecast confidence, probabilistic products, and nowcasting during high-impact events.
Oversee radar and remote-sensing operations, including configuration and interpretation of Doppler radar, dual-polarization products, satellite imagery, lightning data, and specialized datasets to support hyperlocal forecasting.
Lead the technical integration and maintenance of weather graphics, map engines, and visualization tools (e.g., WSI, Baron, GR2Analyst, Vizrt, Chyron), ensuring on-air graphics are accurate, performant and aligned with brand style guides.
Establish standard operating procedures for severe-weather messaging, tornado/hurricane protocols, flooding and winter-weather responses, including verification procedures and post-event debriefs to improve future performance.
Coordinate cross-functional coverage plans with producers, assignment editors, digital teams, and social media leads to ensure consistent, platform-tailored weather content and real-time updates.
Create and approve all on-air weather scripts, rundowns, and forecast messaging, balancing meteorological precision with clear, audience-appropriate language and editorial sensibility.
Manage the weather content calendar and special programming for storms, seasonal outlooks, climate stories and sponsored content while ensuring editorial independence and transparency.
Own the station’s or brand’s weather data pipeline, including ingestion, quality control, archiving, and deployment of model data, observations, and post-processed products used by forecasters.
Drive continuous improvement by implementing forecasting verification metrics, tracking model performance, and publishing internal scorecards to inform model selection and forecast bias corrections.
Lead community outreach and public safety initiatives related to weather—school talks, public-facing preparedness campaigns, and partnerships with local emergency management—to improve community resilience.
Direct the production and publishing of weather-related digital products including explainer videos, story packages, interactive maps, live streams, and push-alert strategies aimed at maximizing reach and engagement.
Oversee budget and capital requests for weather systems, hardware (radar, servers), software licenses, and data subscriptions; evaluate vendors and manage vendor relationships for forecasting and graphics tools.
Ensure compliance with all applicable broadcast standards, public alerting guidelines, and legal requirements for emergency communications; maintain relationships with NWS liaisons and regional weather partners.
Coordinate multi-station or network weather strategies when applicable, sharing resources, templates and best practices to ensure consistent coverage across markets.
Implement and maintain disaster recovery and redundancy plans for weather data, graphics, and live broadcasting technologies to minimize downtime during critical events.
Facilitate technical training for on-air talent and newsroom staff on understanding watches, warnings, lead time, and how to communicate risk effectively to diverse audiences.
Lead post-storm analysis and after-action reviews, producing lessons-learned reports that inform updates to procedures, forecast tools and staff training priorities.
Develop and maintain public-facing meteorological content that emphasizes clarity, trust, and science communication best practices; use SEO-driven headlines and metadata strategies to increase discoverability of weather content.
Collaborate with product and engineering teams to define and deliver weather data products (APIs, widgets, notification rules) for apps, web, OTT and voice platforms, ensuring data reliability and latency requirements are met.
Drive innovation by evaluating new data sources (satellite, model ensembles, machine-learning nowcasts), advocating for pilot projects and integrating new techniques into operational forecasting.
Act as the principal spokesperson for weather on-camera as needed, demonstrating polished live presentation skills and the ability to explain complex meteorological phenomena in accessible terms.

Secondary Functions

Support ad-hoc data requests and exploratory data analysis.
Contribute to the organization's data strategy and roadmap.
Collaborate with business units to translate data needs into engineering requirements.
Participate in sprint planning and agile ceremonies within the data engineering team.
Maintain documentation for forecast procedures, editorial policies, and technical system configurations.
Provide mentorship to interns, student meteorologists and junior staff through formal training sessions and shadowing opportunities.
Monitor social media sentiment and misinformation; correct inaccuracies and amplify verified weather safety guidance.
Assist marketing and sponsorship teams to develop weather-related branded segments while preserving editorial integrity.

Required Skills & Competencies

Hard Skills (Technical)

Professional meteorology expertise: solid understanding of synoptic, mesoscale and microscale processes, frontal analysis, thermodynamics, and convective initiation.
Forecast modeling proficiency: practical experience interpreting and combining guidance from GFS, ECMWF, HRRR, NAM, SREF/ensemble systems, MOS and model output statistics for public forecasts.
Radar and remote sensing: expert-level interpretation of Doppler radar (reflectivity, velocity), dual-pol products, satellite (visible/IR/multi-spectral) and lightning datasets.
Broadcast weather systems: hands-on experience with WSI, Baron, Weather Central, GR2Analyst, NOWrad, Vizrt or Chyron weather engines and on-air graphics workflows.
Alerting & public safety systems: familiarity with NWS watch/warning protocols, CAP/ETL pipelines, EAS, WEA mechanisms and emergency notification best practices.
Data tooling & analysis: working knowledge of Python or R for data analysis, ensemble post-processing, verification, automation and simple scripting to streamline forecast workflows.
GIS & visualization: proficiency with ArcGIS/QGIS or equivalent, and experience building interactive maps for web and broadcast presentations.
Content management & newsroom tools: experience with newsroom systems such as ENPS, iNews, CMS platforms, and familiarity with scheduling and rundowns.
Digital product integration: experience designing or managing weather APIs, push alert rules, widgets, and live-streaming workflows for web and mobile.
Systems administration basics: understanding of server deployment, data ingestion, and redundancy planning for mission-critical meteorological data.
Data verification & QA: experience establishing verification metrics, scoreboard dashboards, and bias corrections to improve forecast performance.

Soft Skills

Leadership and people management: proven ability to hire, mentor, motivate and develop meteorology and production teams.
Crisis decision-making: calm, decisive operational leadership under pressure during severe-weather events with clear communication to stakeholders.
Excellent verbal and written communication: translate technical weather information into concise, audience-appropriate messaging for broadcast, web and social platforms.
Editorial judgment: strong news sense to prioritize weather stories, balance sensationalism vs. public safety, and maintain ethical standards in sponsored content.
Collaboration and cross-functional influence: work effectively with producers, reporters, product teams, engineers and external partners.
Teaching and coaching: patient trainer who can upskill on-air talent and junior meteorologists in meteorological interpretation and presentation.
Project management: organize and lead system upgrades, pilot projects and recurring workflows with timelines, budgets and vendor coordination.
Attention to detail: meticulous in verifying forecast products, graphics and alerting triggers to avoid misinformation.
Audience empathy: understand local vulnerabilities and tailor communication to different communities, including non-English speakers and underserved audiences.
Adaptability and continuous learning: eagerness to integrate new data sources, tools and science into operational forecasting.

Education & Experience

Educational Background

Minimum Education:

Bachelor’s degree in Meteorology, Atmospheric Science, or closely related physical science.

Preferred Education:

Master’s degree in Atmospheric Science, Meteorology, or Climate Science.
AMS Certified Broadcast Meteorologist (CBM) seal, National Weather Association (NWA) certification or comparable professional credentials.

Relevant Fields of Study:

Meteorology / Atmospheric Science
Climate Science / Environmental Science
Geoscience / Physical Science
Data Science or Computer Science (for candidates focusing on model pipelines and automation)

Experience Requirements

Typical Experience Range: 5–12 years of professional meteorology experience with at least 3–5 years in supervisory or lead forecasting roles.

Preferred:

7+ years of broadcast or operational forecasting experience, including demonstrated leadership in severe-weather operations.
Proven track record managing weather teams, on-air talent, and broadcasting/graphics systems, plus experience coordinating with the NWS and local emergency management.
Experience integrating digital-first weather strategies (apps, push alerts, interactive maps) and demonstrated use of verification metrics to improve forecasting accuracy.