Broadcast Meteorologist Interview Guide

OMB Control # 0648-XXXX
Expiration Date XX/XX/20XX

HURRICANE IDA BROADCAST MET INTERVIEW PROTOCOL (60 min)
DEMOGRAPHICS & JOB: To elicit Broadcast Meteorologist background, job duties, staff, and
work during a Hurricane
We’d like to begin the interview by talking about your general experience as a Broadcast
Meteorologist and understanding the duties of your team/staff during Hurricane Ida. (15 min)
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In general, what’s your role in your office? What are your job duties?
How long have you been at this station?
What is your professional training and education related to this position?
Could you briefly describe the team you work with?
a. Prompt: Are there full-time meteorologists in your office/station? Do they all
report on weather? Are they certified by the AMS (Amer. Meteorological Society)
and/or NWA (Nat. Weather Association)?
b. Prompt 2: Is your office/station affiliated to another station (i.e., cable news
station)?
5. How many hurricanes have you covered before?
a. Prompt: If the experience expands more than a decade, ask in the last 5-10 years.
6. How does your work change during the coverage of a hurricane? For example, what was
your role during Hurricane Ida? (e.g., capture days/hours worked, tasks, responsibilities,
etc.)
a. Prompt, if needed: could you talk about additional tasks or responsibilities you
had during Hurricane Ida?
b. Prompt: if another hurricane is mentioned from 2020, ask about it, too, including
Covid
HAZARDS: To elicit which hazards and impacts were most important to BMs and their staffs
We’d now like to talk to you about Hurricane Ida. For these questions, we’d like to understand
better the different hazards that occurred with the hurricane. (10 min)
7. Can you explain us how hurricanes typically impact your market?
8. What were the impacts of Hurricane Ida in your market?
9. Could you tell me about your station’s main hazard concerns for the audience before and
during hurricane Ida? (Have them walk us through an example of these issues.)
a. Prompt, if needed: Why were these the main concerns?
10. If not addressed, What were the wind and/or water hazards that you were worried most
about during Hurricane Ida?
a. Prompt: flooding, surge, tornadoes, synoptic winds, etc.
11. If not addressed, what did you do in Ida when there was a threat to flash flooding/other
flooding?
12. Do you remember doing something different during Ida, when delivering information
about tornadoes and strong winds? What about flash flooding/other flooding?

a. Prompt: What did you do in Ida when there was a threat to tornadoes or strong
winds?
13. What did you all do to address/prepare people for these concerns?
Next, we’d like to understand more about needs others might have said they had for
information about wind and water hazards before and during the hurricane.
14. What kinds of questions did you get from the public before and during the storm? What
were they asking about/saying?
15. How did they communicate with you (e.g., social media, phone)?
a. Prompt: Do you recall any concerns about co-occurring hazards? If so, what did
you tell them?
b. Prompt: If not mentioned: Do you recall from who these concerns came
specifically? (Organized communities, ethnic groups, etc.) If so, what did you tell
them?
If not addressed in the previous question, ask about TORFF hazards. We want to talk about
dual hazards, or those that occurred at the same time and in the same place, and how that
might have been challenging.
16. Is there a different way you approach your audience when informing about dual threats
(e.g. wind/water) during hurricanes? For example, in Hurricane Ida, do you remember
any specific ways you approached tornadoes versus flooding?
a. If there were some, how were decisions made about coverage and
communicating the warnings /overlapping risks for each of the different threats?
Prompt: Could you walk me through an example of how the decisions were
made?
b. Prompt: What worked well or didn’t in communicating dual threats?
c. Are there any types of formal forecast products that you reference or use the
most for these situations (i.e., wind category, impacts, etc.)?
Prompt: Do these vary based upon different lead times? Or if it’s earlier or later
in the storm path?
VULNERABILITY: To elicit who BMs think is most likely and most significantly affected by the
hurricane and Covid. (10 min)
We’d like to understand which groups of people are most likely and most significantly affected by a
hurricane in your market.

17. Who do you most worry about being impacted by hurricanes in your market area?
a. Prompt: Which areas or groups of people?
b. Prompt: Whose lives may be in danger the most or may not recover as easily?
18. What worries you most about them?
a. Prompt: Their ability to shelter, evacuate, their understanding of the hazards, etc.

19. What areas or infrastructures are most frequently or severely impacted by hurricanes?
a. Prompt: By wind or water threats (e.g., tornadoes/storm surge)?
b. Prompt: How do you know which people and infrastructures are most affected?
20. How have your concerns changed with Covid?
21. How did these groups communicate their needs to you prior to and during Ida?
22. When delivering information about hurricanes, do you adapt any specific
information/message to the groups of people that could be at most risk?
23. Where did people primarily go to evacuate or shelter from Ida? Was this different from
before Covid?
a. Prompt: Were there any new sheltering/evacuation information you shared
related to Covid-19 and public safety during hurricanes?
COVID: To learn the different ways Covid might have impacted how BMs planned,
communicated, and changed policies for sheltering / evacuation / messaging (10 min)
In this section, we’d like to know how Covid might have changed communication practices for different
challenges such as sheltering and evacuation.

24. Was there a time when you and/or your team had to work from home during this
pandemic? If yes, how did that change your capacity to deal with Hurricane threats?
25. How did the pandemic change official policies and practices in your office related to
hurricanes initially? Has that changed since then?
a. Prompt: What [human/infrastructure] resources were allocated from hurricane
management to Covid?
26. How did Covid change the advice or information you shared?
27. If not mentioned: Who are you most worried about with Covid in your market?
a. Prompt: Who is most at risk from Covid?
b. What other challenges did you face with Covid this hurricane season (or last
year)?
28. What concerns did you hear most from the public about Covid and hurricanes?
a. Prompt, if needed: which groups of people expressed these concerns (e.g.,
ethnic groups)
29. How did the pandemic change official policies and practices in your office related to
hurricane planning and response?
a. If yes, how did that change your capacity to communicate Hurricane threats?
b. Prompt: Was there a moment you and/or your team had to work from home
during this pandemic?
30. Are there instances when Covid took precedence over meteorological hazards? If so, in
what ways?

THINGS THAT WORKED / DIDN’T WORK WELL: To capture what successes & limitations
broadcasters experienced when an event included overlapping threats. Includes things like
staffing issues, office culture, uncertainty, expertise, technology (e.g., computer models) (5
min)
31. If you were faced with another hurricane like Ida again, is there anything you think you
would do differently to help your office and your public deal with or prepare?
32. Any specific product (e.g., information, tool, model data) you wish you had to
communicate overlapping hazards, including Covid, during Ida?
33. Anything else you think we should know but hasn’t discussed?
a. Prompt: Is there any current technological, organizational, or information
innovation that you think will work to deal with co-occurring hazards?

If time:

RISK ASSESSMENT: To understand what information helps them attend to and assess weather
hazards; what information was requested by populations in their markets
Now, we’d like to understand the timeframes when information is most helpful to you in
assessing weather hazards. (10 min)
34. Focusing on the 36-48 hours leading up to a hurricane, what information do you use
most frequently to monitor and/or assess these hazards? What information is most
important to you 24 hours out? 12 hours? Landfall? During?
a. Prompt: Are there thresholds for making decisions about different threats?
35. What scientific or technical information is essential to you in assessing hazards?
Public Burden Statement
A Federal agency may not conduct or sponsor, and a person is not required to respond to, nor shall a person be subject to
a penalty for failure to comply with an information collection subject to the requirements of the Paperwork Reduction Act
of 1995 unless the information collection has a currently valid OMB Control Number. The approved OMB Control Number
for this information collection is 0648-XXXX. Without this approval, we could not conduct this information collection.
Public reporting for this information collection is estimated to be approximately one hour per response, including the
time for reviewing instructions, searching existing data sources, gathering and maintaining the data needed, and
completing and reviewing the information collection. All responses to this information collection are voluntary. Send
comments regarding this burden estimate or any other aspect of this information collection, including suggestions for
reducing this burden to the Nicole Kurkowski, R2O Team Lead, DOC/NOAA/NWS/OSTI, 1325 East West Highway, Silver
Spring, MD 20910, 301-427-9104, [email protected]