43 WEATHER Augmented Reality
xtreme weather is real. But new digital tools are turning that reality on its head with very unreal, but very powerful
visualisations for weather reporting. The Weather Channel has always tried to innovate with new visualisations, to help its audience connect with weather events. But in September 2018, a report showing the potential storm surge caused by Hurricane Florence went viral. The report itself sparked news coverage from a variety of sources with words like “stunning”, “terrifying” and “insane”. The US National Hurricane Center had predicted Florence could produce surges over 11 feet (about three metres) high. Most of us have to think for a moment to visualise exactly how high three metres is, then it takes further concentration to imagine what that flood of water might look like in your own neighbourhood. The Weather Channel helpfully offered up a 3D augmented reality visualisation, complete with the sound effects of roaring water and creaking vehicles, which brought home the threat of the storm surge and the damage it could cause – and all with the presenting meteorologist standing in the middle of it, in his own narrow disk of dry land. The video of the report on The Weather Channel’s YouTube page is about to top 2.5 million views at this writing – surely a world record for a weather report. RAISING THE MILLIBAR Like a rising storm surge, the bar for dramatic, high-quality weather journalism is going up and up. Increasingly sophisticated graphics tools are being employed, but the one that has revolutionised the field – and has made a splash throughout the broadcast industry – is Unreal Engine. Unreal Engine is a suite of flexible, open source tools, written in C++ for game design, created by Epic Games, (the company who brought you Fortnite) to enable everyone from fans to pros to create high quality 3D games. Epic THE WEATHER CHANNEL HELPFULLY OFFERED UP A 3DAUGMENTEDREALITY VISUALISATION
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