at 1:13 PM by Mallory Schnell

Meteorologists are the Secret Weapon for Holiday Shipping

As the holidays grow near, corporate meteorologists are working behind the scenes to keep the shipping of packages on time. Around this time every year, customers grow impatient when their order doesn’t make it to their house in the 3-5 business days the company promised; they couldn’t care less that bad weather was affecting the shipping center halfway around the world.

As expected delivery times become shorter and the amount of packages grows larger, the jobs of corporate meteorologists are as demanding as ever. UPS and FedEx are preparing for a record-breaking 900 million packages this month, so error is not an option. Shipping work for meteorologists is very demanding, as they must reroute jets, mobilize crews, and prepare pilots for any visibility hazards when necessary.

Drew Harrel from the Washington post wrote a recent article on the “secret army of meteorologists”. Here is an excerpt from that piece:

The largest shipping firms’ top meteorologists are a motley crew of Air Force veterans, experienced forecasters and part-time storm chasers, many of them weather nerds who can trace their love of sky-watching back to a seminal childhood blizzard, hurricane or act of God.

This winter could be their biggest test yet. The National Retail Federation expects that about 45 percent of Americans will do their holiday shopping online, and Forrester Research analysts predict that online sales will rise about 13 percent this season, to $89 billion.

Amid this tension, shipping meteorologists’ work can take on an air of near-military momentousness, including among the 15 expert weather-watchers at ­FedEx’s global command complex. On the chaotic travel day before Thanksgiving, meteorologists there flitted among four monitors’ worth of satellite, radar and weather-model data, prepping for questions about when, for instance, rain would change to snow at the Newark airport.

Meteorologists are imperative to the success of major shipping giants and large retailers, especially during the hectic holidays. So next time you receive that last-minute gift just in time for Christmas, be sure to thank the meteorologists who helped get it there.