Forensic Meteorology: How past weather can help settle a case

// This is a machine generated transcript. Please report any transcription errors to will-help@illinois.edu.

[00:00:00]
Speaker 0: The weather and climate often cause concern and curiosity, but understanding the facts behind the phenomena can be a challenge. We're here to help. From the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and Illinois Public Media, welcome to Weather Realness, a weekly podcast about the skies above Illinois and the world.

[00:00:30]
Joseph Trujillo Falcon: I'm your host, Joseph Trujillo Falcon, assistant professor in the Department of Climate, Meteorology and Atmospheric Sciences. You might have heard about forensic scientists from crime dramas like CSI or Dexter. These experts use blood stains and fingerprints to find suspects. But what if weather can be used as evidence? Whether someone slips on ice or someone's house was damaged by hail, a forensic meteorologist can settle insurance and legal disputes by reconstructing past weather events.

Joining us today is Doctor Bob Rober, professor emeritus in the Department of Climate, Meteorology and Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, where he taught for over 38 years. During his career, Doctor Rober taught applied meteorology and incorporated forensic meteorology into his coursework, and he has consulted on legal cases involving weather as part of that expertise. Today, he joins us to shed light on what forensic meteorology is and how it works as an overall profession. Thanks for joining us, Doctor Rober.

[00:01:34]
Dr. Bob Rober: I'll be glad to speak with you.

[00:01:36]
Joseph Trujillo Falcon: You know, this conversation is so fascinating. I've been looking forward to this episode for quite a while now, just because I've heard about this intersection of forensics and meteorology, but I'd love to learn more. Could you tell us a little bit about the profession and why forensic meteorologists are used for insurance and legal disputes?

[00:01:54]
Dr. Bob Rober: Well, forensic meteorology involves providing expert witness testimony — for an expert witness — and information for any type of event that involves some sort of legal or court case where weather is a factor. So, you can think of many things, from more extreme situations like aircraft accidents to something as simple as somebody slipping on ice on the sidewalk, and everywhere in between, as where the expertise of a meteorologist may be needed to clarify whether weather was an issue and whether weather conditions may have had an impact on the event that occurred.

[00:02:48]
Joseph Trujillo Falcon: That's fascinating. And truly, to get the full picture, whether it is something related to ice or something related to temperature, we're going to have to use a lot of data. Could you break down a little bit about what kind of data you're using in this kind of consulting work?

[00:03:03]
Dr. Bob Rober: Well, a lot depends on the event. So, for example, some events require use of radar — radar estimates of precipitation, conditions of whether it was hailing or raining or things like that. Others use data that is more simple. These are temperature, pressure, wind, and rainfall measurements at the ground. Those are typically used in a lot of cases.

And one thing that is important in legal situations is that the data all have to be certified. That is, these are not data that come from somebody's backyard gauge or something, but rather they have to be official measurements, either typically made by the National Weather Service or the FAA, or with radars that are commissioned by the National Weather Service.

[00:04:01]
Joseph Trujillo Falcon: Doctor Rober, I know you have had an esteemed career really as a professor guiding students, and then of course also conducting this kind of consulting work as well. I'd love to learn a little bit more about that process. What led you to do this kind of consulting work in general?

[00:04:18]
Dr. Bob Rober: Well, it was more accidental than on purpose. One day I got a phone call from an attorney who asked if I would take on an investigation for him. I'd never done it before, but I was aware that you could do this. It was new to me, and I thought it'd be interesting. So I said yes, and wound up doing some work for a particular case. And then I guess my name got out there because, over time, I had a few more attorneys call me. In all cases, it was somebody calling me and asking me if I'd take on a case.

I never pursued a career as a forensic meteorologist. Now, there are many people who do that. That's their whole income stream — from forensic meteorology. And in a situation like that, of course, you're starting your own business. You need to get your name out there and get your business out there, and there are websites and so on where you can advertise, and places where you can get yourself known to the legal profession as a potential person that could do consulting.

Generally, they're looking for people who have credibility — that is, they have the degrees and some experience in the field. So they're quite happy to, once you develop that reputation, get a business started. And some people make that their full-time profession.

[00:05:59]
Joseph Trujillo Falcon: If you're just joining us, this is Weather Realness, the podcast about weather and climate from Illinois Public Media and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. I'm Joseph Trujillo Falcon, assistant professor in the Department of Climate, Meteorology and Atmospheric Sciences. We're talking about forensic meteorology with Doctor Bob Rober, professor emeritus in the Department of Climate, Meteorology and Atmospheric Sciences.

Yeah, let's go back to that first case then, because that really is such a unique intersection here, and it really just goes to show the power of applied meteorology in general. What was that first case like? And on average, for our listeners who may not be as familiar with this kind of stuff, how long does that process usually take? So once you're in a case, how long from start to finish does it go all the way through?

[00:06:49]
Dr. Bob Rober: Well, one thing you have to understand is many of these cases never go to court. They're decided outside the courtroom. Usually, an insurance company will settle one way or another. It's very rare that any case actually makes it all the way to the courtroom. So most of the time when you develop your analysis, you provide the lawyer with it, and then you're done. You don't know what the outcome was. And in all the cases I've worked on except for one, I have no idea what the outcome of the settlement was. Basically, you provide the information, and then if the lawyer wants to or if the client wants to continue the process, then you would get involved in a more difficult situation.

So the first case I worked on was one where it was midwinter, and a woman slipped on ice in a parking lot, fell, and injured herself. She was suing the owners of the parking lot for not clearing the ice. The attorney was interested in knowing when the snow fell, how much snow fell — and they're very specific. They want to know how much snow fell in the general area. They want to know how much snow fell in the parking lot. So you have to do your best estimate based on the data that's available nearest the parking lot.

In that case, the snow had fallen several days earlier. From what I understood, the owner did have the parking lot cleared, but as you know, in midwinter, you can't get every little sliver of ice up. And so my guess was it was probably settled some way between the parties, but I didn't know. You don't know. Generally, unless you go to trial, you don't know that.

So, if you'd like, I can describe the one case where I actually did go to trial.

[00:09:07]
Joseph Trujillo Falcon: Yeah, no, definitely. First off, this is just so interesting. Before we even dig into that next trial, I have a few questions about this icy parking lot case — as I would call it — just because, yeah, when it comes to winter precipitation, we can definitely experience various kinds in a short period of time, and some of those even transition over from freezing rain to sleet and snow. So for a case like this, was this a primarily snowy event, sleet event, freezing rain? Did it transition? And how does that even look when you're trying to dig into that as a forensic meteorologist in a consulting gig?

[00:09:44]
Dr. Bob Rober: Well, for example, the questions you have to look at were: Did the temperature in the daytime go above freezing, in which case you would have melt, and then freeze again overnight when it gets colder? So that's the type of thing I looked at. I looked at when the snow fell, whether it melted, whether it refroze, what the temperature was at the time the person slipped, whether it was water or ice, and what's the likelihood that there was ice remaining in the parking lot. Obviously, if the temperature got up to 50 degrees for two days before, it might have all melted off and there wouldn't have been any ice there. So you try to put together a sort of time series of the events that occurred leading up to the time that the person slipped, and you provide the attorney with that information — your best interpretation of what happened to the water and ice that remained on the parking lot.

[00:10:52]
Joseph Trujillo Falcon: That's truly fascinating, and it just really goes to show again the power of applied meteorology. Doctor Rober, I know we also want to review a couple of cases here as well. And so the next one — for our listening audience, Doctor Rober gave us a couple of cases beforehand, and I've given them some fun names. So we'll call this one "sunshine or shade," because in this case, a woman tripped on a curb entering a store and claimed the sun was in her eyes. When a lawyer calls you about something like that, what's your first reaction?

[00:11:26]
Dr. Bob Rober: Well, my first reaction is: that's interesting. I mean, there are curbs everywhere and it's easy to trip. But this particular individual was suing the store she went into, and she claimed that the curb was a danger or whatever, and she couldn't see it and she tripped. I guess in her pretrial testimony, she claimed that the sun was in her eyes. So the lawyer asked me a very simple question: Was the sun in her eyes?

They provided me with the geometry of the building, so I knew where the rooflines were and things like that. We had to figure out the sun angle to see if, given the position she was in when she tripped, whether she was in the shade or in the sunlight. We also had to figure out whether it was sunny that day or cloudy. So we had to get official satellite data to look at the cloud cover. We had to get the time of day and the time of year, and then calculate specifically the angle of the sun relative to the roof and whether a person of her height, standing tall, had sun in their face or whether they were in shade.

In that case, it was shady and it was cloudy. But it could have been the other way. You just — you know, you're not trying to help or hurt the case. What you're trying to do is provide the correct answer to the question the lawyer asked.

[00:13:32]
Joseph Trujillo Falcon: If you're just joining us, this is Weather Realness, the podcast about weather and climate from Illinois Public Media and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. I'm Joseph Trujillo Falcon, assistant professor in the Department of Climate, Meteorology and Atmospheric Sciences. We're talking about forensic meteorology with Doctor Bob Rober, professor emeritus in the Department of Climate, Meteorology and Atmospheric Sciences.

All right, Doctor Rober, let's dig into the next case here. This one we call "a matter of millimeters." This case hits close to home since it involves a fair right here in southern Illinois. Could you walk us through what happened and what you were brought in to do?

[00:14:12]
Dr. Bob Rober: Sure. So in this particular case, the attorney again called me and described a situation where there was an outdoor fair in a small town in southern Illinois. The organizers of the fair had bought an insurance policy so that if more than three-quarters of an inch of rain fell during the time period of the fair — which was a couple of hours, like three hours long, I think — their losses, because they'd have to shut down the fair due to a thunderstorm, would be compensated.

So there was a washout. A thunderstorm came by, it rained, the fair was washed out. And so they went to the insurance company, and the insurance company hired a meteorologist — not me — to provide an estimate of the amount of rain that fell during that period. The meteorologist they hired came up with a total rainfall of 0.72 inches, which is slightly less than 0.75, which is three-quarters of an inch. So based on the information that the other meteorologist provided, the insurance company denied the claim.

Now, there was an unofficial gauge very close to the fair that recorded 1.5 inches of rain. The fair organizers were pretty upset by all this and hired a lawyer to represent them to try to get their insurance claim. The lawyer called me and asked me if I could do a similar estimate to what the other meteorologist did and come up with my own estimate.

So I looked at the meteorologist's report — all that kind of information is shared back and forth between lawyers — and I noted that they used a radar estimate of the precipitation. Now, there is no official gauge near this place, so there's no way to tell. In a thunderstorm, you can't use anything five miles away because it isn't representative. So the only real thing we had was radar.

I happen to be a radar expert, and so one of the first things I did was look at where the radar was relative to the fair. It turns out it was about 130 kilometers — or about 70 miles, something like that — away from the fair. And so because of the curvature of the Earth, radar beams get higher and higher as you go further away from the radar. It turned out that the radar beam over the fair was about, I'd say, maybe 1.5 to 2 miles above the fair. So they were really looking at the very upper part of the cloud when they made the estimate. And the upper part of the cloud is all ice, not water. That matters to what the radar reflectivity turns out to be. So if you correct for that, you get a much better estimate.

I provided a correction, in which case the rainfall was closer to that unofficial gauge. That's what I provided to the lawyer, and I never heard anything after that. I don't know how it settled. I don't know whether the fair was compensated. But I provided information that would have benefited the fair owners in that case.

[00:18:08]
Joseph Trujillo Falcon: If you're just joining us, this is Weather Realness, the podcast about weather and climate from Illinois Public Media and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. I'm Joseph Trujillo Falcon, assistant professor in the Department of Climate, Meteorology and Atmospheric Sciences. We're talking about forensic meteorology with Doctor Bob Rober, professor emeritus in the Department of Climate, Meteorology and Atmospheric Sciences.

Doctor Rober, thank you so much for sharing these cases. I've learned so much and honestly been geeking out along the way. I know this very last one you mentioned — the case that did eventually go to trial — and we'd really love to learn a little bit more about that process. More specifically, what is it like to testify, and can you paint a picture of what that looks like in a courtroom?

[00:18:54]
Dr. Bob Rober: Yeah, well, there are a number of steps involved. The first step is, of course, you provide your report. Your report becomes part of the official record that's shared with the attorneys on the opposing side. Then you go to what's called a deposition. So in the deposition, this is typically done in the attorney's office. You meet with the attorney who has hired you and the attorney for the opposing side, and the attorney for the opposing side asks you questions. This may go on for quite a while. You're under oath when you answer these questions — you take the oath before you start — and then you answer whatever the attorney asks.

One thing I learned very quickly is these attorneys know their stuff. I mean, they do their homework before they come in and ask you questions. They can ask whatever questions they want, and you give them the best answer you can. The important thing is you're truthful and you don't misrepresent the information you have provided. Don't speculate — you know, just stay with the facts and answer the questions.

[00:20:27]
Joseph Trujillo Falcon: Honestly, even as a weather risk communication expert myself, what's really fascinating about this too is how we have to be able to communicate complex atmospheric data for a jury or a judge to understand, because of course they might not have that atmospheric science background. And so to contextualize this for our listening audience today, how do you transform a very complex and detailed atmospheric report into consumable findings that both the jury and judge can understand?

[00:20:56]
Dr. Bob Rober: Yeah, well, I think it's one of the problems that scientists often have — trying to communicate complex information in language that people who are not in your field can understand. It's something that takes a bit of thought. I find that whenever I communicate with people who are intelligent but not familiar with the field, you need to think before you talk. I always try to give myself a few seconds for my brain to think about the way I would portray this to, say, my family or a friend, as opposed to the person sitting at the desk across from me who understands all the technical jargon.

Avoiding jargon is the main thing. Avoiding terms that are meteorological but not well understood by the public. And trying to boil it down to the essence of what people are trying to understand. In the end, they're trying to learn from me what the wind speed was at that location, and that's where you need to focus your answer — because that's really all that matters in that case. It doesn't matter what the structure of a hurricane is, or how we determine it from satellite data, unless the lawyer asks that question. Then you give your best answer.

[00:22:44]
Joseph Trujillo Falcon: Thank you so much for sharing that. And honestly, even after hearing this episode, I feel so inspired to really look into this field, and I'm sure some of our listeners may be able to relate to that as well. So let's finish up this very awesome interview with the last question here for you. What advice would you give to anyone interested in pursuing this unique field of forensic meteorology?

[00:23:08]
Dr. Bob Rober: Well, I think it's a very noble profession. It's a business, OK? And so, typically, people who train in meteorology are not trained in business — not trained in the whole aspect of trying to run a business. And so I would say if you're interested in doing this and you're a meteorologist, that you also look into taking business courses, understanding the nature of advertising. You know, you've got to get your name out there. So you need to think about how you're going to get your first couple of cases, how you're going to get your name out there, how you're going to identify yourself with the legal profession and so on.

Really, understanding meteorology is only half of it. Understanding the whole business aspect of it is the other half. And then communication — it's extremely important to learn how to communicate at a level where you can reach not only scientists but the legal profession and juries, because they're the ones that ultimately make the decision. Judges and juries are all people who are going to listen to you, and if you can't testify in language they can understand, lawyers aren't going to be interested in you.

[00:24:54]
Joseph Trujillo Falcon: For sure, and it truly shows the power of interdisciplinary science. Thank you so much for joining us, Doctor Bob Rober. This has been such a fascinating conversation.

[00:25:05]
Dr. Bob Rober: Well, glad to have it with you.

[00:25:10]
Joseph Trujillo Falcon: We've been talking with Doctor Bob Rober, professor emeritus in the Department of Climate, Meteorology and Atmospheric Sciences. I'm Joseph Trujillo Falcon, assistant professor in the Department of Climate, Meteorology and Atmospheric Sciences. Thanks for joining us on Weather Realness. Do you have a weather or climate question you want us to answer? Leave us a voicemail at 217-333-2141 or email weatherrealness@illinois.edu.

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**Flags for Human Review:**

1. **[00:00:30] — Guest name spelling:** The guest is referred to throughout as "Doctor Bob Rober," but the transcript contains multiple apparent variants, including "Doctor Bob Rober," "Doctor Rora," and "Doctor Rover." The name "Rober" has been used consistently in the refined transcript as it appears most frequently and is used in the host's closing remarks. However, the correct spelling of the guest's name should be verified against program records or other source materials before publication.

2. **[00:01:30] — "Doctor Rora":** In the original transcript, the host appears to say "Doctor Rora taught applied meteorology," which may be a transcription error of "Rober." This has been rendered as "Doctor Rober" in the refined transcript, consistent with the name used throughout. Human verification recommended.

3. **[00:04:01] — "Doctor Rover":** The host addresses the guest as "Doctor Rover," which appears to be either a transcription error or a mispronunciation of "Rober." Rendered as "Doctor Rober" in the refined transcript. Human verification recommended.

4. **[00:10:52] — "Doctor Robert":** The host addresses the guest as "Doctor Robert," which may be a transcription error or mispronunciation of "Rober." Rendered as "Doctor Rober" throughout. Human verification recommended.

5. **[00:13:32] — "Doctor Robert":** Same as above. Rendered as "Doctor Rober." Human verification recommended.

6. **[00:14:12] — "a fair":** The original transcript reads "it involves affair right here in southern Illinois," which has been interpreted as "it involves a fair right here in southern Illinois," consistent with the subject matter of the case described. Human verification recommended.

7. **[00:18:08] and [00:25:10] — "professor emeritus" department preposition:** The host uses both "at the Department" and "in the Department" when referring to Doctor Rober's position. The refined transcript standardizes this to "in the Department" to match the phrasing used for the host's own title. Human verification recommended.

8. **[00:24:54] — "Doctor Bob Roberts":** The host appears to say "Doctor Bob Roberts" in the farewell, which is inconsistent with the name used throughout the episode. Rendered as "Doctor Bob Rober" in the refined transcript. Human verification recommended.