Meteorologists aren't just on television; in fact, meteorologists can provide crucial testimony in court cases.

When a tree falls due to lightning or wind and causes property damage, an insurance adjuster typically doesn’t challenge the insured’s claim. It was an act of nature, after all. 

If nobody got hurt, then the process is super smooth and, usually, the insured walks away happily with a check to cover damage based on their coverages.

However, when inclement weather seriously injures someone and that injury was a result of a property manager’s negligence, then the claim becomes more complex and sometimes lawsuits are filed.

I’ve been performing weather-related accident investigations since my first hail and lightning damage case in 2007. In that case, the insurance adjuster simply needed to know which part of the storm caused the property damage first: The hail or the lightning, in order to properly compensate the claim (the weather phenomena each had different limits).

But not all cases are that cut and dry. Since then, investigative reports have taken my work around the world, as far away as Singapore and Greece and as high as the tallest residential skyscraper in the world.

Meteorological investigations are a niche area of meteorology (where atmospheric and environmental science is already a niche career). Furthermore, it’s an area of meteorology that requires a consulting certification, a process that takes approximately two years providing client and other consultant meteorologist references. Most of my consulting peers have a Ph.D. 

While not all cases require an in-person site survey, sometimes the locations are remarkable. One of my most interesting cases was actually about preventing accidents and injuries in the first place.

In 2016, I worked on a case that took me to the tops of the highest-priced residential real estate in the city: The new skyscrapers that line billionaires’ row on West 57th Street, which were still under construction at the time. 

The NYC Department of Buildings set strict limits on wind for construction crane operation. It was my job to examine the wind instrumentation that the crews installed, and then download, chart and analyze the wind data for use as evidence in my report.

As you would expect, the winds got stronger as the buildings got taller. At some point during construction, the wind at the top of the building would always be above the threshold for cranes, halting progress.

The attorneys used critical wind speed evidence that I modeled to help prove their case.

In the USA, we have National Weather Service (NWS) offices that, among other tasks, examine tornado damage to classify a tornado’s intensity from EF0 to EF5 in the Enhanced Fujita scale. Using the NEXRAD national radar network, NWS can issue tornado warnings in real time to protect lives and property.

The NWS saves this radar data in a national database for later access to reanalyze a particular storm. To my surprise, European countries have great radar coverage, compared to the USA, except in the mountainous terrain (radar works best along line of sight).

Greece is one country, for example, where weather radar coverage is limited. Towering rocky islands scattered around the vast Mediterreanean Sea isn’t an ideal setup for seeing low-angle tornadoes.

That lack of data was a problem when I was asked to independently confirm a tornado that flipped sailboats over at a marina and crushed steel warehouses. My good friend in Greece is a forecaster for the Hellenic National Meteorological Service (Greece's official governmental meteorological agency), and he laughed when I asked where I could find the radar data.

He replied, “what radar? We don’t have a radar here. That’s why we called you!”

The attorney from Athens needed a report to submit in court that proved a tornado had actually touched down. I put on my investigator hat on and poured through the dozens of damage images that she sent me.

The NWS uses a degree of damage (DoD) system to rate the intensity of tornadoes in the USA. Similarly, using the photo evidence and noting the materials used to construct the damaged buildings, a consultant meteorologist can certify his or her claims of a tornado (I rated it an EF-2 with winds up to 135 mph).

Preventing injury relating to weather is also something that I wrote about regarding the New York City Marathon, a race where I have been the Chief Meteorologist annually since 2009.

Most commonly, my phone rings when established safety protocols regarding severe weather are ignored and people get hurt as a result. An attorney can’t proceed after filing a suit until the firm submits an expert witness testimony from me to the court.

If the firm tries to avoid the additional cost and omit an expert weather report, or they just printed the day’s weather from weather.gov, the judges admonish the attorneys. Those motion denial statements are a delight to read!

It saddens me, though, when people are permanently disabled due to their work putting them in the path of severe weather without proper precautions, such as in electrical storms, snow storms and ice storms.

As always, my goal is to remain objective and establish the details using science that explain what happened with the weather. I enjoy getting super nerdy and explaining the physics of snow ratios and rates with clients. I think they appreciate the passion.

Overall, the most interesting aspect of all my cases is that I’ve seen signals of climate change in my own data, even without specifically looking for it. For certain cases, I need to collect longer-term ranges of data.

In the case of the Greek tornado, I found that severe weather is becoming more common in Europe, decade-over-decade. For Singapore, I concluded that outdoor athletic events in tropical climates will need cooling strategies to prevent overheating.

In the ongoing snow and ice litigation, six-inch-per-hour snowfall rates with thundersnow are becoming more common, something that was so rare just two decades ago. These are all examples of how a warming climate holds more moisture, and more atmospheric energy means bigger and badder storms.

Over time, that also means that the risk for accidents goes up, and more lawsuits will follow.