6News Meteorologist Jennifer Schack goes over her forecast in front of the studio's green

We can all remember being asked, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” And most of us probably remember that fantasy job becoming more realistic as we grew from our childhood years to our teenage years.

My childhood dream was to be a TV meteorologist. It was a quick realization in my high school years that college would involve math, math and more math, with plenty of physics thrown in.

And panic moments didn’t stop there. After four years of learning concepts, theories and equations, in 2004 I landed a great job at 6News, and a bigger panic came over me – forecasting.

I learned all of the concepts in school, but plunging into my first career job, I quickly learned about all of those extra, practical, hands-on things that you don’t learn in the classroom, and forecasting proved to be a big part of that. I’d forecasted plenty at school, but in college the biggest penalty was a bad grade or a “lesson learned.” Now I had to do it on my own and tell it to strangers.

One of the most important concepts I’ve learned on the job is that every forecast’s starting point is the current time. The first thing I do when I forecast is to look at and understand what is going on right now. The current atmospheric data comes from weather balloons launched into the atmosphere several times a day. I also check current surface observations. It’s important to know initial forecasting conditions. In school, I learned about propagation of errors: If your data begins with an error, your experiment is guaranteed to be flawed by compounding that error. You don’t want that in a forecast.

Another realization I had upon beginning my career is that computers are basically my co-workers and best forecasting tool. I hadn’t considered that when choosing a profession.

I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not the most patient computer user, and I don’t boast about being fancy at using them, but because of them forecasting is easier and can be done further into the future. I use computers each day to not only make graphics for television but also as a tool in forecasting. Over the last several decades, more and more computer models have been designed that aid in forecasting. They forecast anywhere from 12 hours to 240 hours in the future. Computer models use the equations and mathematics that I learned in school along with data to create forecasts. As a meteorologist, it is my job then to blend my knowledge and the computer model data to make the most accurate forecast possible.

When creating a forecast, it’s usually not about the two or three hours of work that went into it that day. A forecast usually involves the three to five days that I’ve learned about the weather system from computer models and the nearly four years that I’ve studied weather systems in eastern Kansas.

Some of the greatest strides in forecasting come from learning from your mistakes. The ones that were the most difficult, or not 100 percent accurate, are the ones that I remember and think about when I forecast a similar scenario.

I know I’m a rarity with this, but I enjoy geometry. In school I liked finding measurements of angles, and I liked thinking in three dimensions. This comes in handy when it comes to weather and forecasting, because the atmosphere is three-dimensional. It’s easy to get caught up in what is happening at the base of the atmosphere. But as a meteorologist, it’s my job to know what’s going on from the surface to 5 miles up into the atmosphere where the jetstream resides. It’s also important to look 200 miles away at weather that may be important here in time.

Over the years, I’ve also learned that forecasting takes confidence. It can be tough to be the only person forecasting 60 degrees when others have mid-70s, or to offer an opinion and have someone say, “Well I heard on the radio …” or, “The Weather Channel said …” It can be intimidating at times.

I know I’ve chosen the right career. I enjoy the challenge of the forecast, although I’m a perfectionist in an imperfect science. I also enjoy being a part of so many people’s lives through my work in front of the camera.