> People have a strong tendency not to trust forecasters
It's possible a lot of this bias is just outdated, up until very recently most hurricane (cyclone in my case) warnings came with a disclaimer like "cyclones or notoriously unpredictable and can make sudden, unexpected course changes" and for the most part this was true even in the short term. I don't think I've seen a wildly incorrect forecast in my area in 20 years but my mother still believes in this inherent unpredictability.
The challenge is that, eventually, the forecast of one storm will be wildly off. This is inevitable. But that doesn't mean that the forecast was necessarily incorrect. I think that this is what it's crucial to explain to the public: the general meaning of uncertainty. We need to learn to deal with it.
It's possible a lot of this bias is just outdated, up until very recently most hurricane (cyclone in my case) warnings came with a disclaimer like "cyclones or notoriously unpredictable and can make sudden, unexpected course changes" and for the most part this was true even in the short term. I don't think I've seen a wildly incorrect forecast in my area in 20 years but my mother still believes in this inherent unpredictability.