Few people have jobs where what they do and think can affect everyone around them, changing their schedules and altering travel plans. Darren Van Cleave is one of them. 

As Meteorologist in Charge with the National Weather Service in Salt Lake City, the South Jordan resident is among a team of scientists and specialists issuing forecasts for residents of the Beehive State and surrounding areas. The task is daunting due to the complex terrain in Utah.

He grew up in rural eastern Oregon near Pendleton, and as a young man was always curious about weather.

“I specifically wanted to know how much snow we might get at our house,” he said. “I watched a lot of TV weather forecasts, as well as reading our newspaper closely each day. It was how I learned about the National Weather Service and how taxpayer dollars were used to prepare and protect us from inclement weather. When it comes to public safety related to weather, the NWS is the authority.”

He came to the University of Utah to earn an undergraduate degree, then finished graduate school at Colorado State University. His first job was in Rapid City, South Dakota, where he met his future wife Rachael who worked in broadcast journalism. They subsequently moved to Sacramento, then to Missoula, Montana, where he served as science and education officer for the NWS office. Four years ago, they came back to Salt Lake City, a place still near and dear to him from his collegiate days.

“I’m a huge Utes fan,” Van Cleave said. “We would often travel back to Salt Lake City to watch Utah football games, probably at least once every year. And the other thing that’s unique is we have four different sites for the weather service within about a 10-mile radius—local and regional teams that help oversee all offices in the West.”

In Van Cleave’s site near Salt Lake International Airport, there’s a weather forecast office, the river forecast center for anything that flows into the Great Salt Lake or contributory to the Colorado River, and flight forecasts. A lot of information geared for very different audiences.

Utah’s terrain provides Van Cleave and his coworkers with unique challenges.

“The intersection of weather with mountains is one of the problems I really enjoy facing,” he said. “From my home in Daybreak, for example, I look up at Lone Peak, or towards the Oquirrhs, and can see it snowing there but not here in my yard. Complex terrain, specifically the mountains, makes forecasting very tough. A big storm here could mean 2 inches of snow in one part of the valley and 24 inches somewhere else.”

That can be caused by what’s called a “rain shadow,” where a southwest flow into the valley can be affected by the Oquirrhs and cause great variances in who gets the precipitation and who doesn’t. 

“The Great Basin to our west can modify weather heavily,” he said. “It can shred a storm. We don’t have the most variable weather in the country, but our terrain makes predictability more difficult.”

The NWS system breaks every part of the state into pixels equal to about 2-½ kilometers squared—about a mile and quarter. For example, it takes 15 of those pixels to cover all of the area of Daybreak. 

“The public can click on the map located at weather.gov/slc and see the forecast for that specific pixel,” he said. “It operates 24/7 all year and gives you exact forecasts for a trail you want to hike or a lake you want to fish. It can give you the probability of rain or snow on that site, wind and temperature conditions, and it’s completely climatized for the elevation. There’s a lot more science to weather forecasting than most people realize.”

One thing that Van Cleave believes is that climate change is real.

“We’ve altered the climate and created urban heat islands, which makes temperatures warmer in the summers,” he said. “That is just a statistical fact.”

A team of scientists and specialists work at the NWS to create forecasts for Utah and surrounding areas.