For over two decades, Chief Meteorologist Jarod Floyd has become an institution for weather forecasting in the Arklamiss — first beamed into our homes primarily through television and earning the trust of our community for facts-based weather forecasting and reporting with zero sensationalism. Now, Floyd is operating his own online forecasting business at DigitalWeatherDesk.com and on social media, which is entirely free to access and subscribe. The links are included at the end of this article.
The Lincoln Parish Journal’s Kyle Roberts was able to sit down with him for a Zoom Q&A. The following transcript has been edited for clarity.
And, please, continue to pray for our friends and neighbors in areas to the east and south of Lincoln Parish as they recover from this storm system.
Kyle Roberts: “Thanks so much for hopping on. What has this week been like for you from a forecast perspective and given your new venture now that you’re doing this on your own?”
Chief Meteorologist Jarod Floyd: “The last week has been a lot of learning — what works, what doesn’t work, what the consumers, what the viewers need, what they don’t need, um, and being able to supply, what they need. But from the forecast standpoint, I kind of have to give the kudos to the computer model data and the forecast data ahead of time. It never really wavered from last Sunday when it pointed at this for the next Sunday, so about a week out.
“It was already saying this was gonna be a problem. We were able to sound the alarm bells pretty early that this was going to be an issue. The last week has been a lot for a new business and a new platform. It has been a learning experience, but I also think, for lack of a better term, we’ve been discovered by the community. And that means the information gets to more people, and that’s the positive side of it all.”
KR: “With this being the first major storm system that’s come through and now going outside of the TV studio and into your own business now, what has that transition been like for you, from the time that you decided to start this, to where you are and where you expect to be in the future?”
JF: “It’s been about a year and a half — before we even launched — of kicking tires, asking questions and trying to figure out how this would work, how it would look and all that stuff. There’s been a lot of anxiety, a lot of, “I don’t know what I don’t know” kind of things, and so it’s just been a learning process and asking a lot of questions to a lot of important folks, and I always give the credit to Nick Mikulas, who’s with Cenla Weather down in Alexandria. He was mentor of mine to kind of walk me through how this process would look. And then another gentleman, Ben Luna, who’s with Tennessee Valley Weather. The digital weather platform in these rural areas continues to expand and for our smaller communities in our relatively rural community. This is a business model that catches on it, and it makes sense for us.
“But back to the original question. It’s been a change to move from broadcast to digital, but also, it has been less stressful in the last week to be able to still be around your family during the middle of the winter storm. We had roof crises going on here where we had ice accumulating. We had ice dam issues and if I were to deal with that from 20 miles away (in the studio), that’s a lot more stressful for me. I was able to help my family while still informing the Arklamiss. Again, the stress levels in terms of being a father and being a husband and being away are just so much lower, and that makes me a more efficient person to get the information out, which is also helped as well.”
KR: “This ice event was something that’s every 5 to 10 years, maybe even less frequent. Now we move into something that’s a little more standard with our annual severe weather season coming up in the spring. We’ll still be expecting tornado watches, tornado warnings. How different, if at all, are you expecting your sever weather forecast to be with your new platform as opposed to being in the studio?”
“Yeah, and that’s going to be the cool thing about it. We’ve had a couple of severe weather events already where we’ve done almost essentially test runs — almost like a dress rehearsal, if you will — for a more active season ahead. It will be a different for folks that are expecting a television-style presentation. They’re going to be disappointed. But for those that are looking for a little bit more casual, not necessarily informal, but just a little bit more long-form extended, detailed coverage for their severe weather, that’s what they’re going to be expecting to see.
“The ice storm was a marathon, severe weather is more of a sprint. And so instead of seeing updates every two or three or four hours, we’re just going to provide live coverage until it’s gone. Case in point: we had a tornado warning back in Bienville Parish a couple of weeks ago, around 11 or midnight. We did the tornado warning coverage, but then as that storm remained severe, but not tornadic, it started to approach Ruston, Monroe, West Monroe — all these more highly populated areas along the interstate. And I knew a lot of folks would wake up at 1:00 in the morning to the thunder and the wind and the rain and they wanted to know what’s going on. Well, normally, severe thunderstorm warnings you wouldn’t provide severe weather cover or live continuous coverage on broadcast television. We just kept our live stream going. That way that if folks woke up and they found the live stream, then we told them, “It’s just some some thunder and some lightning — you can go back to bed,” and they went on their merry way.
“We’re trying to to build a community. And that’s the most important thing, and that’s the word I keep coming back to: Somewhere that folks who are whether anxious, and they don’t know where to turn — they know where they can go, and not only get information from somebody that’s responsible, reliable, and local, but they can also be around other folks that can help provide them information or give them a heads up of what’s going on in their area.
“And that way, for the weather anxious community that we have, and there’s a lot of folks like that in Lincoln Parish and Ruston when you go back to the tornadoes back in 2019, it gives us all a place that we can be, so that we can all be informed and be on the same page together.”
KR: “I‘m glad you mentioned 2019 because that was going to be my my next question for you. One of the things that living in Ruston my entire life, we always felt like we were impervious to tornadoes — it was always a lot of close calls and not any actual real_touchdown. And of course, this was an EF3 tornado came through. And then you tack on 13, 14 months later, Hurricane Laura comes through the area, as well, which also is a very foreign. Are we beginning to see more severe weather shifting into the Arklamiss than maybe 10 or 15 years ago? And if so, what do you think are the reasons behind that?”
JR: “I really, genuinely think that our perception is our reality, right? So if we perceive that things have gotten worse over the last 10 to 15 years, then we can, in theory, probably paint a scenario that’s accurate in that regard. But I would also echo that really in the last 24 months, our severe weather seasons have been rather tame. I go back to the last 24 months and I haven’t had to work a lot of tornado watches and a lot of overnight or a lot of wall-to-wall severe weather coverages. So I do think it ebbs and flows. That’s my honest opinion in these types of things. In 2016, we had the floods. And then we hit 2019 to 2021, which was very active. We had the Ruston tornadoes. We had Hurricanes Laura and Delta. We had the Easter Sunday tornadoes in Ouachita Parish in 2020. We had the winter storm in 2021. That was in February of that year that impacted a lot of areas. So that was a really active stretch.
“Our job is to do the weather with no political bias. If it hasn’t happened in the last 14 days and it’s not going to happen in the next 14 days, we probably aren’t going to talk about it very much because it’s about weather and what’s impacting us here currently. But I would also argue for those that are discussing the severity of index of weather conditions in our area: I think we’re just more aware of them. In the early to mid-90s, when I was growing up and you were out at your local ballpark, if there was a tornado watch, you didn’t know that unless you checked the news or the television before you left. Now you’re getting bombarded from your social media platforms from your phone itself with the wireless emergency alerts.
“It’s the same with everybody talks about the severity of hurricanes and how many the frequency of hurricanes. I know a lot of hurricanes that probably happened in the 1700’s and 1800’s that — unless a boat went right through it — you wouldn’t know about it. And so, it’s, again, awareness and the ability to to observe these things more frequently as they happen in our planet — that’s what I lean on more typically.”
KR: “What is Jared doing when he’s not doing the weather?”
JF: Well, right now? Maintaining a business. Because that’s one thing that I knew nothing about when I started this and everybody keeps asking me, I have PlayStation 5 and I haven’t picked up my controller in eight months. And it’s a great thing because I really genuinely enjoy what I’m doing. This is a blessing to the community and it’s weird for me to say that because it is my own business, but it’s something that we need. I think that our community deserves good things, and we shouldn’t have to wait for larger markets. We shouldn’t have to wait for the Dallas market or the Shreveport market or whatever to get things before we get them. We deserve good things. And this weather platform is a good thing for this community.
“But on the off time that I do have free time, we do golf a lot. We are a golfing family. I’ve got to dust the swing off, and hopefully, we can thaw out eventually sometime soon and get out there and swing the sticks.”
KR: “What are all the ways people can be following you and how can they subscribe and sign up?”
“Yep, easiest way to follow us is on our social media platforms. If you don’t know where to find us on those, Just go to DigitalWeatherDesk.com. That has literally everything — the website is not just a “weather-nerd” website — It is the home base for this platform. If you need to know how to download the app, go to digitalweatherdesk.com because the links are there to download. If you need to find us on your favorite social media platform, go to DigitalWeatherDesk.com because that’s where all that information is. You can get your forecast, you can get your interactive radar, you can learn more about our business partners who support this whole venture.
“If you want to subscribe to WeatherCall.com, which this is a new thing for $15 a year — I think the folks in Ruston would really like this is a $15 a year add-on service, but it will call email, text you, or a combination of all three when a warning is headed for your area. So if you prefer to just have a literal phone call, when a tornado warning is issued for your area that’ll wake you up in the middle of the night, all that stuff.”
KR: We really appreciate all you do for our area and for your time.
