Movie review Pressure: The Weather Forecast that Changed D-Day

Operation Overlord required key requisites to be pulled off for it to work — it needed a low tide, moonlight, acceptable winds, limited cloud cover, and manageable seas, meaning that the weather forecast needed to be precise. To accomplish that feat, the meteorologists garnered data from weather stations, observers, ships and merchant vessels, radiosondes, pilot balloons, and aircraft from all over the globe.

Modeling the Weather

Temperature, humidity, pressure, wind speeds, and directions at different altitudes were used to predict one piece of the weather puzzle. Surface weather maps, drawn by hand from the garnered data, were another, along with Norwegian cyclone models that provided warm fronts, cold fronts, and occlusions.

Instead of computers, the meteorologists used pencils, graph paper, pressure charts, analog calculations, and experience to model weather. Stagg and Krick combined their talents and produced an accurate weather forecast that would push the invasion day to June 6, 1944, saving countless lives in the process.

Today, weather forecasts are produced by satellites, Doppler radar, supercomputers, and numerical prediction models capable of analyzing billions of atmospheric datasets every day. That said, the success of Operation Overlord was determined decades before those technical marvels even existed, when meteorologists pieced together observations from ships, balloons, aircraft, and weather stations to predict a brief break in the storm.

Pressure serves as a testament to one of history’s most important military decisions that depended not only on strategy, but on the science and technology of weather forecasting.

I didn’t know a movie about meteorologists would be so good. So educatiuonal to boot.

I give it a 5.00 out of 5.00. An absolute must watch.