{"id":18199,"date":"2026-05-28T05:04:21","date_gmt":"2026-05-28T12:04:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/?p=18199"},"modified":"2026-05-31T07:19:35","modified_gmt":"2026-05-31T14:19:35","slug":"the-forecast-that-saved-the-world-and-the-movie-that-tells-the-story-the-new-york-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/?p=18199","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;The Forecast That Saved the World, and the Movie That Tells the Story&#8221;, The New York Times"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/planetearthfdn.org\/news\">Back to News<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p id=\"article-summary\">The new film \u201cPressure\u201d tells the story of the fateful D-Day weather forecast. Here\u2019s what it got right and wrong from the historical record.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/05\/07\/multimedia\/00wea-PressureReality-01-jhzl\/00wea-PressureReality-01-jhzl-articleLarge.jpg?quality=75&amp;auto=webp&amp;disable=upscale\" alt=\"A man with a mustache and military uniform is sitting alone. \"\/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">In the film \u201cPressure,\u201d Andrew Scott plays James Stagg, a Scottish meteorologist whose job was to help forecast the weather ahead of the D-Day invasion.&nbsp;Credit&#8230;Alex Bailey\/Focus Features<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>By&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/by\/nazaneen-ghaffar\">Nazaneen Ghaffar<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Nazaneen Ghaffar, a reporter on The Times\u2019s weather team,&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2025\/06\/05\/weather\/d-day-forecast-history-wwii.html\">wrote about the D-Day weather forecast last year<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>May 28, 2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cWell, for a start, he is shorter than my father, considerably,\u201d said Peter Stagg of the actor Andrew Scott, who portrays his father, Group Capt. James Stagg, in the new film \u201cPressure.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cHe was 6-foot-4,\u201d Mr. Stagg added. \u201cWhich, in those days, was very tall.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A whole 8 inches, or 20 centimeters, separates Scott from the elder Stagg. It\u2019s a small and faintly amusing discrepancy, and one of the few liberties taken in a film that is otherwise strikingly committed to historical detail. Because beyond the question of height, \u201cPressure\u201d is a careful retelling of one of the most pivotal weather forecasts in history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Set during the tense 72 hours leading up to D-Day, the film follows Stagg, the quietly burdened meteorologist tasked with advising Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower on when the weather conditions would allow the Allied invasion of Nazi-occupied France to proceed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The criteria for such weather conditions were extraordinarily precise. The invasion needed to take place during a low tide, in order to expose German defenses, and it needed to be just one day before or up to four days after a full moon. It also had to align with a Soviet summer offensive from the east, to maximize pressure on German forces.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>There were other strict requirements:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li>Before the landings, the weather needed to have been calm for 48 hours.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Parachutists and other air support needed less than 30 percent cloud cover below 8,000 feet, with a cloud base no lower than 2,500 feet and visibility over three miles.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>For the three days after, the wind needed to stay below a moderate breeze, to keep the landing craft from capsizing while crossing the English Channel.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Stagg was also responsible for producing a unified forecast based on input from three independent groups, two British and one American, who often clashed in both methodology and interpretation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In 1944, forecasting was an evolving science, and even Allied countries approached it differently. The American team, part of the newly formed U.S. Strategic Air Forces, employed analogue forecasting, comparing current conditions to historical weather patterns. The British teams, by contrast, relied on hand-drawn charts, observational data and newer understandings of upper-atmosphere patterns.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/05\/07\/multimedia\/00wea-PressureReality-02-jhzl\/00wea-PressureReality-02-jhzl-articleLarge.jpg?quality=75&amp;auto=webp&amp;disable=upscale\" alt=\"A man in a blue dress shirt and tie speaks on a telephone. Four people are seen in the background. \"\/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Weather forecasting was still in its early stages when the D-Day invasion was being planned, and the American and British scientists had different approaches to it.&nbsp;Credit&#8230;Alex Bailey\/Focus Features<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>I came to \u201cPressure\u201d being somewhat familiar with this story, having spent time last year reporting on&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2025\/06\/05\/weather\/d-day-forecast-history-wwii.html\">the real events behind Stagg and the integral D-Day forecast<\/a>. I watched the film with a particular focus on how it handled the tension between fact and drama.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Weather films based on real events often take liberties with the facts, and the science. \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2000\/06\/30\/movies\/film-review-instant-calamity-just-add-water.html\">The Perfect Storm<\/a>,\u201d for example, was based on the real 1991 storm that led to the loss of the Andrea Gail, a 72-foot fishing vessel whose six-man crew died at sea. With no survivors, no one knows what actually happened on the boat during its final hours, meaning much of the drama had to be imagined. Even the storm itself was portrayed as more intense than it had actually been.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Both \u201cTwister\u201d and its follow up film, \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2024\/07\/19\/weather\/twisters-tornado-storm-chasers-real.html\">Twisters<\/a>,\u201d were inspired by real storm chasers \u2014 an inherently dramatic job \u2014 but they simplified and exaggerated how tornadoes behave in reality. Forecasting and storm-chasing technology in both films is shown to be far more precise and advanced than it is in real life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But for the most part, \u201cPressure\u201d takes care to hew closely to the facts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The film\u2019s attention to detail is no accident. Dr. Catherine Ross, a library and archive manager at the Met Office, Britain\u2019s weather service, said the filmmakers had spent a day with her examining the archives, including original hand-drawn weather charts and Stagg\u2019s own diary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cThey really went to town,\u201d she said. \u201cThey even had somebody color matching the charts to make sure that when they were printed off, they were the right shade of green.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/05\/28\/arts\/28wea-PressureReality-bill\/28wea-PressureReality-bill-articleLarge.jpg?quality=75&amp;auto=webp&amp;disable=upscale\" alt=\"Bill Shieldods sitting at a desk on set.\"\/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Bill Shieldods, a senior Met Office forecaster, described a level of detail was further than what audiences would see.Credit&#8230;via Bill Shieldods<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Bill Shieldods, a senior Met Office forecaster who works with the military at R.A.F. Leeming, was brought onto the production because of his experience in hand plotting charts, and he even appeared briefly as an extra.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>He described the set as \u201cDisneyland for a Met forecaster,\u201d saying he felt as if he had stepped into a time machine. He began his career in the 1980s in a manual forecasting environment that, he recalled, was still remarkably similar to that of 1944, before computerization fully took hold in operational meteorology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Charts at the time, as depicted in the film, were painstakingly drawn by hand, sometimes taking hours to complete. Mr. Shieldods described a level of detail on set that had gone far beyond what most viewers would see.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cIn the forecast room were folders, they looked the part, really vintage,\u201d he said. \u201cI expected there would be nothing in them, but I opened one and there was documentation about the D-Day landings, the sort of weather criteria and stuff specific to that era.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/05\/07\/multimedia\/00wea-PressureReality-tqwp\/00wea-PressureReality-tqwp-articleLarge.jpg?quality=75&amp;auto=webp&amp;disable=upscale\" alt=\"A black-and-white photo of a man with a slight mustache and military uniform from the second world war. \"\/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">The real James Stagg was 6-foot-4, his son said.&nbsp;Credit&#8230;.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>However, like any dramatization, \u201cPressure\u201d<em>&nbsp;<\/em>inevitably shapes history to fit its narrative. One of the most notable compressions concerns the timeline of Stagg\u2019s involvement. In real life, his role in planning the D-Day forecast began months before the invasion, but the film put it just days before.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Appointed in early November 1943, Stagg and his team of forecasters from the United States Army Air Forces, the Met Office and the Royal Navy spent months running practice forecasts. These exercises were crucial in building Eisenhower\u2019s trust as well as demonstrating that a reliable and unified forecast was possible. Dr. Ross said that Stagg had also played a key role in determining the precise list of weather parameters required for a successful invasion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The film, however, suggests that Stagg first meets Eisenhower and the team of forecasters in early June.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In reality, as Stagg recounts in his book, \u201cForecast for Overlord,\u201d Eisenhower had already initiated weekly in-person meetings by mid-April, attended by an array of high rank officers that Stagg initially found daunting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The film also compresses elements of Stagg\u2019s personal life. In it, his wife gives birth to their second son immediately after D-Day. Peter Stagg said that while his mother had been pregnant at the time, his younger brother was born a few months later, in November.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/05\/07\/multimedia\/00wea-PressureReality-03-jhzl\/00wea-PressureReality-03-jhzl-articleLarge.jpg?quality=75&amp;auto=webp&amp;disable=upscale\" alt=\"Two men stand across from each other. One is wearing the uniform of a four-star general. The other is wearing a suit. \"\/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Stagg had to earn Eisenhower\u2019s trust, and in real life he had months, not days, to do it.&nbsp;Credit&#8230;Alex Bailey\/Focus Features<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Eisenhower once described Stagg as a \u201cdour but canny Scot,\u201d and his son Peter said his father had been \u201cvery polite.\u201d But, he added, \u201cif somebody deserved a rollicking, my father would give it to him.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And despite that small matter of an 8 inch height difference, Peter Stagg said, reflecting on what his father might have thought of the film, \u201cI would hope that he\u2019d feel honored and pleased.\u201d He said he was glad his father was \u201cnow getting the recognition he deserved to have had\u201d over 80 years ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>The story behind \u201cPressure.\u201d<\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2025\/06\/05\/weather\/d-day-forecast-history-wwii.html\"><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2025\/06\/05\/weather\/d-day-forecast-history-wwii.html\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2025\/05\/27\/multimedia\/00wea-versiontwoDdayweather-02-bmjk\/00wea-versiontwoDdayweather-02-bmjk-threeByTwoSmallAt2X.jpg\" alt=\"\"\/><\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2025\/06\/05\/weather\/d-day-forecast-history-wwii.html\">The Man Whose Weather Forecast Saved the World<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2025\/06\/05\/weather\/d-day-forecast-history-wwii.html\">Getting the troops to Normandy on D-Day was a tremendous logistical undertaking. And it almost didn\u2019t happen.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2025\/06\/05\/weather\/d-day-forecast-history-wwii.html\">June 5, 2025<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/by\/nazaneen-ghaffar\">Nazaneen Ghaffar<\/a>&nbsp;is a Times reporter on the Weather team.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>See more on:&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/topic\/met-office-united-kingdom\">Met Office (United Kingdom)<\/a>,&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/topic\/organization\/us-navy\">U.S. Navy<\/a>,&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/topic\/person\/dwight-david-eisenhower\">Dwight David Eisenhower<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Back to News The new film \u201cPressure\u201d tells the story of the fateful D-Day weather forecast. Here\u2019s what it got right and wrong from the historical record. By&nbsp;Nazaneen Ghaffar Nazaneen Ghaffar, a reporter on The Times\u2019s weather team,&nbsp;wrote about the D-Day weather forecast last year. May 28, 2026 \u201cWell, for a start, he is shorter [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1001004,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18199"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1001004"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18199"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18199\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18208,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18199\/revisions\/18208"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18199"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18199"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18199"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}