Consulting meteorologists should have a separate fee schedule for non-expert witness testimony. These rates should be based upon: (a) your present salary (as opposed to going rates for expert witness testimony); (b) realistic assessments for the time it would take to accomplish a given task; (c) a base-line or minimum amount of money for any task.

Let's say you are asked to provide weather forecasts for a surfing group. The forecasts merely involve a generalized 3 PM wind forecast for today and tomorrow for Crissy Field. This "nowcast" and forecast needs to be posted to a phone answering machine each day by 9AM.

The production of the forecast is simple, since it is at most a 1 day forecast (involving skills that you will get in Metr 403 beyond simply looking at the Eta). However, there is a certain amount of "up" time you will need looking at the pattern, deciding on a forecast, and wording the forecast. That may actually only take about 1/2 hour each day. In addition, there will the phone call-in and recording. Our first estimate is 45 minutes per day. (Remember, as part of professional ethics, if you agree to this contract you MUST fullfill it. That means, no weekends or vacations...unless you sub-contract those periods of work out to someone else).

Divide your annual salary by 40 hrs X 52 wks = 2080 h. Disavow yourself of the $$$$$ you saw with the expert witness testimony. Dividing your annual salary into an hourly rate will result in less striking hourly rates. Mine, for example, would be $43.

Anyway, multiply this by 28 to estimate monthly charges (to get, in this case, $1211). Then you have to decide if either this is too much, or too little to charge given the current market, and the "worth your while" factor.

By the way, you can do this for any task, including developing a site climatology for a homeowner, or single weather forecasts for a wedding or something like that. My minimum is $100, incidentally.