With winter weather approaching, students have multiple resources for projecting the weather.
According to Rich Wirdzek, meteorologist for WHIO-TV, both local TV stations and the Farmer’s Almanac are valuable, but in different ways.
“The Farmer’s Almanac is based primarily on climate history, basically the type of scenarios to expect per season in a given region,” Wirdzek said in an e-mail. “I feel it does a good job, sometimes, indicating a shift in precipitation patterns and temperature patterns over intervals of several months (seasons).”
Wirdzek said that for a student, the Almanac is a good resource for a broader perspective on winter weather, including long-term seasonal predictions.
“Over the course of decades, local climate patterns tend to shift over several years, and have a habit of repeating themselves as well,” Wirdzek said.
This year the Almanac projects “more days of shivery conditions” and overall “a winter during which temperatures will average below normal for about three-quarters of the nation,” according to www.farmersalmanac.com.
The Almanac goes on to predict “near-normal” amounts of precipitation, including an ‘Alberta Clipper’ that “will bring snowier-than-normal conditions to parts of the Northern and Central Plains, and to the Ohio River and Great Lakes region.”
The Almanac isn’t as accurate for day-to-day weather as it is long-term, according to Wirdzek, because the Almanac cannot “accurately” predict smaller things like “where thunderstorms will form, where tornadoes will strike [or] who sees the most snow.”
“Our weather can be different over the course of just a few miles sometimes,” Wirdzek said. “One county sees rain and wind damage, while one county to the east sees nothing! Northern counties in the state see snow and ice, while southern counties see only rain!”
Compared to a TV station, radio station or newspaper, the Almanac doesn’t have the same capabilities, according to Wirdzek.
“The Almanac does not have the information to decipher small scale weather situations on a day to day or week to week basis. Geographically, it only is accurate in cases of broad geographic regions, and again, broad spreads of time (seasons), when speaking of average precipitation and temperature shifts.”
For a student to know if it will snow tomorrow, the best option is to go with a local TV station, according to Wirdzek.
“The best way for a student to stay on top of daily weather is to watch a local TV station’s weather forecast, or get web based weather info from a local TV station’s website. Staff meteorologists who live in the area that they are forecasting will have a better knowledge of small scale weather changes and have the tools to track weather changes on a moment’s notice.”