Joel Gratz is one the few long range snow forecasters on Earth and he’s one of the best. Outside magazine just sat down with him and really put some time into prying out Joel’s secrets. The resulting article is eye opening and it taps into the roots of an ability we wish we all had: the ability to forecast snow’s arrival through time.
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“Gratz, a lifelong skier who lives in Boulder, loves nailing a forecast, and today he did just that, having predicted that Vail would get nearly a foot of new snow. To prove it to the tens of thousands of people who follow his powder forecasts—posted daily on his website, OpenSnow.com—he whips out his iPhone and snaps pictures of freshly covered glades that he’ll upload later. Gratz also has a ruler affixed to a ski pole; ten minutes earlier, he jammed it into the snowpack and photographed that, too. “A week ago I said today would be a very good day,” he says. “It turned out that it was. That’s pretty cool from a weather standpoint.”
Gratz is what weather buffs like me call a microscale forecaster, which means he focuses on a particular kind of weather event (in his case, snowfall) for an audience that is particularly interested (skiers and snowboarders). He got started five years ago, frustrated by his inability to find the tailored forecasts he craved. “I was livid whenever I missed a powder day,” he tells me. “Nobody could forecast them, so I started doing it myself.” – Michael Behar/Outside Magazine
Read the full Outside Magazine article by Micheal Behar here and be amazed:
Risky stuff to build a business on, but I guess I’ll always listen and be interested.
Our boy BA holds it down in Tahoe, kinda