Many Ohio University students’ mornings consist of waking up, brushing their teeth, checking the weather and throwing on clothes before heading to class.
If the weather they checked is wrong they can be sweating by the time they reach the top of Morton Hill or end up stuck waiting in Baker Center to avoid a rain storm.
“I think there’s always the pressure on forecasters,” Ryan Fogt, the director of the Scalia Laboratory for Atmospheric Analysis, said.
The Scalia Lab is a teaching, research and forecasting facility, Fogt, an associate professor of meteorology, said. The lab issues forecasts for the Athens area at least twice a day every day, including during summer break and on Christmas. The forecasts, which are entirely produced by students, are available on the lab’s webpage and through a phone hotline.
The students are able to make those forecasts because of the equipment and resources available in the lab. Forecasters use a university-owned weather tower on West State Street which collects data including wind speed, temperature and soil moisture, Fogt said. The $45,000 tower was installed in 2010.
“We are at least on par with other schools and organizations that are collecting data and observations,” Ian Bailey, the associate director of the lab, said. “So that’s really exciting.”
Though the Scalia Lab's predictions may be as good as the rest of the nation, the U.S. is not on par with the rest of the world in terms of accurate weather prediction.
The accuracy of weather forecast has generally improved, Fogt said, but models used in the U.S. are not as sophisticated as the models used in Europe.
Fogt said the European models collects more data more frequently, and the equipment collecting that data is located closer together, resulting in more accurate predictions.
In comparison, U.S. models — including the Global Forecast System used by the Scalia Lab in its predictions — collect data farther apart leaving gaps the system has to interpret, he added. Fogt attributed the better forecasting models in Europe to increased funding by the European Union.
As far as the Scalia Lab’s accuracy goes, Fogt said the student forecasters are still learning but improve as time goes on.
“We’re not quite as good as the National Weather Service, which has trained people for longer,” he added. “But we are getting a lot better, and students that are doing more and more this semester are a lot better.”
Some students working in the lab participate for credit in a forecasting class, but the lab also has three paid positions, Fogt said. Other students do so solely as volunteers.
“When you're taking a class, you may not be able to experience all the kind of fun weather,” Fogt said. “If you're in the fall, you might miss out on severe weather. If you’re in the spring, you might miss out on some frost events or other things that are happening in the fall.”
Dylan Stiner, a senior studying meteorology, said the Scalia Lab is a great place to learn and the equipment used is “pretty high-tech stuff.”
In addition to the weather tower, the forecasters also use data from a lightning detection unit on the roof of Clippinger Laboratories, the building•in which the Scalia Lab is located, Fogt said. The unit helps the lab detect if there is any severe weather close to Athens.
One piece of equipment the lab is missing, though, is a doppler radar, which monitors precipitation and storms.
“We really are looking into (buying a radar system),” Fogt said. “They’re really expensive. They’re multimillion-dollar things just to build, and to maintain is another big cost.”
The closest radar systems to Athens are in Wilmington and in Charleston, West Virginia, Fogt added. Because they are so far away, the data produced concerning Athens isn’t as accurate as it could be. For example, the radar may only pick up on the higher clouds in Athens where snow is falling, but once precipitation falls closer to the ground, it is in the form of rain.
"I think (the student forecasters) do have pressure," Fogt said. "I think it’s good for them to experience that because it’s the real world."
