Jackson Road resident Richard Foot, a former Dundalk High teacher and creator of the Foot’s Forecast weather blog, measures the depth of the snow in his back yard after the two recent storms.

Dundalk man leads team of students

by Bill Gates

Put aside for a moment, if you can, that little snowy 1-2 punch that nature battered us with last week.
    Think back to Saturday, Jan. 30, and the snowstorm that seemingly blew in out of nowhere and left behind 4 to 6 inches of snow. (Quaint, isn’t it, how that amount used to be a big deal in these parts?)
    It was called the storm no one saw coming. Except for the student weather experts of Foot’s Forecast.
    Yorkway resident Ryan Krimm, a sophomore at Sparrows Point High School, predicted on Jan. 28 that Dundalk would receive seven inches of snow two days later.
    The actual amount was 5.7 inches. Still, not bad considering what was written in The Baltimore Sun the next day: “Forecasts didn’t see this coming.”
    A lot of science went into Krimm’s prediction: storm reports, data, radar, a polar vortex in southern Canada that was moving away, and more.  But the bottom line was “The storm was trending much further north” than expected, Krimm said.
    (If you’re interested in the research that went into the prediction, visit footsforecast.org and follow the link for “older posts” until you get to that week.)
    As Richard Foot posted on Foot’s Forecast on Jan. 31: “By 11 p.m. [Jan. 29] it was plain to see that millions of people and hundreds of forecasters alike were in for a big surprise. Mother Nature had played her cards, but did so late at night when few were paying attention.”
    Foot’s Forecast, for those who may not remember the March 2005 story in The Eagle, is the weather blog created and adminstered by Jackson Road resident Foot, a former earth science teacher at Dundalk High who now teaches at the Crossroads Center in Middle River.
    Foot started the blog in 2004 in response to the impact of Tropical Storm Isabel on Dundalk-Edgemere.
    He felt people were unprepared for the danger of the storm because they weren’t warned by local media. So Foot started his blog to fill that void.
    Foot’s Forecast has grown in “size” and influence over the past five years. It’s no longer a one-man operation: a team of weather fanatics such as lead forecaster Krimm develop the site’s predictions along with students in Foot’s ninth-grade physical science class at Crossroads.
    “We average 50-60,000 hits per day,” Foot said last week. “We’ve had over 1 million hits the past 10 days, from 100,000 unique individuals.
    “Someone from every state in the union is reading our site, and someone from three-quarters of the countries in the world have visited the site.”
    This winter has been great for the blog’s reputation. The team at Foot’s Forecast has nailed every storm this season, including close predictions on final snowfall totals.
    The forecast for the Dec. 19 blizzard “is what put us on the map,” Foot said, as well as earning them a front-page story in The Sun.
    Foot’s Forecast was calling for over 20 inches of snow from the December storm while the National Weather Service was talking about 5 to 10 inches.
    Since then, The Sun has featured snow total predictions from Foot’s Forecast alongside those from Accuweather and the National Weather Service.
     Back on Oct. 30, Foot’s Forecast had posted a long-range prediction that the first significant snowfall (4 or more inches) would hit between Nov. 15 and Dec. 5. It snowed on Dec. 5.
    Two days before the start of the Feb. 5-6 storm, Foot's physical science class predicted Baltimore-Washington International  Thurgood Marshall Airport would get 25.6 inches of snow.
    The actual amount recorded at BWI was 24.8 inches.
    “That’s 96.8 percent accuracy, made 48 hours in advance by a ninth-grade class,” Foot said. “That is pretty darn good. The National Hurricane Center will tell you that, 48 hours out, a storm track can be off by 200 miles.”
    As the Dec. 19 storm approached, Foot’s Forecast predicted 24.7 inches at BWI. The actual amount was 21.5; the National Weather Service had finally called for 10 to 20 inches.
    Yes, the NWS upper end was closer to the actual amount, but it gave itself a pretty wide range whereas Foot’s students went with an exact amount.
    For the Feb. 9-10 storm, Krimm predicted two days in advance that Parkton would receive 19 inches; it got 18.9. He called for Pimlico and Dundalk to each get 21.1 inches; Dundalk got 19 and Pimlico 21.5.
    Krimm also predicted the storm would leave 18.3 inches in Reading, Pa., and 17.5 inches in Allentown, Pa. Reading got 20, Allentown 17.8.
    “Kids using hard science and real data are beating the pros at their own game,” Foot said.
    Krimm, a SPECIES magnet student at Sparrows Point, is a self-professed weather fanatic who has been studying the weather since he was 5 years old.
    “Weather is important. It impacts your life,” Krimm said. “Also, the people on television aren’t too accurate. They would say 20 inches of snow, and it wouldn’t happen.”
    So Krimm took to watching the weather every day and studying the aspects of weather. He started writing his own weather blogs when he was 11 years old.
    Krimm is the most recent addition to the Foot’s Forecast team, joining the blog as lead forecaster after the Dec. 19 storm.
    “I’ve been reading his blog since 2004,” Krimm said. “Foot has had a good influence on me. Ever since I joined his site, I’ve hit every storm.”
    Krimm’s old blogs focused on “now-casting” – basically sticking one's head out the window and posting observations on what the weather was doing at the moment. He did some forecasting, usually just a few days in advance.
    Obviously, with the title of “lead forecaster,” Krimm has moved beyond now-casting.
    On the Web site, Krimm, Foot and the other forecasters (Foot’s Crossroads students and six others who cover areas such as western Pennsylvania, central Pennsylvania and northeast Ohio) meticuously list the climate factors behind their predictions. They don't just throw out unsupported numbers.
    Afterward, they analyze how their predictions stack up against what actually happened.
    “There's a lot of pressure to do the best forecast possible,” Krimm said. “We do a verification to see how good our forecasts were. When we’re right, we get more visitors.”
    Why has this winter been so, well, snowy? Well, remember what the fall was like? How often you had to grab an umbrella? If you’re a high school athlete, recall how many times you had to play or practice in the rain?
    “People like to say, if all that rain were snow, we’d have a blizzard,” Foot said. “Well, it happened.”
    The basic rule of thumb is, at 32 degrees, one inch of rain equals 10 inches of snow.
    “When we were getting all that rain back in the fall, I was telling people, ‘The atmosphere is primed and ready to go. All we need is for the climate to get colder, and we are going to be clobbered,’” Foot said. “The moisture patterns were already there, waiting to go.”
    The Baltimore area, however, has been seeing liquid equivalent ratios of one inch of rain becoming 20 inches of snow. That’s how you come to have over 80 inches of snow, total, so far.
    Foot and his forecasters think the area will top 100 inches, easily, before the end of winter.
    None of which bothers Krimm, Foot and their partners.
    “I’m pretty much a snow die-hard. I’m definitely not sick of it,” Krimm said. “Three 20-plus-inch storms is unheard of. This is probably the only time we’ll see something like this in our lives, so we might as well make the most of it.”
    Foot has several improvements planned for the site to make it more user-friendly. This spring, it will add a focus on the Baltimore ecosystem: the needs of the watershed and restoring the Chesapeake Bay.
    “What’s really awesome about all of this is the site started in Dundalk,” said Foot, who moved to Dundalk from Pennsylvania in 1999. “Where are people going to get the real scoop on the weather? Dundalk.”