Section: Student News
Meteorology students compete in forecasting weather
Feb 21, 2007

Oh, the weather outside is frightful. Or least it has been for much of the winter. Just how frightful it will remain is anybody’s guess—and Metro State students’ forecasts.

Nearly two dozen Metro State meteorology students are working hard to understand the weather by competing against 40 schools and 1,500 academic and government forecasters nationwide in the WxChallenge weather forecasting competition.

Students forecast the weather four times a week over two-week periods in each of five cities: San Antonio, Texas; International Falls, Minn.; Tucson, Ariz.; Atlantic City, N.J.; and a fifth city to be determined.

All competitors make weather predictions for the same cities during the same two-week stretch by tracking weather patterns and trends and doing computer modeling.

“It’s a level playing field,” said Sam Ng, assistant professor of meteorology.

Competitors predict high and low temperature, precipitation to 1/100^th of an inch and wind speed in knots.

This semester marks Metro State’s debut in the competition that includes meteorological powerhouses such as Penn State and the University of Oklahoma.

Metro State students are competing against graduate and doctoral students, faculty and government forecasters. The students work in the Metro State weather lab in the Science Building designing computerized weather models based on data from the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR) in Boulder, Ng said.

Twenty-three students and three faculty members including Ng, Richard Wagner and Jon Van deGrift are competing.

“The students can brag if they beat a professor but so far only one has beaten me,” said Ng. “It’s stirring up a lot of excitement in the department. The freshmen who didn’t do it now say they wish they had.”

“I’ve seen freshmen beat graduate students and faculty,” Ng said.

Metro State’s 23 competitors are meteorology majors and minors and a few aviation majors, Ng said.

The top 64 forecasters will enter an NCAA tournament bracket to vie for the national championship.