Weathering the storms of progress
Nearly 50 years in meteorology has made Jym Ganahl more accurate than any cricket alive
By Mark J. Lucas |
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Chief Meteorologist Jym Ganahl has been a weatherman at WCMH-TV Channel 4 in Columbus since 1979, and has been in the business of calling the weather for more than 44 years. His affinity for snow coincides with the affinity that many children (such as myself, at one point) have for getting a day off from school because of unfavorable weather conditions. However, the weatherman's job is not as simple as it seems. One doesn't simply open a window and check for rain, and with the tools at the modern meteorologist's disposal, the accuracy should be near-perfect.
"I actually would [consider it an exact science]," Ganahl said. "Everyone else doesn't seem to think so, but there are many things that I look at every single day that help me determine what's going to happen in weather, especially this time of the year. Between May and November, you shouldn't miss it."
And what exactly does a weatherman have at his disposal? Well, in the newsroom at WCMH, Ganahl studies a wall of computer screens that display various charts and patterns from the National Weather Service, as well as feeds from the NBC4 Doppler Radar in West Jefferson. WCMH also has access to a geostatic (stays above us) satellite 23,000 miles above our fair city.
Not bad. Before the invention of all that equipment, calling the weather was a little bit less complex.
"They guessed," said Ganahl. "Actually, they'd look to see what was going on, to the weather in the west and just transferred that over to the next day. For example, 'What's it doing in St. Louis? Oh, that'll be here tomorrow.' That was kind of what we did back then. Pretty boring, if you ask me. We missed [the forecast] a lot more before there were satellites and before there was radar, because we couldn't see things, just like you couldn't see the hurricanes out on the ocean, and we trapped the fleets sometimes. [Fleet Admiral William] Halsey's fleet was trapped in the Pacific Ocean in hurricanes, twice, but now you can see things a lot better than you could before, and that's what makes it so much easier to do."
Even with modern technology, predicting the weather can still be tricky. In winter, for example, the change in ground temperature can shift the weather so dramatically that it is very difficult to accurately read meteorological conditions more than three days out. Forecasts in early spring can also be a mystery.
"When an error does pop up, it's going to be in the month of March, and it's going to be revolving around fog," said Ganahl. "If the fog doesn't burn off or lift, then your temperature will be 15 to 20 degrees wrong. March is the month that will have the most wrong forecasts of the year."
Missing by 15 to 20 degrees is no small error if it means the difference between rain and snow.
"When I was doing the weather in Iowa one day, it was supposed to rain, and it was supposed to be 40 degrees. It seemed like a safe bet. It was raining and 40, but it started to drop and we got 18 inches of snow. Eighteen inches of snow when you're predicting 40 and rain is dropping the ball pretty bad, but I love snow, so I wasn't unhappy about it."
Chief Meteorologist Jym Ganahl
Photo: Christopher Atwood
Ganahl isn't unhappy about any aspect of his job as a weatherman. He said it seems like more of a hobby than a job, that he is never bored, and he always enjoys coming to work. When the rest of us complain about driving in the snow during the winter months, he gets a little extra kick in his step, because "that's when it gets fun."
Ask the man about how he actually predicts the weather, and you get a very enthusiastic speech. Hard to follow. For me, anyway.
"The most important thing that I have at my disposal is thermodynamics," Ganahl said. "I look at the potential energy, and I get a number for potential energy," he continued, pointing to a number of computer screens. "When that number is over 2,000, then I kind of look to that area for storms."
Then next portion of the explanation became increasingly technical. There was much talk of potential energy and wind topography, but what it all boiled down to is that Ganahl has been studying weather since he was in middle school, and he has learned quite a bit. He is a student of many techniques that fall outside the realm of highly technical meteorology, such as using crickets to predict temperature changes. He also studies the way that the sun affects the weather, which revealed some very interesting data.
"When there are sunspots, it's like the furnace is turned on," says Ganahl. "The Earth warms up. When there are no sunspots, it's like its on 'standby,' and the earth cools down. Seventy-six percent of the days this year we've had no sunspots, 77 percent last year, and that's why the earth has cooled a degree, and we even have charts with sunspot cycles. 1994 was our coldest January, so we can call up the sunspot activity on January 20th, and it was really low. In the late seventies when it was cold, there were no sunspots, so the activity on the sun correlates directly with to what happens temperature-wise on the earth, and it's largely ignored, and yet we have charts on this for 200 years. They don't even look at that [for global warming and cooling], but they should."
However he divines the weather, he does so pretty accurately, but there are limits. Ganahl says a weatherman in Ohio can only predict the weather about a week out, and that hasn't changed much since he began. Despite the myths about the unpredictability of Ohio's weather, Ganahl claims that it isn't all that difficult to foresee.
"[In Ohio] you can see things coming at you from the west, northwest, and southwest, and we're pretty flat. We don't have to worry about mountain ranges or anything to distort things, so Ohio gives us an advantage of two days to see things coming out of the mountains in the West. It would be harder out in Iowa or Nebraska, South Dakota. Things tend to die down in Ohio after sunset every day, this time of the year."
Originally Published: August 1, 2009
