One of the Triad's favorite weather forecasters isn't on TV or the radio. In fact, he's exclusively online. And still in high school.
Nathan Harmon, 17, of Winston-Salem started the "Nathan's Weather Center" Facebook page in 2014. Since then, he's gained a loyal following (approaching 10,000 likes) and his interest in meteorology continues to deepen. He attends Atkins High School, has a part-time job, and still finds time to maintain his passion for weather forecasting.
"I organize my schedule where I can look at the models late at night and schedule a post for the early morning. I look at the models again during lunch and post again when I get off the bus," says Harmon.
In an interview with WFDD's Keri Brown, Harmon says this isn't just a passing phase. He plans to pursue a career in meteorology after college.
How did you become so interested in weather?
"Snow's always been my greatest interest ever since my first snow storm. As a kid, I would always go to church and pray for snow, hoping that we would see a snowstorm for my birthday, which was January 18. From then on, I was selected to participate in FOX 8 Meteorologist Van Denton's Weather Kids. He helped me a lot to hone my skills to read the models... It's a lot of math and algorithms and there's a lot of work that goes into analyzing each model."
Sometimes in forecasts people can get carried away and caught up in hype when there's talk of a winter weather storm. How do you handle situations like this and predictions?
"It's much more than stepping in front of a computer and saying it's showing the potential for a lot of snow. I refuse to buy into the hype until I actually see consistent agreement from other members and study the models."
People really rely on what you say. How do you deal with the pressures of being accurate and all that comes with this?
"It's very stressful compared to when I first started. I didn't have a lot of Facebook likes at first and I needed to learn more about the models. That's when I started getting help from local meteorologists to learn how to hone my skills and get better at it. You go to school and the first question you get is 'are we getting snow? I want to know if we are getting out of school later this week'. I say it could change, but I give my prediction based on what I've studied."
As for the precipitation that could hit the Piedmont this week, Nathan says he's following the weather models very closely. You can find his latest forecast at Nathan's Weather Center.