Tom Ross

From Staff Reports

A relatively mild winter was predicted for the Asheville area by retired meteorologist Tom Ross during his Dec. 6 lecture at Asheville-Buncombe Technical Community College’s Ferguson Auditorium.

“December 2011 looks quite mild, after Wednesday (Dec. 7). I don’t think we’ll get any major snow ‘til after Christmas,” Ross said. (Asheville just got a dusting of snow that night.)

“The remainder of the winter will play a tug of war between warm and normal” and “to wet, alternating with dry and cold.”

However, he also predicted  “above-average” snowfall for the Asheville area this winter, at 15-plus inches. For downtown Asheville, he said the average winter snowful is 13.5 inches.

Ultimately, Ross said with a grin, “When you come right down to it, only God knows for sure” about the weather.

His hour-long talk, “The Long-Range Winter Forecast for Western North Carolina,” was the fourth in A-B Tech’s Institute for Climate Education lecture series spanning 2011-12. About 40 people attended.

Ross was introduced by meteorologist Pamela McCown, who noted that he would be addressing the question of: “What is going to happen this winter?” She also pointed out that the “meteorological winter” runs from Dec. 1 through the last day of February.

After five relatively mild winters, Asheville and Western North Carolina had experienced two “gnarly winters” in a row, said McCown, who is director of communications and outreach for Education Research Services Inc., and vice president of the board of Colburn Earth Science Museum located on Pack Square in downtown Asheville.

Ross, who lives in Fairview, began by noting that he has “been in weather for about 35 years.” He recently retired from the National Climatic Data Center. Prior to that, he worked for AccuWeather, a weather media company that provides for-profit weather forecasting services worldwide.

“Meteorologists have thick skins, so it’s OK if you throw tomatoes,” he told the crowd. “A lot of people call us ‘knuckleheads.’ Yeah, we take the butt of the jokes in the media.”

He added, “I look at it (meteorology) as an art and a science. After I got out of Penn State, I worked for AccuWeather for 10 years.”

In contemplating developments during his career, Ross said, “We’ve come a long way in weather and climate science.”

Predicting the weather in the Asheville area is particularly challenging, he noted, because the elevation ranges from 2,000 feet in the valleys to 4,000 feet atop the peaks of Madison County. Ross said it would not be unusual for the temperature to be 37 degrees in downtown Asheville — and a much warmer 47 degrees at the airport.

Options “for getting the weather” include the National Weather Service, AccuWeather and Ray’s Weather, “up at Appalachian State” in Boone.

“I really recommend Ray,” Ross said. “He does a really good job on winter weather.”

In speaking of a major influence on weather, Ross said, “There’s so much water on earth,” noting that it compromises 75 percent of the planet’s surface.

He then defined La Niña and El Niño as “drivers of the currents in the atmosphere,” with the former bringing “cooler than normal” weather, and the latter, “warmer than normal” temperatures.

In noting that meteorologists “always hedge their bets,” he said, “We’re in a La Niña pattern right now,” which is a “very important” fact for farmers and others in agriculture to know. He also said, “Look for the La Niña effect through March.”

He predicted there would be some snow the next night — Dec. 7 — “a dusting to an inch, depending on where you live.”

“Forecasting is like baking a cake, OK?” Ross said. “We don’t even know of some of the ingredients in it ... So there are a lot of things that go into the soup” for predictions.

“One of the phrases we’ve got in weather forecasting is: ‘Canada didn’t close the picket fences,’” referring to cold weather arriving in the area.

Prior to the settlers entering what became north Buncombe County, Weaverville was known as “Dry Ridge”  to the Indians “because it’s so dry,” averaging just 37 inches annually in rainfall, Ross said.

“The warmest January on record” in Asheville was in 1950, when the average temperature was 51.6 degrees, Ross said. “It was more like April. Everything came out (bloomed) in late January.” After that, “it got cold and there was snow the rest of the winter.”

In contrast, Asheville’s coldest winter was in January 1977, while its coldest recorded tempterature was minus-16 degrees on Jan. 21, 1985. The city’s deepest snowfall was 25.5 inches in February 1969.

“Sixty-four percent of the time, our snowfall is 15 inches or less,” Ross said.

He added, “When you have two atypical years, you don’t normally get a third ... There could be a lot of snow in North Buncombe and nothing around the airport (to the south). That’s often the case — and the school system is getting smarter by closing parts and opening parts of the system on snow days.”

In speaking of nearby high-altitude Boone, Ross marveled, “Boone’s snowfall is between double and triple ours,” as it averages 42 inches per winter.

In a question-and-answer session, someone asked if the yearly numbers for ice, snow and rain are measured at the Asheville Regional Airport in Fletcher, or in downtown Asheville.

“When you hear the numbers, it’s usually from the Asheville airport. They manned that beginning in 1964 ... There are many (weather) stations around the region,” he noted.

A woman noted that on Sunset Mountain near the Grove Park Inn in North Asheville, “it tends to snow on one slope and not on another.”

Ross acknowledged that he has seen that pattern.

To some other questions, Ross said, “Our weather here (in the Asheville area) is fairly tranquil. We get snow, but winters last only a week or two.”

A man asked, “What the difference between ‘partly cloudy’ and ‘party sunny?’”

As the crowd laughed, Ross said, “There’s basically not much difference.”

In general, Ross asserted, “Everybody uses the same weather data ... A lot of people take that data and make different models and forecasts ... The secret is putting as much information in the beginning of the forecast to ‘wow’ people.”

In a critique of Ross’ profession, a man suggested that a meteorologist needs to “open the window and look outside before you make a forecast.”

“That’s right,” Ross said, agreeably.

A woman said that after the open cut was made in the mountain near downtown, “it’s affected the weather” in Asheville.

“Yes, it’s possible,” Ross replied. “Whenever you change the terrain,” it can change the local weather.