A Collaboration Ten Years In The Making...

OUR STORY | OUR MISSION | AUTHENTIC WEATHER CAMPAIGN | SHORTY AWARDS | FOR INVESTORS

Pennsylvania Team Leader Andrew Barney, a Meteorology major at Penn State University, presented on behalf of our team at the January 2013 conference of the American Meteorological Society in Austin, Texas. What the power of collaboration can do for you.

On January 26, 2004, during a multi-day ice storm in Baltimore, Maryland, a high school Earth Science teacher heeded suggestions of his students, and began posting their  weather forecasts online for his colleagues. That decision became a vision for authentic local weather. Today, that vision has grown to an international team of dedicated local forecasters across 30 U.S. states to global destinations ranging from Auckland, New Zealand to London, England. Their secret sauce? Collaboration. Passion. Innovation. 

Your Support Matters. For any readers who wish to support expanding our vision of "authentic, local weather from a trusted team", please visit this link to make a donation, or click the button featured in the right column.


We Thank You. This website and our team would not have happened without the loyalty and support of our readers. We dedicate this 10th year commemoration to you, for believing in our vision all these years. New to Foot's Forecast? We welcome you just like everyone else! Get a glimpse of how it all started at this link to the original post from 1/26/2004, and how the team developed from there in Our Story section.

L to R:  Mr . Foot with original 2007 Dundalk High graduate Diandre Williams
with Director of Outreach Nikki Byers, Forecasters Aaron Salter and Jason Mitchell
at the 2011 Maryland Emergency Association conference in Ocean City, MD

The Brief Back Story In the early 2000's, Mr. Foot, a 1996 Penn State graduate in Earth Science, had been occasionally teaching his 10th grade students at Dundalk High School lesser-known techniques of short and long range weather prediction. Their experiments, as rigorous explorations within the Baltimore County Public Schools Science curriculum, had begun to yield surprisingly accurate results. A summary: 

• A six-week long range forecast, made on October 30, 2002 for snow "the first week of December" that same year. A followup prediction of "Happy Friday" to the school community on Wednesday, December 3rd - was succeeded by the famous 7.4" snowfall on December 5, 2002 that closed many Maryland schools for two days.

• A four-day advance prediction of 18-24" of snow for the February 15-18, 2003 Presidents Weekend Blizzard, known as "PD II" in meteorological circles.

• An unforgettable life-lesson about Hurricane Isabel in 2003, which started out as a simple Atlantic Ocean storm tracking project-- and ended with students asking, "Is this going to hit us?"  Mr. Foot and the class predicted days in advance the storm's impacts might eclipse Hurricane Floyd (1999) and Tropical Storm Agnes (1972).

Nine years later, due to the dedication of our team, and the loyalty of our readers...what started in the dusty corner of a high school science classroom has become a locally trusted to-go source in 30 U.S. states, and in 2 other continents.

L to R: Meteorologists Shundra Stewart (MS), Daniel Ross (GA), Randall Hergert (FL)
with Forecaster Nikki Byers at the 2012 New Orleans conference of the American Meteorological Society 

January 26, 2013 introduces our 10th year of collaborative forecasting for you. Leading to the arrival of our official 10th anniversary in 2014, we are pursuing this strategic vision, and invite you to join us:

• LAUNCH a globally-scalable, locally relevant website to streamline your access to our community-level teams and helps us all achieve "life beyond Facebook." The Umbraco-developed website is ready, pending the resources to sustain it.
• IMPLEMENT a hyper-local Smartphone app with nationally efficient content, instantly connecting you with real updates from nearby and distant forecasters guided by professional level NOAA Mesonet.  
• BUILD resources in a capital campaign to expand our services to readers to all U.S. states, as part of our "50 states, 50 weeks" initiative heading toward January 26, 2014. 

Join Our Journey If interested in supporting our vision to expand delivery of our services for the benefit of readers in your community, Our Board of Advisors and Leadership would welcome a dialogue with you. Whether a small donation for the team, consulting expertise or even sponsoring a state or local team, all contributions will have a big impact on keeping our services authentic and local, for you.

L to R: Mid-Atlantic Director Greg Jackson with Fusion Photographer Emily Rund,
Director of Strategic Media Diandre Williams and U.S. Team Spokesperson Aaron Salter
at the campus of University of Maryland-Baltimore County.

If you'd like to open the discussion, please contact us: team@footsforecast.org or 443-929-0721 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting            443-929-0721      end_of_the_skype_highlighting begin_of_the_skype_highlighting            443-929-0721 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting            443-929-0721      end_of_the_skype_highlighting      end_of_the_skype_highlighting.

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