Our lives, schedules, families and daily activities revolve around them. We pray for them. They are essential to our survival. I'm not talking about work or gods or societies. I'm talking about storms. Without storms, skiing -- and therefore us skiers -- wouldn't exist. For this fact alone, Salomon Freeski TV's third episode of the season revolves around the most simple totem of a skier's life: the storm. To get a little extra info about storms, I called up a guy whose life also revolves around them, Brandon Wholey, chief meteorologist for Channel 4 News in Reno, Nev.
First off, Brandon, why do some many weathermen call stormy weather "bad weather?"
Well, for the average person, commuting over passes, driving to work and going to school, it can be a major inconvenience, hence "bad weather." But I guess for skiers and snowboarders it truly is "good weather."
Most definitely. So can we just meet in the middle and call it "neutrally biased weather?"
I personally will try to not say bad weather and just refer to it as stormy weather.
Thanks. So have you ever gotten angry calls from skiers when a storm you predicted to have huge precipitation numbers doesn't quite pan out?
Maybe not from skiers exactly but, yes, a lot of callers say some pretty weird things. It's a pretty thankless job -- they never call to applaud you if you're correct. They just call to complain if it snows in the valleys five more inches than you thought.
Million dollar question: Any predictions for us skiers this year?
Everything depends on whether it's an El Niņo, La Niņa or neutral year. This year we expected an El Niņo to develop this past month, but it hasn't yet so we're seeing a neutral to weak El Niņo year so far. It's possibly strengthening but so far it's still typical.
Filled with plenty of "good weather" then?
Yes, hopefully filled with lots of good weather for you guys.
