When a snow storm is imminent, FCPS students tend to constantly check their Twitters and weather apps in the hopes they will get a cancellation or at least a delay. But for the people who follow @marksweatherpage on Instagram, they have the advantage when it comes to school closings and forecasts.
Junior Mark Skaggs said he has been interested in meteorology since elementary school, and created his weather page in 2018.
“I started posting [about weather] on my main Instagram, but I felt that sort of [subject] belongs somewhere else so I decided to create my own Instagram for the people that would be interested in school forecasts or what’s going on outside,” Skaggs said.
Skaggs’ page compares models, which he calls forecasts, from different perspectives about upcoming weather events such as snow storms, thunder storms and hurricanes. Skaggs said he prefers to cover snow storms due their unpredictability.
“Sometimes [the models] are in major disagreement and it’s interesting to see what they say and [that’s how I] interpret what my forecast is going to be,” Skaggs said. “Usually I use the models to see how much snow we’re going to get.”
Before posting his predictions and thoughts on the upcoming snow storm, Skaggs spends the days before the storm researching the different models and forecasts before combining them all into his own snow map where he makes his predictions.
“I mainly check it to get a different perspective on what other people are saying, and I’ll usually combine all those thoughts into an overview of the storm, which is what I’ll post three days later and give what I assume what’s going to happen,” Skaggs said. “Sometimes I change it because there’s a personal opinion so there is some bias, but mainly they come from those sources.”
When researching and making his forecasts, Skaggs said he tends to play it safe in order to be more accurate than other meteorologists.
“Meteorologists usually tend to be wrong and that’s okay because anything can happen to a storm,” Skaggs said. “I’m not trying to be perfect but I’m trying to be better and as accurate as possible. I try to put all my hard work into my accuracy and not give just my guess.”
When he first started his account, Skaggs had around 20 followers. However, that number has increased to 120.
“It feels great because people are actually interested in my passion and what I want to be when I grow up,” Skaggs said “I think it’s kind of awesome that people can give feedback, acknowledge, and say thank you to what I love to do.”
While winter is almost over, Skaggs said he will continue to cover the weather even if there is less interest.
“I’m probably going to shift to thunderstorms,” Skaggs said. “Of course there isn’t going to be much interest because people follow my weather page because they want school to be cancelled. It’s probably going to be a long time before I go back over to winter weather.”
As for the long-term future for Skaggs and his weather page, he said he wants to be a meteorologist and thinks his weather page will show colleges how committed he is to covering and analyzing weather patterns.
“I just want to be a meteorologist so I’ve already visited a lot of schools that offer meteorology,” Skaggs said. “I think [the account] will help in my college applications because I’ll mention that I have a weather page that has over 100 followers and I think they’ll take note and think, ‘Oh this guy is really interested in weather we should consider him for our college.’”
2019-03-25