New site features forecasts

Media Credit: Blair Schlichte Meteorology Professor Bob Weisman officially launched his Web site Monday. Weisman has been working on it since November and includes historic St. Cloud data, normal temperatures readings and links.

With the Minnesota weather always changing, it is hard to tell whether a person should walk outside with a hat and scarf on or leave them at home.

"Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it," Mark Twain once said.

This is why SCSU meteorologist and professor of meteorology in the Earth and Atmospheric Department, Robert Weisman, has decided to do something about it.

Weisman launched his "ultimate" weather news source online Monday with over 100 pages of St. Cloud climate data through the SCSU Web site.

"It is the only one of its kind," Weisman said.

Weisman downloaded historical weather data of the past 15 years from the National Climate Data Center with some help from SCSU alumnus Peter Boulay. He helped go through old written records from the 1880s. Some of the information was passed on from the old St. Cloud National Weather Service Office in 1995 with some help from former meteorologist of the National Weather Service (NWS) Ralph Nistler, who provided much of the historical data.

"Eighty percent of phone calls (I get are) from people who are always looking for normal conditions for St. Cloud on when it rained or snowed on a certain day," Weisman said. "Some people are doing science projects and need to know (the forecast), or some policemen want to know about snow measurements so they can track footprints in the snow."

The "ultimate" weather news source contains:

• The only known listing of the 1971-2000 St. Cloud daily normal temperatures.
• The only known listing of daily record highs, lows (both warm and cold), snow and rainfall.
• Links to daily high and low temperatures and precipitation from 1997 through this morning.
• Weisman's monthly St. Cloud summaries from 1998 through last month.
• The only known listing of monthly average temperatures from 1881 to last month.
• Monthly precipitation from 1887 to last month.
• Monthly snowfall from 1899 to to last month.
• Listings of the 10 warmest and coldest temperatures for each month, 10 wettest and driest months and 10 snowiest and "brownest" months throughout St. Cloud History.
• Links to the latest St. Cloud weather conditions and forecasts from the National Weather Services (NWS) and from Weisman.
• Links to climate data for other Minnesota cities from the NWS, the national Climatic Data Center and the Minnesota State Climatologist Office.

"I was shocked to find out that the lowest recorded temperature for Minnesota was 50 degrees below zero back in the 1880s," Weisman said.

Aside from updating his Web site, Weisman has also had two articles published in journals. He wrote an article in the December 2002 issue of the Weather and Forecasting Reference Journal about developing forecasting. It was funded by the National Science Foundation grant in Washington, D.C.

"Three people needed to check it for scientific accuracy to see if it was okay before it got published," Weisman said.

The other article was published in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society. That article talked about people that have a hard time hearing when it comes to weather issues. The article was inspired by his main joy in his life: his 10-year-old daughter Shirley, who is hearing impaired.

"She wants to be the first woman president," Weisman said proudly.

Weisman has been teaching at SCSU since 1988 and still has a strong passion for meteorology.

"I have a love for it," he said. "You have to have job satisfaction for the area you are interested in. I love dealing with the forecast and the weather. It is always a challenge and I have always wanted to make a difference growing up."

Weisman first became interested in meteorology when he was growing up in Boston, Mass.

"I used to measure the snowfall when I was a kid," he said. "The weather there changes very drastically on a day-to-day basis. When I was going to school, I lost my spring break and regular school days during the week because we had three, two-foot snowstorms in a week. I would have to attend school on Saturdays."

Weisman earned his Bachelor of Science degree in meteorology from the University of Lowell, Mass. in 1982. He went on to earn his Master's from State University of New York, Albany in 1984 and his Ph.D. in 1988 from the same university.

Weisman was also considering being a television weatherperson, but decided against it after being an intern for CBS in Boston during his senior year at Lowell.

"I learned (at CBS) that the people who worked there weren't praised for how good of a job they were doing," he said. "They were judged on their looks and other personal traits. For me, that is not what it is all about."

Weisman said that although his experience at CBS was not what he had expected, he has done some radio broadcasts for KVSC.

"It was fun, but it is really more for the students to get an experience at the station," he said.

But for now, Weisman will continue to get up at 4 a.m. everyday to obtain the weather and put it online for the St. Cloud community.

"The old site (established in September 2002) that contained the weather forecast is controlled by SCSU," he said. "You were never more than 'one click away' from the forecast."