Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences

NSIDC Cryosphere Seminar

Wednesday May 17 2023 @ 11:00 am
to 12:00 pm

May

17

Wed

2023

11:00 am - 12:00 pm

Event Type
Seminar
Availability

Open to Public

Audience
  • CIRES employees
  • CU Boulder employees
  • General Public
  • NOAA employees
  • Science collaborators
  • The Weather and Science Story behind OpenSnow by Joel Gratz
    Abstract: Joel Gratz, the founding meteorologist at OpenSnow, will discuss how OpenSnow creates its (often but not always accurate) snow forecasts, some of the challenges that arose during the 15+ year journey of building the business which now serves forecasts to millions of people worldwide, and the difficulty of gathering snow data around the world. In addition to a few slides, Joel will walk through the OpenSnow app in real-time, and he would love to take many questions and work through the answers with live data.
    Bio: Joel Gratz is the founding meteorologist and Colorado forecaster for OpenSnow, a mobile app and website that provides snow forecasts and travel advice to millions skiers and snowboarders annually. Joel graduated from Penn State with a degree in meteorology and then earned his MS and MBA from the University of Colorado. As a die-hard skier and powder seeker, Joel spent years studying local weather patterns and made his first public snow forecast in 2007 to an email list of 38 people. When he’s not forecasting and running the business, Joel talks excitedly about weather to anyone who will listen and he also finds plenty of time to enjoy the outdoors through skiing, biking, hiking, and even chasing and photographing thunderstorms and tornadoes. Joel, his wife,  and son Levi live in Boulder, CO, but when the snow flies, they hit the road to personally test his forecasts.