The Powder Buoy blog’s following is 45,000 strong and growing as it tries to predict the powder flu, or when the Rocky Mountains will get a fresh coat of white.
Blog founder Mike Ruzek said it started after his friend retired and moved from Park City to Hawaii. The friend started surfing there and would track National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration buoys for ocean swells. He noticed a trend: when a buoy swell or “pop” happened in Hawaii, a storm would hit Utah two weeks later.
Ruzek said he started tracking buoy 51001, commonly known as “Hawaii Buoy One,” in 2002. After a few years of his own research, he started sharing his predictions on social media in 2009.
“I was like, ‘Huh, this is good enough for me, if it's two weeks out from now on a Tuesday, Wednesday, I'll leave my mornings open and go skiing and be back in the office by noon,’” he said. “It just kind of started that way with something that I had for my friends and myself and it just kind of grew from there.”
Ruzek said a large pop of over 20 feet has meant a multi-day storm in the Rockies a few times since he started tracking. But, the height of a buoy pop doesn’t always translate into inches of snow. He said there was a big swell two weeks ago but the storm Dec. 9 didn’t bring much precipitation to Utah.
As for the science behind the snow, National Weather Service research meteorologist Matt Jeglum said buoy pops coinciding with storms is more of a coincidence than science.
“It is the case that many of the storms that end up bringing snow to Utah start in the Pacific Ocean. And when you have wind blowing over the ocean, it creates waves, and those waves will go to this buoy,” he said. “But generally, we do not use buoy pops as a method of forecasting.”
He said meteorologists use scientifically proven methods to predict weather a week or two in advance. Jeglum said computer-generated models provide much more accurate data they use to forecast.
While a single weather model is not accurate, Jeglum said, dozens of models tweaked by meteorologists provide more scientifically sound data then used to make predictions.
“If you run these 50 models, and let's say 45 of them have 30 inches of snow at Park City Mountain Resort a week and a half from now, then you can have a lot more confidence that a big storm is coming than if you just have that one model,” Jeglum said.
Technology continues to advance but Jeglum reminds Utahns forecasting isn’t an exact science. He said the atmosphere is constantly changing and weather models aren’t able to account for every single variable which leads to forecasting errors.
However, those models remain one of the best tools to help meteorologists predict when powder days are on the horizon.
Editor’s Note: Mike Ruzek and his company, Graystone Consulting, are financial supporters of KPCW. His wife, Erin Ruzek, is on the KPCW board of trustees.
