This article was originally published in the Charleston Daily Mail on Nov, 20, 2014.

HUNTINGTON — Joseph Fitzwater’s dorm room is not a typical college student living space.
For one thing, it’s clean.

The Marshall University junior keeps his twin bed made and his clothes picked up.

The walls are sparsely decorated, aside from a few NASCAR posters and maps on the walls, and a small wind chime madefrom diecast cars hanging above his dresser.

His desk is a little crowded, but only because it holds two computer monitors.

The monitor on the right shows a weather radar map with blobs of green precipitation moving across the map. It’s just like the radar maps you see on television newscasts.

This is the other strange thing about Fitzwater’s room.

The 10-by-14-foot space is the international headquarters for Fitzweather.com, the weather forecast website he has run forthe last three years.

Fitzwater, who is majoring in geology with a minor in meteorology, updates the site at least once a day but sometimes makesas many as five posts on busy weather days.

“It’s always different. Even when it’s sunny and 70 there’s always something going on,” he said.

He became interested in weather forecasting when he was just six years old, after his parents took him to visit the WOWK television station in Huntington to meet longtime meteorologist Spencer Adkins.

Fitzwater was entranced.

He started watching television weather forecasts religiously and read every weather book he could get his hands on.

Before Fitzwater could afford subscriptions to satellite or weather models, he was making weather predictions the old-fashioned way: looking at the sky.

“I can just go out and look at clouds for an hour. I’ve done it tons of times,” he said.

He started his website in 2011 while recovering from a rope swing injury that required emergency surgery.

Doctors placed him on strict rest orders for two weeks, so he decided to start a website for his weather forecasts.

He taught himself how to write computer code and came up with the name “Fitzweather” as a play on his last name.

“My mom said that would be cute,” he said.

Now that he’s in college, the forecasts are usually the last thing he does before going to bed.

He gets finished with his homework by 10 or 11 p.m. and then spends anywhere from 30 minutes to two hours working on weather predictions.

“It’s tough. I don’t get a lot of sleep sometimes,” he said.

He begins by looking at the radar.

Fitzwater compares several radar locations — usually Charleston, Jackson, Ky., and Wilmington, Ohio — to check for precipitation and see which way it might be moving.

Next, he pulls up a map from the National Center for Atmospheric Research, which provides “surface data” like dew point and air pressure. 

Fitzwater then pulls up a chart that tracks “atmospheric sounding,” which measures air pressure, air temperature, windspeed and wind direction at different levels in the atmosphere.

This information is helpful when forecasting certain kinds of weather. For example, when temperature increases through theatmosphere (called an “inversion” by meteorologists), it often leads to the creation of fog.

The last thing Fitzwater does when preparing a forecast is check the weather models.

He has subscriptions to a few different weather model services, which provide weather predictions generated by supercomputers.

Fitzwater uses these predictions to check his own forecast.

“I don’t like to do forecasts on weather model data, but I like to use it as more of a guide,” he said.

That’s because, oftentimes, the supercomputer-generated forecast is less accurate than a prediction made by a trained human eye.

“A lot of time weather models are way off,” he said.

Fitzwater said he doesn’t really keep track how his forecasts stack up against the professional meteorologists, but said hegenerally receives positive feedback from readers.

“I always feel really good when I’m right. I want my reputation to be good. That’s why I spend hours on it every day,” he said.

Of course, no meteorologist is correct all the time, and Fitzwater is no exception.

One recent night, he and his roommate decided to take a study break and walk to a nearby Sheetz for a root beer and cream soda.

His roommate asked Fitzwater if he needed a coat.

“I’m like, well, there will probably be a few sprinkles,” he said.

The sky was clear on their way to the convenience store, but things drastically changed on the walk back.

“We get about halfway to the dorm and it started pouring down rain,” Fitzwater said. “He was like, ‘What happened to the sprinkle?’” he said.