MONROE — Eric Snodgrass, the senior science fellow at agricultural consultant company, Nutrien Ag Solutions, had no problem telling a room full of farmers on Nov. 5 at Snohomish County’s Farming and Forestry conference that he sucks at his job. In fact, he repeated the statement a handful of times throughout his hour-and-a-half talk.
As an atmospheric scientist, Snodgrass utilizes machine learning to improve long-range weather forecasts and predict how weather affects U.S. farming. He presents research at over 100 conferences every year and won the Educator Award for Distinguished Service to America’s High Technology Agriculture in 2023.
“Every year when I get invited to all these things, they’re like, can you just tell us how the next six, nine months are gonna go? What about the next five to 10 years? And I’m like, you’ve got to be kidding me,” he said, not even 10 minutes into his talk. “We as meteorologists, we really suck at our jobs. We rely entirely on the fact that you all have this human condition called short-term memory loss.”
Many people have tried to control the weather over the decades, Snodgrass said, giving detailed and humorous anecdotes of historical attempts of trying to create clouds and rain across the globe. Even now, Snodgrass said he gets countless emails from conspiracy theorists ranting that the government is creating hurricanes or moving weather patterns to advantageous parts of the country for political gain.
But weather is not some magical event — it’s merely the consequence of our round planet being unevenly warmed by the sun as rays hit the equator more intensely than the poles, Snodgrass said.
“Weather is just the expression of the Earth trying to heave itself into a more comfortable position,” he said. “The basis of what I do every day is to figure out how the Earth is going to exhaust all this heat. And what’s fun is, we try to predict where it might go next.”
While Snodgrass can’t see the future or control the weather, he’s able to compile mass amounts of data and historical trends to predict what the atmosphere’s next move might be. And for the farmers of Snohomish County and Western Washington, he said he has good news.
Most winter projections show lots of snow in the North Cascades and rains in the lower valleys, he said. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s three-month outlook forecast predicts Washington will experience below-average temperatures and above-average precipitation levels through February.
It won’t be cold and rainy every day, Snodgrass said, emphasizing that predictions only go so far. But looking at the patterns, the upcoming winter might be able to alleviate the drought Washington is currently in, he said.
The U.S. Drought Montitor’s latest map, released on Thursday, showed that almost all of Washington is experiencing drought conditions, with areas of Chelan, Okanogan and counties in the southeast portion of the state in extreme drought. Western Snohomish County is in severe drought, with the valley experiencing moderate drought.
If five atmospheric rivers, like the one that the region experienced this past week, hit Washington by April, Snodgrass said he’s optimistic the conversation of drought in the area will cease by spring.
To view Snodgrass’s weather website, visit ag-wx.com.
Eliza Aronson: 425-339-3434; eliza.aronson@heraldnet.com; X: @ElizaAronson.
Eliza’s stories are supported by the Herald’s Environmental and Climate Reporting Fund.
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