Amateur weather forecaster gains followers for pinpoint web bulletins
Print Edition
Shi Shanzhong is a shy 20-year-old Shanghai man who works with numbers, but when he talks about snow, typhoons and hail, his face lights up.
Shi, who started to study weather on his own two years ago, has become a popular non-governmental weather forecaster online. He’s known as “Xiaoshan” and has more than 10,000 followers on Weibo, and his followers often praise his short-term forecasts.
Typhoon Muifa in 2011, which affected several coastal provinces, triggered his interest in typhoons and other weather phenomena, he said.
“Typhoons are damaging, but they are also beautiful,” he said. “If you track a typhoon from when it is formed, you would find that it is like a complete life ... being born, growing up and weakening. It’s fascinating.”
He started to look for radar and meteorological data on websites. He delved into programming on his own to analyze data and to make forecasts.
Having majored in machine automation in technical secondary school, data analysis was not a stretch.
“In fact there are tutorials on the Internet,” he said. “And we have online forums to discuss weather issues, so it’s quite easy to learn everything since I have the basic knowledge.”
Two months after starting to study weather, Shi started trying to do forecasts online. He is most proud of his short-term forecasts, which his followers claim are more accurate in time and place than governmental forecasts.
He said since the climate is stable in winter, it’s easier to make long-term forecasts, but in summer, factors change so quickly that he has to change the forecast from time to time.
“I think that’s why our official weather forecast is usually quite vague,” he said. “They only say rain will hit at times in some areas, but would never say when and where. They are conservative, being afraid to make mistakes. Meanwhile, I tell people everything I see, and I’m not guarded.”
He said the meteorological bureau needs to report to the city government before issuing violent weather alerts, so alerts sometimes are not prompt.
On August 25, 2008, the city was hit by a rare rainstorm in which one was killed. The Shanghai Meteorological Bureau issued an orange rainstorm alert, which means the rainfall in three hours would reach 50 millimeters, but actually the rainfall on that day reached about 100 millimeters, which matched the red alert — the highest level, Shi said. “This year, the bureau once said the high temperature of the city would not be higher than 40 degrees Celsius, but in fact we had six days when the maximum temperature exceeded 40 degrees.”
Shi said the conservatism of official forecasts has left a space for non-governmental forecasters to develop.
“From the comments on my Weibo page, I know that many people appreciate my efforts, which is a big encouragement to me,” he said.
An official with the bureau said it’s good for people to be interested in weather, and the public is always welcome to join discussions about weather.
Shi said he went to a lecture on typhoons at the bureau shortly after he started his hobby, and he admitted that the information was over his head.
Shi said before studying weather, he didn’t have many hobbies apart from playing video games, and now he spends most of his leisure time doing forecasts. Shi graduated just a year ago and was in the process of changing from a drafting job for a Japanese firm to a new job with a Japanese company.
“It’s hard to find time to read radar at work, so I do most of the studies at night,” he said. “If this counts a hobby, then I think it’s quite a healthy one.”
Shi, who lives with his parents, never talks to his family about the weather or his popularity. “They need not know,” he said, declining to elaborate.
Recently, as typhoon Trami brought a few days of rain and relatively cooler weather to the city, Shi got excited. On Wednesday, he went out to measure the wind speed with an electronic wind measuring instrument he bought online. “The wind speed was 13 meters per second, which was very strong,” he said. He said late Wednesday and Thursday, “the wind would be much stronger, but there will not be much rain.” He was right. It was really windy from Wednesday to Thursday but there was little rain.
“This year typhoons on Pacific Ocean are not so active because the position of subtropical high is more westward than normal,” he said, looking a little sad, “but we can always expect there will be typhoons in fall,” he said, with a grin.
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