MoCoSnow: Montgomery County’s “Social Mediarologist”

Ever since I was a kid, attending Watkins Mill Elementary School, I have loved snow days. When I became a teacher, I loved them just the same and would share my thoughts on upcoming winter weather with my students at Roberto Clemente Middle School during the end of class. When those students left for high school, they wanted a way to keep up with the winter weather forecasts and school closing and delay predictions…and MoCoSnow was born.

It started as a little google blog that would receive a couple dozen hits a day in the winter time, but quickly grew when I opened my Twitter account in 2013. Since then, the website has received over a million hits in a single winter and the Twitter account has amassed over 15k followers. There are almost 30,000 MoCoSnow subscribers and over 10.8k likes on Facebook.

Aside from a meteorology class I took at Montgomery College one summer almost two decades ago, everything I’ve learned about winter weather has been self-taught. I’ve purchased subscriptions to websites that give access to some of the best weather models available and I compare the information I get from those to the information provided by local news outlets.

I consider MoCoSnow a hub for winter weather. Often times you’ll see snowfall projection maps side by side from 6 or more different sources. This allows the readers to get all of the information that’s out there and see who ends up being the most accurate.

In addition to winter weather forecasts, MoCoSnow predicts school closings and delay. Featured in Bethesda Magazine as “The Predictor,” I have released a free iOS app that provides predictions for Montgomery County and surrounding areas (predictions for Frederick, Prince George’s, Howard, Fairfax, Loudoun, and Carroll counties, as well as D.C., are available DAILY on the MoCoSnow app).
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Download the free MoCoSnow app here: itunes.apple.com/us/app/mocosnow-app/id1320643511?mt=8