Weather according to Ward: With Facebook, young meteorologist takes WNC by storm

CANTON — Hunter Ward stood in front of an empty window frame in a half-finished, mountainside house he's constructing. His hair blew uncontrollably in the wind as he pointed to the snow flurries obscuring the paper mill in the valley below.

Clad in work boots and double-front Carhartt pants, he looked like a contractor, but he waved his arms about like a TV weatherman as he explained the storm unfurling in front of him.

The 29-year-old amateur meteorologist is rapidly catching attention in Western North Carolina, but he's not building his following in front of a green screen. He's broadcasting live from his living room. Nearly 11,000 people follow Ward on Facebook, where he posts daily forecasts that he spends up to 40 hours per week developing. Most of that time is spent studying weather models, he said.

Ward is a builder by trade. He runs a family construction company with his dad. But he holds a certificate in broadcast meteorology from Mississippi State, and he’s on a mission to make forecasting as accessible as possible.

“My main goal throughout this whole thing has been to help people; that’s all I’ve wanted to do,” he said at his Canton job site Thursday morning. He’d only recently finished shooting a live forecast video for his Facebook page, Ashevillewx.

"I want to provide people with a place where they can ask weather questions and get the forecast,” Ward said.

When he started Ashevillewx almost four years ago, Ward had no idea his weather predictions would eventually reach thousands of people each day, he said. His daily video forecasts, hosted over Facebook live, seldom have fewer than 3,500 viewers and have hit more than 10,000 on snowy days this winter.

Ask Ward how he keeps people tuning in to his forecasts day after day, and he’s likely to answer with two words: “accuracy and relatability.”

“He’s the only one I trust”

In early December, when all the other local weather agencies zigged, Ward zagged.

They called for an inch to three inches of snow. He called for two to four inches in Asheville and as many as six inches in outlying communities the day before the Dec. 8 snowstorm that surprised everybody other than Ward’s followers.

By the morning the snow started falling, he upped his prediction to 10 inches, which “was honestly still a little low,” he’s quick to admit. In the weeks following that storm, Ward’s page picked up an additional 2,000 followers.

Later the same month lightning stuck twice — though not literally. On the morning of Dec. 31, Ward accurately predicted the Asheville-infamous New Years Eve ice storm that surprised most people, weather forecasters included. In a 9 a.m. post on the last day of the year, he warned his followers of dangerous, ice-covered roads, which he predicted would impede travel beginning later that afternoon. And again, he picked up about another 1,000 followers because of it.

“He’s the only one I trust for my weather,” said Amy Silvers, a Fletcher resident who has been following Ward’s forecasts since before he started Ashevillewx.

“The last two storms we had, he nailed two-for-two when everybody else completely missed it,” she said.

Silver heard about Ward from a coworker in 2014. At the time, Ward was posting weather predictions on his personal Facebook page, so she added him as a friend to have access to his forecasts.

Silver wasn’t the only person who heard about Ward via word of mouth. A few months after he started posting forecasts, he’d added more than 200 friends, most of whom he'd never met, he said.

“I had gotten to where I was confident enough that I started posting my forecasts on my Facebook,” he said. “I felt I was getting it right enough that I could tell people what I thought.”

He’d been making predictions about the weather since he was an undergrad at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. But he hadn’t shared them with anybody other than his close friends.

At the time Silver heard about him, Ward had only recently started taking online courses through Missisissippi State’s broadcast meteorology program — the same one Ingrid Allstaedt and Jay Siltzer of WLOS went through.

Silver — who these days keeps Ashevillewx pinned to the top of her newsfeed — said she noticed Ward's “accuracy was amazing.” She’s a runner who doesn’t take the winter off and began to plan her schedule around what Ward had to say.

After a while, Silver said she messaged him and suggested he make a public Facebook page to give more people access to his forecasts.

Four years later, Ward’s page is still growing — and rapidly. The comments on all his posts are rife with praise from followers who post things like “yours is the only forecast I watch” and “called it again, Hunter! Good job!”

“My dad always taught me that if you gain somebody’s trust, that’s everything,” Ward said. “In weather, your reputation is important. If you tell people they’re going to get snow a lot and it doesn’t happen, there’s some distrust that’s created.”

So far, Ward has only majorly flubbed the forecast twice, he said. His worst mistake came shortly after he started Ashevillewx. In February 2014, he called for four to six inches of snow, and the city got none.

The people’s meteorologist

During Ward’s live forecast videos, followers post questions about everything from weather terminology to specific hazards they might encounter on their morning commutes. On a busy day, he'll answer as many as 40 questions about his forecasts. Responding to every query is getting harder the larger his following grows, he said.

Ironically, Ward's willingness to engage with his audience has helped propel his popularity.

“One advantage of Facebook is the here and now. People can talk to me,” Ward said. “People aren’t dumb. If you take the time to show them what’s happening with the weather, they’ll start to understand.”

For a man who lives with his head in the clouds — or at least in meteorological models of them — Ward takes an approach to forecasting that’s surprisingly down to earth.

He is adept at yanking the lofty jargon of meteorology out of the realm of the academia and making it easy to understand for everybody regardless of their experience with “vertical lift” or “temperature inversions.”

"He makes the weather very relatable," said Jim McKernan, a fourth grade teacher who works at Sand Hill-Venable Elementary.

McKernan has been following Ward's forecasts for years. In 2015, when he was teaching fifth grade, McKernan asked Ward to speak to his class about the weather. Weather accounts for a sizable portion of the fifth grade science curriculum, so Ward led a two-hour lesson about meteorology.

"Hunter had an enthusiasm that was contagious with the kids," McKernan said. "He broke it down in different ways and made the kids a part of the process. He didn't move off a kid until he thought they understood."

Ward’s Facebook fans have encouraged Ward to monetize his forecasts. His followers have suggested that he post his videos to Youtube, where — with enough views — he’d likely receive ad revenue. Others have suggested he create a paid forecasting service.

Ward doesn’t make any money as a meteorologist. In fact, he spends $300 a year on subscriptions to nation weather modeling services, and he estimates he spends another $500 annually to pay for the gas he uses driving around chasing storms.

He said that he has thought about methods to make money in meteorology, but ultimately he thinks it’s a bad idea. His construction business is profitable enough to keep him from want, he said.

There are advantages to providing forecasts for free. He can be bolder in his predictions without fear of strong backlash from people who might feel ripped off if they were paying. Most importantly, he thinks trying to make money off of his forecasts would compromise the very reason he started Ashevillewx.

“My main fear is that monetizing things would hinder people who wanted to come to where I’m forecasting to get help understanding the weather,” he said. “That’s why I’m really here.”