Charlie is the kid who sits behind you in chemistry and can recite the periodic table of the elements forwards and backwards. He’s the kid in Marine Bio who seems to never try, and yet still gets the highest test grades. He’s the proactive participant in Language Arts who’s always ready with a clever response.

He’s a star student in school, but his abilities don’t stop there. Charlie has one more: he can accurately predict atmospheric conditions based on raw numerical weather models, the alignment of winds at different millibar levels in the atmosphere, and the distance in feet from one pressure zone to another. Yeah, I know — what? It means he knows the weather.

One day, long, long ago, young Charlie was but six years old and in New Mexico on a vacation with his family and friends. It was around 6 a.m. when they encountered a thunder storm, complete with lightning, hail, and an entirely dark, black sky. For six-year-old Charlie, this “intense” encounter was awe-inspiring.

Ten years later, and Charlie is a spitting image of his former self, still contemplating weather patterns in wonder. The only difference? Now, Charlie can thoroughly and confidently explain everything he observes.

He started out learning about the atmosphere from websites, and by watching KOMO 4 and listening to their “fantastic discussions.” From there, he shifted his attention to the national weather forecast discussions, He then started experimenting with the forecast models at the University of Washington (computers which take data, put it through complex equations, and result in a prediction).

Charlie makes his weather predictions by combining and interpreting all of the raw data he receives (such as information from satellites, radars, and weather stations).. As scientific as this may seem, Charlie stresses that it’s “still very important to look at the sky.”

His freshman year, Charlie made a group on Facebook for his followers called “Charlie’s Weather Predictions.” The group started with only 20 members, but when winter rolled around the count had boomed into the 300s.

He then englarged his group of followers by making a blog, charliesweatherpredictions​.blogspot​.com, on which he gives explanations to his procedures. He’s made such a reputation for himself that random, middle aged people have bumped into him in cafés and recognized him.

Charlie has recently made his way into Garfield’s morning announcements, broadcasting his five-day weather predictions for that school week. “[Predicting weather] is definitely an innate quality,” Charlie jokes. “Just like all gifts it must be cultured and refined into something much more beautiful.”

Charlie is extremely confident in his predictions, unlike the media forecasts which predict snow on a day that turns out to be sunny. Though the media always seems to have exaggerated predictions, Charlie says “they have to play the safe road,” just in case there’s any chance at all that their hyped up prediction might come true.

Charlie isn’t informing a city full of people, and therefore, he doesn’t have to play the safe road. He’s allowed himself to take more risks in his predictions which still usually turn out to be correct. It’s difficult for him to make exact predictions months in advance, but he can predict trends. For example he can’t predict what the exact weather will be during spring break (hopefully sunny), but Charlie says that late November is usually the stormiest time of the year, so he can predict that Thanksgiving weekend won’t be too sunny (though what does it really matter, when there’s turkey to eat).

After Thanksgiving break, winter break will quickly be approaching. So, the big question is, how much homework can we put off in confidence that we’ll have a few snow days? Charlie says this year is an El Niño year, meaning the Pacific Northwest is warmer and dryer than normal. Because of this, he doesn’t think there will be any snowball fights or sledding in the near future, though Ms. O’Sullivan predicts two snow days this school year, one before winter break, and one after.

“I’ve talked about weather in her class a few times and I can tell that she’s not just throwing random weather predictions out there, she also has an interest in it too,” Charlie said. “Just imagine what she could accomplish as a weatherman!” (Exact number of snow days have yet to be decided).