After 15 years of forecasting, Local Yokel is shifting focus

Right in rain

After 15 years of forecasting, Local Yokel is shifting focus

A Brocken spectre, a phenomenon that occurs when the sun is low, magnifies a shadow cast upon the upper surfaces of clouds that sit lower than the mountain from which the shadow is cast.

Steve Reinhold/Appalachian Adventure Company photo

BY HOLLY KAYS OUTDOORS EDITOR

Preston Jacobsen, a man some know better as the Local Yokel Weather guy, comes by his love of meteorology honestly.

“Since I’m such an observer — I can’t stop observing and taking note of things and thinking— that data helps calm that and centralizes that desire to observe that weather is a neat thing to watch play out,” he said. “It’s always in motion.”

Jacobsen’s dad was a weather nut too, a guy who grew up wanting to be a hurricane hunter, but when his eyesight disqualified him from that career path, entered the business world instead. Born in New Orleans, Jacobsen lived in hurricane country until middle school, when his father’s career moved them north to Charlotte.

“We used to map hurricanes every season on a giant four-by-six poster every year on a wall,” said Jacobsen. “The Weather Channel was always on. Local on the Eights was like a background noise in our house.”

When Jacobsen asked how hurricanes form, or what causes a rainbow to spread across the sky, his dad had an answer. As he grew toward adulthood, those conversations inspired him to keep asking questions, and keep looking for answers.

SELF-TAUGHT FORECASTER

That desire eventually gave birth to Local Yokel Weather, an endeavor Jacobsen, now 35, launched shortly after finishing his sophomore year at Western Carolina University. While living in Jackson County, Jacobsen grew frustrated with what he terms the “megaweathers” — The Weather Channel and Accuweather, for instance — posting forecasts that bore little similarity to on-the-ground results. They’d call for 1-2 inches of snow in Sylva, and town would get flurries while the Plott Balsams would pick up 3-6 inches.

“Seeing the microclimates at play and watching the forecast never match up, I was very interested in learning how to fix that,” Jacobsen said.

Jacobsen wasn’t a meteorology major. He went to school for environmental science and hydrology, but he considers himself to be very much a “numbers person” and a “pattern person.” So he formed Local Yokel and started forecasting.

He quickly realized how difficult it was to do well, so after finishing his degree he took more classes at the University of North Carolina-Asheville, positioning himself as a self-taught local forecaster.

“Through time I fine-tuned that forecasting skill and also along the way, in tandem, added stations where I could,” he said. “The slogan was, ‘Local weather for local people.’ This was the only outlet forecasting for this spot in this spot.”

The data used to build forecasts for the mountains comes mainly from the two nearest National Weather Service stations, in Morristown, Tennessee, and Greer, South Carolina. Those locations shoot radar beams into the sky to gather information about what’s happening in the atmosphere, and forecasters crunch the data to guess at how those conditions might translate to future weather observations.

But those radar beams can’t travel through mountains, so they have to be tilted at a higher-than-optimal angle to clear the ridges marking the region’s edge. This means the beams miss the lower air layers, important information for forecasters trying to predict how atmospheric forces and mountain topography might interact. While developments in the last decade or so have made the radar beams more effective, large areas of the mountain region still rely on limited forecasting data.

“The Escarpment and the Great Balsams tend to block a good portion of Southwestern North Carolina, and then the Smokies and the Black Mountains as well as Grandfather, they tend to block the radar for folks in Marion and Old Fort, Wilmington on the shadow side,” said Jacobsen.

Jacobsen honed his forecasting skills by paying careful attention to local features — ridges, creeks, hollers and coves — and how they might affect temperature, rainfall or wind. And from the beginning, he also prioritized improving localized data collection, something that’s sorely lacking in many areas of the mountain region.

“I think the only edge I held was the local insight and the stations I put in those areas that didn’t exist,” he said. “They didn’t necessarily help with forecasting, but they helped with real time, and/or validation that the forecast was correct.”

Jacobsen currently has six weather stations installed at various locations across the region, and as he nears the 15th anniversary of Local Yokel’s creation, he expects these stations — and the new ones he hopes to add — to become his main focus.

Preston Jacobsen holds the new remote weather stations he plans to install soon near Pinnacle Peak in Sylva.

Holly Kays photo

SHIFTING FOCUS

This year, Jacobsen told his 3,200 Twitter followers that he’s done forecasting. After 15 years, he’s gotten tired of it; meanwhile, other outlets have improved their own forecasts. He no longer feels the need to be as aggressive as he has been with producing detailed predictions to inform the public.

“I’ve always wanted to be niche,” said Jacobsen. “I’ve never wanted to do what everybody else is doing.”

Instead of producing regular forecasts, Jacobsen plans to shift toward covering storm events and focusing on fundraising for more weather stations in places where they don’t exist — and, in his view, F

The Great Smoky Mountains Association has earned some recognition recently for producing top-tier educational materials. ■ A chapter book for young readers titled A Search for Safe Passage received the coveted Publication of the Year Award from the Public Lands Alliance Partnership in the category for organizations with more than $1.5 million gross revenue. Written by Creative Services Director Frances Figart and illustrated by Graphic Designer Emma DuFort, both of GSMA, the book introduces readers to problems and solutions surrounding the global issues of road ecology and species migration from the perspective of bear, dear, elk and other animals.

The book was inspired by Figart’s work with Safe Passage: The I-40 Pigeon River Gorge Wildlife Crossing Project, a large regional collaborative working to make a 28-mile stretch of highway in Western North Carolina and East Tennessee safer for both wildlife and humans. It includes a nonfiction section with educational lessons about animal habitat requirements, behavior, migration patterns and road ecology problems and solutions developed with input from international and local experts. ■ The Storybook Trail of the Smokies, which launched in April 2021 to promote literacy in nature, received the Outstanding Public Engagement for Program/Service at this year’s Public Lands Alliance Partnership Awards. A partnership between the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, GSMA and the University of Tennessee Extension Institute of Agriculture, the program was funded by a grant from the Juanita H. Fasola Foundation Inc. Five different books for various reading levels were displayed along the Cosby Nature Trail along with educational prompts to encourage interaction with the trail. ■ “Sepia Tones: Exploring Black Appalachian Music,” an ongoing podcast miniseries, received the e-Appalachian Award at the 45th annual Appalachian Studies Association Conference. The award recognizes an outstanding media source that provides insight into Appalachia and its people or gives Appalachians a vital community service. “Sepia Tones,” is co-hosted by Dr. William Turner and Dr. Ted Olson and according to e-Appalachia Committee Chair Sophia Enriquez represents “an invaluable step toward more truthful, just and complete stories

of Appalachian music.” During the awards, Turner also received the Weatherford Award for Best Nonfiction Book for his scholarly memoir The Harlan Renaissance: Stories of Black Life in Appalachian Coal Towns, published last year by West Virginia University Press.

“Sepia Tones” is produced by Great Smoky Mountains Association and funded through the African American Experiences in the Smokies project in collaboration with Great Smoky Mountains National Park. It is distributed through GSMA’s existing podcast, “Smoky Mountain Air.”

probably never will unless he puts them there.

“I’m trying to push that envelope as much as I can to grab data from spots that traditionally have never seen any centers or maybe have failed for different reasons,” he said. “I want this level of network to outlast my time.”

The next addition to that network will be in place soon near Pinnacle Peak, Sylva’s flagship viewpoint at the top of the town’s former watershed. Money from a GoFundMe campaign paid for the $1,500 remote cellular station — though Jacobsen is also investing $500 of his own money — and plans to install it at the same elevation as Pinnacle Peak but not on the peak itself, where it might impact the view or incur increased risk of vandalism.

It’s the first remote station Jacobsen has ever purchased, and he’s excited. Always before, setting up a new weather station involved procuring a standalone computer, using a cord to connect the station to the computer, and setting it up so the computer would stay dry and powered up.

“I’d like to see more weather stations in remote areas that can be used by people that are already utilizing the outdoors,” he said. “So Panthertown, Pinnacle Peak, Chestnut Mountain Park are good examples of where we can drop a weather station and send (the data) to people so they can use it however they see fit, whether that’s getting ready for their day or put some science to it and use the data.”

Though Local Yokel was an income-producing business between 2010 and 2018, right now it’s more like an intense hobby. At heart, Jacobsen isn’t the ad salesmen he needed to be to keep Local Yokel turning a worthwhile profit. Between his family, his bookkeeping business and his job as finance manager for the Southern Appalachian Wilderness Stewards, right now he only ends up with an hour or so per day to work on Local Yokel.

But he views weather as a lifetime pursuit. Local Yokel has already seen plenty of change in its 15-year history, and Jacobsen expects even more shifts as the story continues.

If he’s learned anything over the past decade and a half, it’s that it’s hard to predict the future.

The inaugural Strawberry Jam Half Marathon/5K will step off Saturday, May 21, in Bryson City, 7:30 a.m. for the half marathon and 7:45 a.m. for the 5K. Both races start and end downtown and will be held in conjunction with the annual Strawberry Jam Festival at Darnell Farms. The half marathon course will include a segment on the farmland, and runners will also go twice through the outer edge of the Deep Creek section of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Both races offer “very flat” courses, according to a press release from organizer Glory Hound Events.

Registration is $70 for the half marathon and $35 for the 5K. Sign up at gloryhoundevents.com.

Hikers and mountain bikers can once more use Schoolhouse Ridge Trail in the Pisgah National Forest after its closure earlier this year to restore the trail’s lower 1.5 miles.

High Country Conservation LLC relocated about 1 mile of trail and rehabilitated a halfmile of existing trail. The relocation resulted in construction of a new singletrack trail and closure of unsustainable fall-line sections. The new trail transitions in and out of original trail sections that were improved along the ridge.

The trail is located in the Grandfather Ranger District in the Wilson Creek area of Caldwell County and connects to Mortimer Campground.

Kids survival camp coming to Clyde

Send your kid off to learn wilderness survival this summer with the Piked Antler Project, a camp in Clyde. ■ Adventure Survival Summer Camp will teach boys and girls basic through intermediate wilderness skills, including safe knife handling, map and compass use, basic wilderness first aid, survival structure construction, campfire building, navigation using stars and moon, water purification and basic animal tracking as well as self-esteem, respect for self and others, ownership of one’s actions and growth mindset. Camp dates are June 6-10 and July 11-15. ■ Anti-kidnapping/Survive, Evade, Resist and Escape camp for kids is designed specifically around wilderness survival. Students will learn how to navigate and survive in the temperate rainforests of the Blue Ridge Mountain. In addition to the skills taught in Survival Summer Camp, the Kids Adventure SERE course will include more advanced life skills like kidnapping avoidance, being aware of surroundings, using intuition, camouflage and concealment, picking handcuffs and zip ties, and self-defense. Dates are June 27-July 1 and July 25-29.

Sessions cost $315 per camper. Ages 10-13. Learn more or sign up at pikedantlerproject.com.