Chris:
Weather is one of the most fascinating topics that humans focus on in their day to day life. But did we know that weather can be used as forensic data in crimes? Today, we talk about that on the Get Overit podcast.
Chris:
All right, everybody. Welcome back to another episode of the Get Over podcast. Happy new year, happy 2022, this will be our first episode in the new year. Thank you for joining us on another season, or year, of great content and great podcast episodes. Before we get into our guest today, just a reminder, you can find this podcast and subscribe if you’re really enjoying it. It’s the best way to get all of our new episodes on your favorite pod player. Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Google Podcasts, Spotify, et cetera. So take a look there, subscribe, leave us a review. And if you’re ever looking to figure out more about how we do it here at Overit, you can go to overit.com and learn more about us in the production studio that we have here.
Chris:
So today our guest is Howard Altschule and he is a certified consulting meteorologist, and he’s also the founder and CEO of Forensic Weather Consultants. I’m really excited to have Howard on. Like I’m sure everyone out there has, I have a fascination with the weather. I think the modern day human has become very fascinated by the weather. I would imagine it’s probably one of the most looked at, observed pieces of content and information on your phone. You’re constantly looking at the weather. I can only imagine what it was like before we had that available to us. So I’m happy to, we’re going to pick his brain and we’re going to learn about his career and his journey to wheres today. Howard, welcome to the Get Overit podcast.
Howard:
Hey, good morning. Thank you for having me on, it’s great. Especially the first one of the year. Glad to share the new year with you.
Chris:
So we have you on first, when we’re recording this, and we’re in the Capital District up here, right outside of Albany, New York. And we have our looks like our first taste of snow coming, so maybe apropos.
Howard:
That’s what you think.
Chris:
That’s what we think, right? That’s what they say. It’s been knocked down a little bit. My wife who’s a teacher, more than most, constantly checking the snow forecast, wondering when she’s going to have her first snow day. And she started out with six inches of snow, now it’s down to two to four. So before I ask questions, like how and why does it change so fast, let’s go back, Howard. Tell me how you got into meteorological science. Did you have a fascination with that? And just tell me a little bit about yourself and how that came about.
Howard:
Yeah. Well, the answer is I’ve had a fascination with meteorology and weather for as long as I could remember. I mean, before I was ten years old, probably like seven, eight years old. I was a weather watcher for Al Roker when he had hair and Willard Scott, so it gives you an idea of how long ago that was. Long time ago.
Chris:
But Howard, what is a weather watcher? What does that mean?
Howard:
I grew up in Westfield, New Jersey and I was one of those kids that had a rain gauge in the backyard, that would go and check out how much rain fell, measured it, call the TV station, call the National Weather Service, report the high and low temperatures, how much snow fell, things like that. So that’s a weather watcher, and you see them on TV, when channel six in Albany or channel four in New York, they say, “Oh, the temperature right now in Guilderland is 25 degrees. Scotia is 23 degrees.” So that’s a weather watcher. And I was growing up in New York City metro area, I was a weather watcher for meteorologists, like I said, Al Roker. A very, very good friend of mine, Nick Gregory who helped me start the weather club, the meteorology club in high school down in Jersey.
Chris:
Geez. I grew up in Rockland county, so I lived down in that area, so I know those guys and the people you’re speaking of. So yeah, go ahead.
Howard:
Yeah. Nick is one of my oldest friends. He’s awesome. Great mentor. Shout out to him.
Chris:
Okay, so you clearly were into weather and that sort of science, because that sounds like somebody that’s really in there. So then how does that progress? You go to school, right, and then you start to go and study that? So tell me the progression of how one gets into where you are.
Howard:
Yeah. And even to back up further, my passion started by watching the snowstorms and lightning storms, thunderstorms outside my window as a little, little kid. And that’s how it all began. So after that, I got admitted to a couple universities, a bunch of universities, but one of the most prestigious ones was SUNY Albany. University of New York at Albany, and I got admitted on what they called the Talented Student Admissions Program. And it was just because I was so passionate about meteorology and so passionate about weather. Moved up to Albany, got Bachelor of Science degree in meteorology. And it involves lots and lots of math, physics one, two and three, calculus one, two, three and four, which is differential equations, and then a lot of other meteorology classes.
Howard:
And the cool thing there was not only did you have those really hard classes, which were hard. We don’t have enough time to talk about all those, but I was able to get really good forecasting skills. And we had forecasting contests that I won sometimes, and we’d forecast all over the country. So that’s where I got my education and background and brought it to the next level, from the hobbyist to now degreed meteorologist.
Chris:
So I imagine what was going on then, when you got out of school and started your career at forecasting weather, has changed significantly from then to now. I imagine it was a lot more, I don’t want to use the word math, but it was probably a lot more modeling and really forecasting. Forecasting, I’m sure now they have computer modeling that does a lot of that for them. Tell me, I think one of the fascinations with the average day to day human about weather is how the hell do you predict and forecast weather? And so if you could, in a very general way, is it just a common set of parameters that you’re constantly analyzing and that’s what you use to forecast, or is it much more complex than that? Can you give us a little bit of the, when you sit down or you did sit down to forecast, what are you looking at?
Howard:
So I just made a forecast this morning, for instance, and I’ll run you through that. I look at what’s going on around the country, what the radar’s showing, where precipitation is falling, what’s the cloud condition like. And then we have computer models, and we have a lot more computer models than we did way back when in college where we only had maybe two or three. Now we have dozens of different computer models and ensembles. So for instance there’s a forecast in the near future of a snow storm coming up the coast, and one computer model brings it up to Albany with snow of maybe two to three, four inches. And the other models overwhelmingly have maybe a coating, but most likely nothing. And it keeps the snow down to the south.
Howard:
So what I do is I look at the consistency of the model runs that run four times a day, and I try and see which ones have verified the best over the past recent history, or especially over the past 24, 48, 72 hours. And typically when you have some of the more reliable models and you have a clustering of scenarios and outcomes of the models, they tend to be more believable. So this one computer model that brings the snow up to Albany and gives us three to four inches, that also forecasted the snow to reach New York City and New Jersey a few days ago and it never got that far. So for instance, my observations were that it has a north northward bias. So that storm is probably going to be further south than the model thinks, and that’s the outlier. So for instance in Albany, that model says we’re going to have four inches, I’d be surprised if we get a coating. Maybe even nothing.
Chris:
Okay. So my wife, a school teacher, will not be happy to hear that. She probably will not have her first snow day off. So another thing that you hear a lot, but in this day of sort of news and politic, you try to fight through and understand. I myself, I think a lot of people, have noticed a lot of weather changed. A lot of severe weather that’s happening more and more, or not, right, Howard? Because you only know what you see, and news tends to sensationalize a lot of things. So my question to you as someone who knows this really well is, is there a higher incidence of severe weather over the past five years, ten years? And if so, what is really going on there? And should we expect that to continue?
Howard:
Well, without a doubt, there’s more severe weather. More extremes, severe weather, hail tornadoes, nor’easters, huge coastal storms, hurricanes. There’s no doubt about that. The question is whether entirely global climate change or whether it’s also just mother nature being cyclical. I tend to think we have a small part in the overall severity and changes of the climate. I think it’s mostly cyclical. We went from ice age to the warming, and now back to gradual ice age is what we’re in now. But there is some component of climate change that we are directly causing. But I don’t think it’s extreme, as directly related or a hundred percent us, as for instance a lot of politicians say. And now the hot topic in all these Fortune 500 companies, “Oh, we’re turning green, we’re turning green.” Great thing, right?
Howard:
But it’s not because we’re causing the weather to be more severe. It’s just mostly mother nature, but we have a part in that too. But it’s mostly just, I think, natural cycles of the atmosphere. And not just one year or two years, probably 20, 25, 30 year cycles or more. I’m not a climatologist, but that’s my feeling on it and my sense on it. But undoubtedly, the weather’s getting worse. There’s more droughts, there’s more areas getting flooded. Hurricanes are more severe. There’s more really bad, damaging tornadoes like we’ve had recently, things along those lines. You’re right on about that.
Chris:
And that is a good segue into forensic weather consultancy. But let me, before I go there, I have a couple other things that I just wanted to ask you. I think we feel like a lot of weather is predictable nowadays, right? Like if I woke up tomorrow and there was a foot of snow on the ground, that would be quite bizarre in our world today without me knowing about it ahead of time. So where I’m going with this is, I just read about this crazy snowstorm that happened along I-95 down in DC. And they called it this sneak attack storm kind of thing, and I’m seeing people trapped on I-95. It looks apocalyptic. And I’m wondering, what is that? From someone who’s who studies this stuff, does that happen? Do you get weather events that just pop up like that, and your teams just don’t see? Or is that again, part of the news, like we did know it was happening, it just sort of got out of control?
Howard:
It’s the news. We knew it was coming, and it’s just drivers that think they wouldn’t have been affected by it, or don’t pay attention to it, or, “We’ve driven through a coating of snow before.” And the what happened actually was verified. The amount of snow that was forecast and the weather that was forecast, I saw it coming. All the meteorologists saw it coming. I was speaking with some folks at the national weather service in the corporate level yesterday, and they said, “I can’t believe what’s going on I-95. These people are so crazy. How could they [crosstalk 00:11:55]-“
Chris:
Yeah, like why would they do that? Right.
Howard:
Yeah. They knew it was coming, but people go out anyway. They don’t think, it’s not going to be me. I can drive 75 miles an hour in my SUV in three inches of snow while it’s pounding snow, I’ll be fine. I’ll defy the laws of physics and ice and friction. And that’s when people get in trouble. So from a forecasting standpoint, we forecasted that perfectly. Not to say there aren’t some surprises, right? Like when you get a changeover line, like for instance, tomorrow we have this snow event in the Northeast and mid-Atlantic. If that storm tends to go a little bit more north, maybe 50 miles further north, then our forecast would go from maybe a coating at best to three, four or five inches of snow. I don’t think that’ll happen. But it happens more when there’s a changeover from rain to snow, because if it never changes over to rain, it could snow and just pile up. It doesn’t happen very often. But once in a blue moon, I’ve heard of people being wrong with the forecast.
Chris:
But if that happened, you would know, right? It’s not like you know Friday morning you’re going to know that. You would know that ahead of time, right? Like those-
Howard:
No.
Howard:
It could get-
Chris:
That’s what I’m talking about. Sometimes the computer models, they’re so off, all of them. And you really don’t know until maybe a couple hours before it actually happens, and oh wow, you know what? It doesn’t look like this is going to change over to rain. It looks like it’s going to change over to snow. Or where we thought it was all rain, you know what, that storm’s going a little bit further south and it’s going to be colder. So, you know what, looks like instead of an all-rain event, now we’re going to have to go two to four inches of snow. And that might be only three, four hours in advance.
Chris:
It’s very much like life, then. You can only model and predict it as so much as you can. You’re going to get unpredictability and it’s going to happen. It’s not going to be perfect. I guess that’s what the definition of a model is, which is probably why you have numerous models. And the best you can do is look for consistency in a bunch of different models, right? And I always look at that when they’re forecasting hurricanes, you get all these crazy lines on the track of a hurricane and some are all over the place. And then as each day gets closer, the lines converge and converge and converge. And I guess that’s what we’re talking about in consistency of the models, right?
Howard:
That’s exactly it. And then the more clustering you have of those spaghetti model plots, which are the lines that you’re talking about, the more likely that that scenario is going to play out. But in the case of a hurricane, they have a mind of their own. So I’ve seen it where they actually are moving to the Northwest, moving to the northwest. And then all of a sudden, all the models think it’s going to continue to the northwest and then it stops. It stops right before it’s supposed to go out to sea, and then it actually moves inland and then strikes the southeastern United States in a certain area. It’s happened sometimes. It’s not very often, it’s very rare that that happens, but hurricanes have a mind of their own.
Howard:
It’s a forecast, it’s our best estimate based on experience, which is very important, right? You really should have a meteorology background and experience, and also use of the models and, and understanding what they mean and how they’re run. I like to say probably the closest profession to forecasting is stock trading, where you have models you have forecasts of what you think is going to happen. And the some fly in the ointment comes in, and then, the markets crash. If there’s some political development or something like that.
Chris:
Howard, just curious, have you ever flown through? Have you ever been on any of those planes that go through any of those storms? I’m just curious.
Howard:
I was supposed to be when I worked on TV. I was on TV for about eight and a half years, including up in Albany at NBC. And I was going to go fly into, gosh, I don’t remember the name of the storm, but I was scheduled to go on a hurricane hunter. Fly into a category one or two hurricane out of one of the air force bases in Virginia. And we were all set. I remember the guy’s name who was going to clear me with security and everything. The day before, though, the flights got canceled and they switched them from Virginia to Biloxi, Mississippi, where the hurricane hunters are based. So I was out of luck. And I’m not a very good flyer in turbulence and thunderstorms, because I know too much about weather. And I know that pilots are meteorologists and they don’t know. They know a little bit about that.
Chris:
Right and you’re looking out the window like, “Ooh, that’s not looking good.”
Howard:
No, it’s like why would you [crosstalk 00:16:22].
Chris:
I was wondering what that would feel like. What does that feel like, to these people in those storms, some of them in big hurricanes, flying into those category three, four hurricanes. What does that feel like? It’s got to be-
Howard:
It’s crazy.
Chris:
It’s got to be super aggressive, right?
Howard:
It’s ridiculous. Severe turbulence.
Chris:
Right. And then all of a sudden they get into the eye and it’s just this incredible calm. And then they have to reenter it again and go through it again.
Howard:
Yeah, you have to go through 70 to 100 mile an hour or 140 mile an hour winds before you do that. And you try and fly in from the top, and then above the convection or thunderstorms and high winds-
Chris:
Right. To drop in?
Howard:
You try to sneak down right into the eye of the storm, if you can, so the severe turbulence is minimal. But there’ve been hurricane hunter flights where they’ve hit huge pockets of turbulence and hey got thrown up in the air, and bloody noses and bruises. It’s happened. So yeah, not for me anymore.
Chris:
Good for them. I mean, we need that, it’s good service to the science and to the country, but like I could never in a million years. And my last question before I get into FWC is when you’re on TV doing the weather forecast, there is actually nothing behind you, correct?
Howard:
Yeah.
Chris:
When you guys are pointing to the, pointing to the map and doing go, we have this in the east and it’s coming down, there’s actually nothing there. That is true, right?
Howard:
Exactly. It’s a blind wall.
Chris:
And you’re looking to the side, where are you getting your read from? Are you looking at something on the side? Are you just pointing to air? How do you know what the hell’s going on?
Howard:
We have a TV here on the side, so I can point, here’s what’s going on over this area. And then a TV here, so look at this and I’m looking at a TV but pointing to the monitor. And then also looking straight on, like here’s the TV and I’d be like, “All right, you see this thunderstorm, everybody? Look at that lightning, this thunderstorm, it’s going to move off to of the west.” I’m looking at the Zoom monitor right now.
Chris:
But you can see what I can see at home on the monitor with everything in the back?
Howard:
Yeah. Bingo.
Chris:
But what’s behind you-
Howard:
It is a blank screen. It’s a chroma key where they plop the images on back of it. So you’re not just guessing, you’re actually seeing where you are and pointing and talking and all that.
Chris:
See, we’re talking to Howard, we’re looking under the hood here a little bit. All right. So, Howard, I want to talk about Forensic Weather Consultants. Because the word forensic implies criminality, right? It implies some sort of case and discovering and uncovering. So tell me a little bit about this and how long has this been about. Has this been about for a while? And then I want you to talk to me about what you get retained for, what are you guys looking for and what you’re doing? It’s very fascinating.
Howard:
I started the company Forensic Weather Consultants a little over 22 years ago. And it was while I was working on TV, I knew that I didn’t want to do TV for the rest of my life. After September 11th, things got very different. So I was like, we need a different type of career path for me, and still in meteorology. So I started Forensic Weather Consultants, opened up the Yellow Pages. I think my first client was Martin Harding & Mazzotti, and another company down in Poughkeepsie working on one slip and fall on snow and ice case every three months. And from there it just got busier and busier and busier.
Howard:
So I started back in 1999 with Forensics, and we’ve done, you know, all kinds of cases worked on about 7,000 cases so far to date. Testified in court, I think 97 times or 98 times in different courts, including the US Air Force court-martial court on an Air Force base. And then we’ve had a lot of other depositions besides that. But the types of cases run the gamut. There’s so, so many different types of cases. It’ll blow you away if you knew about them.
Chris:
So you’re trying to help ascertain or provide information and data around a weather event or some sort of weather related event to some sort of, whether it’s, like you said, an injury or some sort of crime, is it a crime? I don’t know if you want to call it a crime. And you’re not necessarily trying to say it was causal, but you’re just trying to provide some evidence and data and context around the event that happened. Is that right? As it relates to the weather.
Howard:
Yeah. We don’t really testify as to causation of damage or causation of an accident, because that’s really, by training, beyond our scope of expertise as a meteorologist. I can’t tell you, whether I have a personal belief or opinion or not, I can’t tell you professionally whether baseball-sized hail would cause damage to an asphalt shingle roof, if it was hit by hail. I have my own personal opinions and experience, but professionally, I can’t say that and I won’t say that. And probably the judge wouldn’t allow me to say that, because I don’t have the training or experience.
Chris:
Right. But you could say that there was in fact baseball-like hail that did come, and that there’s-
Howard:
Right.
Chris:
Okay. And that’s really what you’re providing.
Howard:
So one of my examples is, we had a hail storm in Guilderland, New York, right outside of Albany. And every house in my neighborhood, including ours, got a big check covering, we had baseball sized hail. 2.25-inch. All of the houses around here got a check to pay for the roof and some siding because they were quite damaged from the hail. There’s one insurance company from one of my neighbors, only a couple houses down, they denied the claim and said there was no hail at all. And that it was just wear and tear, and it was an old roof. So having already been in the forensic field and writing reports, I told her I’d write a report and attest to that there was this severe weather. And we wrote this report, showed the radar images, the methodology. I attached the photos that I was actually storm chasing that day for that storm.
Howard:
And within like a week, they paid the full amount. They went from zero to like $25,000 after they got my report. But sometimes people get the weather wrong or they don’t want to pay a claim for a specific reason. Maybe it’s a $2 million claim and there are some insurance companies that don’t want to pay it, just because it’s $2 million. So a lot of times people have to fight it. On the flip side, there’s a lot of fraud out there with hail claims and slip and falls on snow and ice.
Chris:
Right. So you could be retained either way, I guess.
Howard:
Yeah.
Chris:
To you, it doesn’t necessarily matter, right?
Howard:
Yeah, by plaintiff or defendant. Yeah.
Chris:
It’s all about just providing facts about the weather event as it is, right?
Howard:
Absolutely. Yeah, we get called by both sides of the same case, probably like once a month. And we work all over the country and all over the world.Like in Florida, there’s hail cases. There was a big hailstorm a year ago that went through Orlando and it dropped golf ball sized hail. And what happens is you get these professional companies that they go and they sign up houses and they say, “All right, you had hail, we can get you a new roof. Let us work for you and sign the negotiations over to us.” And then they do all those houses that were hit by the hail, but then they’re like, “All right, we’re done. We have to expand out. Let’s keep it going.”
Howard:
And eventually they go to areas where for instance, there were no, the thunderstorm never even went over, and they say you got golf ball sized hail. So the insurance carrier’s like, “Wait a minute, there’s no damage. There’s no evidence of hail here.” They hire us to prove it and show that there’s no hail. And then they’ll, deny the claim based on that. So that just gives you an idea where there’s some people that don’t pay claims when they should, and there’s some people that file insurance claims when they shouldn’t, just because they want a free roof out of it or whatever it might be.
Chris:
But you obviously have a very scientific approach, right?
Howard:
Oh, yeah.
Chris:
So like, so for example, like, let’s say, like in that example with hail, you might not have been there yourself or had cameras there to document the hail, but you can go back to the meter, like the weather reports, and find with fairly, I imagine, good accuracy as to where that was falling. That’s clearly an objective piece of data that you could present, and I guess objectivity in data is something that’s hard to argue against because it’s not subjective. It’s not opinion, it’s real information. So that really helps in a case, to have that sort of data. So is that your approach? It’s like any other investigation, you go back and you look at the data that’s available and you guys run through and see what’s there?
Howard:
Yeah, and we have a ton of data that’s available. One of the most important things in in hail cases for instance, are doppler radar images. And we have the archived doppler radar images available, and we plot each house or each incident location right on the radar image themselves. Those radar images are taken every one to five minutes on average. There’s a lot of different products that we can look at from doppler radar. Things like base reflectivity, differential reflectivity, correlation coefficient, stuff you’ve never heard of. But it tells us if the radar is seeing hail in the atmosphere or if it’s just rain. And then we also use a lot of cross sections, three-dimensional volume scans, surface reports of hail or storm reports. And really, we take all the pieces of evidence, all the pieces of the puzzle and put it together to see what occurred or what we think occurred within a reasonable degree of meteorological certainty. Now that’s not only applicable to hail storms or tornadoes or wind damage or slip and falls, but we’ve also done murder trials and double homicide trials really where the weather was a factor.
Chris:
Oh, really?
Howard:
Yeah,
Chris:
Is there any example you could give? Not in specifying the case, but how does weather play into something like that?
Howard:
There were some drug deal cases, for instance, where lighting was an issue. Where there was a police officer allegedly saw a drug mule, for instance, that was smuggling. They identified him because of the moonlight, for instance, but the the moon wasn’t out that day. It was [crosstalk 00:26:41].
Chris:
Oh, I see.
Howard:
Something like that. Or a homicide-
Chris:
That’s crazy. You never would think that the weather would be able to come into play in something like that.
Howard:
It’s crazy.
Chris:
That’s wild.
Howard:
And then homicide trials, I know two of them were gang murders, totally different trials. And there were tracks in the snow that matched the defendant. So one of the things we had to do is determine, okay, when it was the last time it snowed? How long had it been since any snow accumulated? Because we’re able to tie together when those footprints had been there since, so since what time. And that was just one more piece of the puzzle, maybe it would be in terms of an alibi or something like that.
Chris:
Right. Like, is it plausible that there were footprints there at that time being whatever. I see. Again, just providing more context and color to the investigation.
Howard:
Oh, yeah. I’ve had disturbing ones, where there was physical assaults and they’d say, “Oh, we want to know if there was thunder in the area,” or loud that could be mistaken for other noises. And it was disgusting, disgusting stuff like that. And we got called for that type of case, and luckily we didn’t get retained on it. They didn’t want to go that route.
Chris:
Right, and you have to hear that.
Howard:
That just skeeved me out. I mean, not saying the guy’s guilty or innocent, but it’s just even just having that kind of defense.
Chris:
Right, the fact that you have to-
Howard:
Trying to prove yeah.
Chris:
Yeah. Wow, so like forensic forensic.
Howard:
It really is forensic.
Chris:
Because people think of forensics, they think of crime scene, but it’s very related. It’s very related.
Howard:
Yeah, exactly.
Chris:
You just piqued my curiosity with a question that I’ve always tried , I get weird answers to when you look it up. Hail, what it is hail? Like, what is it actually? It’s ice formations? When is the proper condition for hail to form, and why don’t see it often?
Howard:
In thunderstorms. And really, you need to have a lot of instability in the thunderstorm, so you need to have enough of an updraft where the parcel rises, the ice crystal. And as it rises, there’s moisture in the atmosphere, rain drops ,other pieces of hail. So as a hailstone, maybe very, very small, maybe the size of a pin or something. As it starts to turn into rain, it freezes as it goes higher up in the atmosphere where the temperature is below freezing. And the further up it goes, the more water it accumulates or the more coalescence there is crashing into other hailstones, so the hail gets bigger. Eventually it starts to fall down to the ground. Now, if the thunderstorm is strong enough, there would be what we call an updraft.
Chris:
So it’s pulling it up.
Howard:
So the updraft is wind coming into a thunderstorm, building it up. And as that hail fell, if the updraft was strong enough, it would pick the hail back up maybe at four, five, 6,000 feet, and then bring it back up into the atmosphere where it had more water to accumulate. And that process would keep on going.
Chris:
So it’s like a snowball getting bigger and bigger and bigger.
Howard:
Exactly. And eventually at some point when the updrafts, the winds bringing it back up are not strong enough to support the weight of the hail, it’ll fall to the ground and eventually reach the ground, crash to the ground. So really, the intensity of an updraft and the severity of a thunderstorm can be proportional to how severe or how large hail is. That’s why super cell thunderstorms usually produce tremendous sized hail, very large hail. But if you get a little thunderstorm, a popup one in Florida that is gone in 15 minutes, that doesn’t have enough-
Chris:
There’s not enough energy in an updraft to pull it. I see.
Howard:
Yeah, so it falls apart.
Chris:
That is predictable, in a sense, right? You can tell the severity and the strength and power of said storm. That’s how you could predict the hail. This could have hail associated with this storm, right?
Howard:
Yeah. And even a day or two in advance, we would know whether it looked like thunderstorms would be severe or non-severe. Is there going to be a tornado outbreak in two days from now? Is there going to be a very large hail event coming? We could see that a couple days in advance, usually. But as you get down to hours before the storm or an hour before it actually hits a location, we would then use short term models over the next 12 hours, but also doppler radar where we would track each storm, look at it on those various products on doppler radar and see whether we see hail in there, how big it is, and then issue warnings accordingly. Issue severe thunderstorm warnings or tornado warnings letting people know, over the next hour and a half, here’s what’s coming.
Chris:
Here’s what’s coming. Well, I know we could talk about, at least I can ask you questions for days on this, but we have a limited amount of time. And I want to talk to you about the not-for-profit that you’re also involved in, Harky’s Heroes for Kids. Tell me a little bit about that, Howard. Where did that come from and what is it, and just give us a little background on that. I’m curious to learn more about that.
Howard:
Sure. Yeah, my father was my mentor, my role model growing up. Had a great relationship with my family. He had kidney disease and passed away when I was 28 years old, in the year 2000. He was 61. And I was in the hospital with him when he had his kidney transplant. I was there when he had kidney failure a couple times, or the threat of rejection and things. So I was very, very involved and tuned into kidney disease. So he passed away in 2020. I’m sorry, not 2020, in 2000. The year 2000, so we started it 20 years after his passing. So he passed in 2000, about 21 years ago, almost 22.
Howard:
So in the year 2000 to mark his 20th anniversary, now that I’m getting the dates right, I decided to start this nonprofit called Harky’s Heroes for Kids, because my father was a clown on the side. He was in New York city, he had a job in New York city as a head hunter for risk managers. But on the side, as a gag, his brother and sister bought him a ticket or subscription to clown school as an joke for his 40th birthday. So he went to it and he just loved it. I mean, he loved it. So at the end of it, he said, “I love making kids happy.” So he started doing birthday parties as a clown, a magician and then as Santa Claus and stuff. And that was his side gig. His name was Harky the Clown. And in honor of him on his 20th anniversary, I just wanted to do something. We’ve been big supporters of the National Kidney Foundation, but now I wanted to do something more and help kids, because that’s what his passion was. He wanted to make kids happy.
Howard:
And sadly there’s so many kids, especially now with COVID, there was kids at didn’t have meals. There still are, they don’t have food. They rely on the school. There’s homeless people, there’s a couple fam couple kids in Guilderland that are homeless and it’s heartbreaking. You think of just Guilderland, people that are homeless and struggling, that’s just not right. And you can only imagine what’s like in other cities like Schenectady or Albany with more population, things like that. So we came together and formed Harky’s Heroes for Kids, which is meant to provide financial support for food, for whatever, anything involving kids to make their lives easier. Get them home, get them presents during the holidays, if their house burns down. If they’re sick, maybe contribute to a fundraiser.
Howard:
It’s still in its very infant phases, and we welcome people to join our committee or our organization or our board of directors. We’re trying to do more marketing and fundraising so we can get even more involved. And I’d really love to just take this thing and blow it up and really, really make a difference in kids’ lives. I have a sweet spot, just like my dad.
Chris:
Where could people learn more about it, Howard, if they want to? Is there a place that you go?
Howard:
Yeah, so they could call our office at Forensic Weather Consultants. The first thing is by phone, (518) 862-1800, or on Facebook, we have a Facebook page called Harky’s Heroes for Kids. And they can reach us either of those ways. And we’d be happy to welcome them, happy to take donations or just have them help us out with the organization. And it’s something I’m very passionate about, there’s a lot of people locally in Albany that participate. So we’re looking to make a difference and, and we’ve started nicely.
Chris:
I’m just curious, do you hold any events or do anything like that? Like sponsor some sort of events like food drives or things like that? And the reason why I’m asking personally is I have a nine year old son, and what I’m trying to do with him more and more is make him understand what he has relative to what other people do not. It’s something that I’m really trying to really instill in him. Because you know, when you grow up with things, you tend to only think that that’s how the world is, but there’s a lot of people and a lot of kids that don’t have. So I would love to bring him around and get him involved with things like your organization that highlight those kids that don’t have. So I don’t if it’s just a fundraising operation right now, but if there was anything that I could possibly get him to see or get him to be involved with, yeah.
Howard:
Absolutely. Right now it’s just a fundraising operation, but yeah, we’d love to get him involved. You know, I’d say, you know, send me an email. You could reach me at hga@weatherconsultants.com. Obviously my work email, but I’m the founder of Harky’s Heroes for Kids so I’ll also accept emails for that. And then our plan is to do these fundraisers, do food drives, do different things, not just get checks and raise money that way, but get the community involved.
Chris:
Get on the ground and do things. Yeah.
Howard:
Yeah, absolutely. So we would welcome all of that, and people could reach me that way and I’ll let them know when we have those events.
Chris:
Okay. And then before we sign off here, do you still do weather predictions personally and put them out somewhere? Are you on social? Because I know people like to follow or check it out. Do you still do that or are you just in your professional-
Howard:
I do.
Chris:
Oh, you do? Okay.
Howard:
Yeah. So on Facebook I have Forensic Weather Consultants, which is my company. We do forensics, but we also provide forecasts. And we’re told by a lot of people that we’re more accurate than any of the TV people, which is what they say, and I take that as a compliment. But we do forecast for just the public, when there’s something big going on, we’ll give them our thoughts. Whether it’s a severe weather event or a snow event or something like that.
Howard:
And we just like to tell it the way it is. There’s no media hype or anything like that. So we just like to tell it the way it is, this is what we think is going to happen, but this could happen. If things change, we’ll keep you up to date. People love that. They love the transparency. And we also have corporate clients that we forecast for, a large top 50 corporation in the world that we do hurricane forecasting for each year. So we forecast what areas of the United States, the West Coast, Hawaii, would be affected by hurricane winds or storm surge. And we give them forecasts so they can prepare their assets and their resources should there be power outages or flooding.
Chris:
And so this is at the Forensic Weather Consultants Facebook page, is that where they can find that?
Howard:
Yeah, the forecast just in general-
Chris:
That kind of stuff, yep. They can go there?
Howard:
Yeah. Forensic Weather Consultants, they can just search that on Facebook and they’ll find it. I think we have about 16,000 followers or something like that.
Chris:
All right. This was a lot of fun, Howard. I learned some things. I’m sure the listeners do, and also to learn about the cause for kids is of course an excellent thing, and I love to see you trying to carry that on. Something that means a lot to you in your life, trying to really continue that. So I urge anyone that has a shared passion with children and things like that to look into that and give you a call or an email to see how they can help out. Thanks so much for coming on the show. And I hope that for my wife’s sake, we’ll have a six inch storm on Friday and not just a dusting of snow. But thanks, Howard. I really appreciate it, man.