LOCAL FACEBOOK PAGE FORECASTS PLANT CITY WEATHER.
“I have always loved weather,” said Jerrod Campbell. “I’ve always had an interest in it. When I was in grade school, middle school, high school, I had other focuses, but I still loved watching the thunderstorms and things in nature.”
Years later, this 2005 Plant City High School graduate morphed this love into his alter ego, PC Weather Boy. Though PC Weather Boy gathers data right here in Plant City, people as far away as England, Nigeria, and the Ukraine view his Facebook page. They, along with nearly 17,000 followers, use PC Weather Boy keep up-to-date.
Campbell has placed weather sensors and instruments on his property. Starting at 6:00 a.m. every morning, he monitors ambient (local) weather data and funnels this to others including the National Weather Service, CoCoRHS (Community Collaborative Rain, Hail and Snow Network) and Weather Underground. “Weather Underground is a huge community,” he shared.
Though Campbell monitors weather frequently, he is a hobbyist. His full-time job is work-from-home and his managers know that on breaks, he takes a look at monitors and reports weather.
However, none of the gauges and instruments Campbell uses are common items that could be bought in Walmart. His are made for high-level accuracy. One of the instruments he relies on is a WS 5000. This sensor boasts an ultrasonic wind sensor, reads air pressure, and can detect lightning up to 30 miles away. He has these instruments set up to feed data to his computer. Even the rain gauge he uses is special—it has to be approved by CoCoRHS for him to maintain membership and report to the network.
Campbeel has links to over 100 weather websites and has 24 weather apps loaded to his phone alone. “A lot of the information that I pull is from unpaid sites that people just don’t know about,” he said. “A regular person would probably have trouble finding the information.” Some of the data from these sites is presented in visually broken up formats that can’t be understood without some background knowledge. Campbell’s ability to interpret for laymen gives the Facebook page extra value.
Though Campbell has been monitoring weather for as long as he can remember, he didn’t initiate the Facebook page until eight years ago. “I probably wouldn’t have done the page had my wife not pushed me to get started,” Jerrod recalled. The page had small beginnings, but over the years, it has grown to its current size. “The main thing that’s really growing the page is word of mouth and the local community.”
The main focus of the Facebook page is hurricane season. “I don’t wish a hurricane on anybody,” Campbell said. “But as a weather person, I love tracking hurricanes. When a hurricane is forming, and I’ve tracked it from Africa through the Caribbean, into the Gulf and we’re trying to figure out where it’s going—sometimes when it gets closer to Florida I don’t sleep.”
When a hurricane is approaching, “People have told me some of the well-known weather people start focusing just on what’s going on in the storm,” he said. “But no one really focuses on how outside areas are being impacted.” So in addition to keeping an eye on the eye of a hurricane, Campbell also posts about the outlying effects, especially the weather Plant City can expect.
“I can post a system that I’m tracking and sometimes be the first,” he said. “I get no likes, no shares, no interaction on it whatsoever—it’s a dead post. But then that thing starts approaching Florida and everybody wakes up and seems to cares that I’ve been talking about it for weeks.”
Campbell has found that people also want local, detailed information about normal conditions like why it hasn’t rained, and when it will. So, outside of hurricanes, he shifts his focus to other weather, “That’s the other part I like,” he added. “I want to be informative. I want to provide the necessary information that I’m seeing at the time, so I don’t inundate people with stuff they probably don’t care about.” Depending on severity and rapid changes in the weather, Campbell has been known to post as much as 20 times a day.
What is satisfying for Campbell? “I’ve got farmers and organizations that follow the page because it helps them understand the specifics of what is going on for this area. It helps them with watering and what to expect for their crops.”
Campbell is encouraged by the feedback he gets. “Recently it’s just the compliments from people saying, ‘You’re really spot on.’ I’ve been told by several people that sometimes I will post information before they see anything about it on the news.”
Given the time, energy, and attention PC Weather Boy gives to his weather work, when storms approach, you will be able to get detailed, accurate weather specific to Plant City.
