Weather Worries? Better Check with Pye!

Charles “Pye” Plasko has transformed into a local celebrity. In 2013, at the urging of a former student, Pye took his love of weather to Facebook and started the page, Pye’s Greene County Weather. Four years later, 8000+ people follow his local forecasts. His followers are as far away as Grove City and Oklahoma. Even the Township Supervisors are known to give Pye a call about the weather to plan ahead.

No one was more surprised then Pye himself in the popularity of his page. “It’s definitely changed my life a little,” he confesses. He runs into fans of his page everywhere – the post office, the store, even at the park walking his dog. Pye recounts, “I was walking my dog at the park. A lady stopped me and asked, ‘Are you Pye?’ I said I was, and she got excited and said, ‘I can’t believe I met you!’”

Pye’s love of weather started in grade school. Like most children, he waited anxiously during winter to hear that magical phrase – snow day. One year the weatherman made a forecast that would lead to a snow day, so young Pye went to bed happy. When he woke up the next morning, he ran excitedly to the window to see all the snow… but there was nothing.

How could the weatherman be so wrong? From that moment on, Pye was hooked. Daily, he began charting the weather himself. He earned a bachelor’s and master’s degree in Earth Science from California University, with classes focusing on meteorology and astronomy and thoughts of possibly working for the Weather Channel.

Instead of the Weather Channel, Pye took his education to Carmichaels Area High School, where he taught for 32 years before retiring in June 2007. While he worked at the school, he was always the go-to guy for the weather; if you wondered what the weather would be doing, you went to see Pye. After retiring from the school, Pye became a realtor. He’s also spent time with both Nemacolin and Carmichaels VFD; he still runs with Carmichaels as an engineer/driver. But it’s the weather that he looks forward to every day.

Pye gets up early, around 6/6:30am daily, to check the graphs and make sure he has something available for his followers. “I’m excited to get up every day to see what’s going on,” Pye says. “Especially if something big is coming, like a snowstorm.” On those big weather event days, he gets up around 4:30/5am.

Pye uses a combination of information sources to create his forecasts. He looks at the information provided by European Centre for Medium-Range Weather (ECMW), the Global Forecast System (GFS), and NWS Pittsburgh to create the foundation of his forecast. He then uses his general knowledge of similar past weather conditions and knowledge of the area to make a more accurate and localized forecast. It takes about an hour and a half to 2 hours to go over all of his sources and compile the information.

Pye acknowledges there are challenges in predicting Greene County weather, especially when trying to go more than a day or two out. The remote areas of Greene County, especially the valleys can see a different weather than the rest of the county, especially in severe cold. There’s also the task of making sure that people understand the graphic models are not a guaranteed prediction because there are so many other factors. But the rewards balance out those challenges. “I like being right,” Pye admits, “Especially when everyone else is wrong!” He laughed, then said, “I also like that people learn a little bit about the weather when I do this. It’s like I’m still teaching a little.”

“He takes it so seriously,” his wife, Kathy, says. “But it’s sparked a good thing in him. It gives him something to do and keeps him active. He even works on it when we’re on vacation!” She adds, “Everyone asks me at work what Pye says the weather will be like. I’m proud of what he’s done.”

Visit Pye’s Greene County Weather at : https://www.facebook.com/pyesweather/.

Published in March 2018 GreeneScene Magazine.