Date: Monday, November 2, 1998
Corrections: FOR THE RECORD
(Unpublished correction) - The 76 inches of snow that fell
during the winter of 1993-1994 set a record for the most snowfall in one winter.
INSTANT WEATHER 50 YEARS' WORTH OF DATA IS JUST KEYSTROKES AWAY FOR METEORLOGIST
CHARLES GIANNETTA OF BATH by KATHLEEN PARRISH, The Morning Call
Think fast. What was the hottest day in 1998? "I can tell you that very quick," said
Charles Giannetta, a meteorologist who retired from the National Weather Service at
Lehigh Valley International Airport and spent the past year putting 50 years of
Weather data into his computer. A few quick keystrokes later, and Giannetta had the answer.
"It was July 22, when the thermometer registered 91 degrees," said Giannetta. "Actually,
that isn't too bad. It was a cool year." Meteorologist emeritus Giannetta of Bath literally
has a half-century of weather patterns at his fingertips.
Want to know what year holds the record for the most snow in the Lehigh Valley? How
about the coldest day in 50 years; or the warmest; or what time the sun rose on the day
you were born?
Just e-mail him or check out his Web site, where he explains everything from the
misunderstood bad boy of weather systems, El Nino, to what causes clouds to form.
"If I can help them, I will," said Giannetta. "We have it minute by minute, every element
you can think of." Giannetta retired from the weather service in 1992 after nearly 36 years.
He teaches a course on meteorology at Northampton Community College.
His wife, Gini, is a cooperative observer for the weather service, one of 5,000 in the
country and the only one in Northampton County. Combined, the two possess an impressive
understanding of Mother Nature. "It's a joint effort," Giannetta said of the Web site.
Giannetta said he hasn't advertised the Web site, which usually gets about 10 hits a day,
meaning roughly 700 people have visited it since it went up in July.
"I'm interested in passing on what I know to people," he said. He also enjoys operating
his ham radio. He has received e-mail from all over the United States and has helped a
person in South Carolina build a home-based weather station and a computer user in Florida
construct a barometer.
"That's the thrill, that I can do that," said Giannetta, 62. The site, which is more than
100 pages deep, contains everything from information about hurricanes and rainbows to 12
years of data collected by his wife from her backyard weather shelter and a summary of
weather conditions for 1993-97.
For example, the average temperature for last year was 51.3 degrees. The high temperature hit
93 degrees on Aug. 16, and the low registered zero degrees on Jan. 19. On the site are articles
Giannetta published on weather and a table to calculate sunrises, sunsets and moon phases.
"I checked around, and there's nothing like this site," said Giannetta, who hopes schools will
find it useful.
There's no one like Giannetta, either, whose interest in weather began when he was 13 and
living in Dunmore, Lackawanna County. Using information gleaned from a weather station at
his home, he would write his forecasts on cards and pass them out to neighbors, place them
in store windows and in the library of Dunmore Senior High School.
Giannetta also installed lights on the top of his house to inform neighbors about weather
conditions. A red light meant it was going to be hot; a blue light, cold, and a flashing
red light, thunderstorms. His first job was as an analyst assistant for the weather service
in Washington, D.C., where he received data from a weather balloon hovering at 100,000 feet.
"The central office is actually the best place to learn weather, but after five years, we
couldn't handle the hot, muggy weather," he said. In 1961, he was transferred to Buffalo, N.Y.,
as a surface and upper air observer, and in 1971 he came to Lehigh Valley International
Airport as a meteorologist. His responsibilities included giving general forecasts for the
Lehigh Valley and the Poconos, aviation forecasts and pilot briefings.
"The Lehigh Valley is a big area," he said. "They only remember you when you're wrong." and
Giannetta is not too proud to admit blowing a forecast or two. Once he predicted it would
snow 7 inches. It rained instead. "The cooler air never got over the ridge of the
Blue Mountain," he explained. Not everyone is understanding of an erroneous forecast,
he said. When working in Buffalo, he had green tomatoes thrown at his home and razor blades
put in his pool. Once, he received a phone call from someone threatening to kill him if he
didn't "make the weather nice." "I'd tell people, `Look, I'm not God,'" he said.
In 1983, Giannetta worked 33 hours straight at LVIA, updating forecasts and giving out
storm warnings and alerts during the largest snowstorm on record. When the last flake had
fallen, 25 inches of snow was on the ground. "I have the distinct honor of working the
heaviest snow in Allentown," he said. "It was a night with no wind. The only noise you
heard was the snow coming down. It was very peaceful."
But don't expect a white Christmas this year. "There's virtually a zero percent chance,"
he said. "If you look at all the data over the years, not one year out of 50 did it snow
on Christmas. But that's the freak thing about weather, this year we'll get 10 feet."
When asked of other weather trends foreshadowed by his data, Giannetta said there wasn't
enough of it to make predictions. "Fifty years isn't enough," he said "I'd need about
a million." But he has noticed interesting occurrences.
"I found that 1997 was a pretty wet year, and 1996 and 1995 were drier years. It surprised
me a little bit. I thought, `What's going on?' Well, who knows? The big thing is El Nino,
but whether or not you can pin it on El Nino, I don't know." A lot, he said, depends on the
"man upstairs." "If He wants it to rain, it will."
E-mail Giannetta at wxdata@enter.net or check out his Web site at www.enter.net/wxdata
CHART by THE MORNING CALL SOURCE: Charles Giannetta, National Weather
Service meteorologist emeritus
CAPTION: LEHIGH VALLEY WEATHER RECORDS
Dryest year --....1991.....-- 30.16 inches of precipitation.
Wettest year --...1952.....-- 67.69 inches of precipitation.
Hottest summer -- 1949.....-- Average temp. 75.3 degrees.
Coldest winter -- 1970.....-- Average temp. 27 degrees.
Most snowfall in one season -- 1994 -- 106.8 inches.
Feb. 11, 1993 --..24 inches in one day.
"WEATHER BY GIANNETTA"