Nearly every August morning I have crossed the Watauga River on the Sleepy Hollow bridge through some pretty thick fog. I lost count as per how many mornings we’ve had so I put in a phone call to my good friend and official SkiSoutheast.com fog counter and winter snow predictor, Allen Mast of the Mast General Store in beautiful "downtown" Valle Crucis, North Carolina. Allen and I go way back as I coached his daughter in soccer for several years. He and I were talking late last Winter and he told me that over the last five years or so that their system of tracking and predicting snowfalls has been almost 100% accurate. Another co-worker at Mast General Store (Becky) emphatically informed me that they have been 100% spot-on for the last few years.
Their system? J-E-L-L-Y B-E-A-N-S! What they do is drop a jelly bean in a jar for every foggy morning in August. Then each time it snows during the subsequent Winter they take one out. According to Allen, Becky and the whole Mast General Store crew, they have been amazingly accurate in predicting snows during the past several winters.
SO HOW MANY SO FAR???
As of Friday, Becky informed me that they had dropped TEN jelly beans in their jar. Add one for each of the last two days as Saturday and Sunday mornings were both draped in heavy fog as each day began. That brings us to 12 of 16 days thus far. Maybe it’s an old way of doing things, maybe it isn’t based on science, but who can argue with a near 100% track record?
It’s still Summer here in the southeast and we’ll take whatever promising news we can get!
Snow reporting. Who should you trust to provide that sort of news? We cover that subject and more on Monday. Be sure to check it out.
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