Penn State Meteorology wins second straight national forecasting title

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. -- For the second consecutive year, a team of Penn State students captured first place in the Weather Challenge, a North American collegiate weather forecasting competition.

Penn State's forecasters bested teams from more than fifty other universities. The top five Penn State forecasters were senior Ryan Kramer, junior Brad Yehl, and graduate students Kyle Imhoff, Josh Boden, and Michael Goss.  Their names will be engraved on the Weather Challenge trophy which will reside at Penn State during the 2013-14 academic year.

Kramer was the individual Weather Challenge national champion, finishing with the top cumulative score among all forecasters.  He is the first Penn State student to win the overall championship in the seven-year history of the Weather Challenge.  Imhoff finished second overall and first among all graduate students nationwide, while Boden and Goss finished second and third in the graduate student category.  Michael Priante, Matthew Strauser and Sean Romeo finished first, second, and fourth, respectively, among all freshmen and sophomore forecasters nationwide.

Other members of the team were freshmen William Chittester, Brenden Moses, Mitchell Drabenstott and Ryan Belz, sophomores Andrew Thomas and Michael Johnston, juniors Yale Williams and Joseph Carolan, seniors Matthew Mehallow, Brittany Recker, Trever Steele, Jaron Breen, Gregory Woloszyn, Zachary Fasnacht, Steven Engblom and Mariguel Gonzalez, graduate student Jase Bernhardt, World Campus student Matthew Gallagher, and faculty member Steve Seman.

During the twenty-week forecasting contest that ran from September to April, students predicted high and low temperatures, precipitation, and wind speeds at ten different cities.  Some of this year's forecast locations included Duluth, MN, Astoria, OR, and Louisville, KY.  SUNY-Albany finished second overall in the forecasting competition, followed by Georgia Tech, Mississippi State, and MIT.