Mark Sirois likes to get it right – and he likes to get it first.
An IT professional by day, Sirois is an amateur weather forecaster who spends much of his free time ensuring people in southern Quebec know what's coming.
And he’s good – so accurate that many of the province’s weather experts follow him.
His fascination with the forecast began as a teenager growing up in the Eastern Townships.
“I was always a big fan of thunderstorms, so I would take out a big almanac and put on my little weather radio with Environment Canada’s little blurb saying ‘weather warning,’ and I would track it as it was going through each hour,” said Sirois.
His passion for predicting became stronger with the growth of the internet. Sirois now has some 7,000 people watching and listening to his forecasts through his Facebook page and he also writes for Harrowsmith Almanac.
“It's always changing. There's no set scenario where you can say A plus B is going to equal C, because there's going to be a variable in there that's going to affect something. And trying to figure it out before it happens is the challenge,” he said.
While he said he's not competing with organizations such as Environment Canada, he loves the thrill of an accurate forecast.
“I was particularly proud at the end of November, (predicting) that it's going to be a white Christmas,” he said. “I got it right last night with snow north of Montreal and freezing rain to the west.”
He's developed such a following that many weather experts look to his page before they deliver the weather themselves, including CTV Montreal weather presenter Lise McAuley.
“He's my weather guy. He has a perspective that's different and that's broader than everybody, so I really like his forecasts,” she said.
Sirois said he's proud of what he's developed over the past nine years.
If I keep people safe from a thunderstorm of from freezing rain or a winter storm and they've booked their travel around a particular event, then I'm happy,” he said.
