Students across Montgomery County leap out of their beds in the morning to catch a glimpse of the infamous snow predictions twitter account @MCPSsnow. The person running the account is MCPS physical education and health teacher for the alternative education program at Blair G. Ewing Center Alex Tisronis.

Tisronis uses the account daily to share the weather and other events in MCPS. Many students and teachers alike follow him as a source for their daily weather. His account allows the MCPS community to know when they should expect a snow day, a two-hour delay, if the weather will be warm or if one needs to bundle up and face the cold.

“The account is a way for students to interact with others about weather and possible school closings and delays,” Tisronis said. “[Although] it’s important for everyone to remember that regardless of my prediction, everyone should [still] be prepared for a full day of school.”

According to Tisronis, his predictions are correct 95 percent of the time. He gets his information from local weather channels and also uses his personal predictions.

Tisronis started the website, mocosnow.com, five years ago as a way to share his weather predictions with students all over the county. He then started the Twitter account two years later to get the information out more quickly and to be more connected to today’s tech-savvy youth.

The account now has 8,403 followers and gains more each day. @MCPSsnow is growing rapidly across MCPS.

“I remember being excited about getting to 1,000 followers about a year ago. I never thought it would get this big, but now we have a goal to get to 10,000 followers by the end of this winter,” Tisronis said.

English teacher Anne Ehlers is an active follower of @MCPSsnow. She uses the account to check the weather the night before a suspected snow day and checks if the official MCPS website is not updating the day of.

“I think Twitter is really interesting for keeping up with things that haven’t hit the newspapers yet,” Ehlers said.

Sophomore Dashika Wijegooneratne also looks to @MCPSsnow daily for weather.

“I read his tweets every morning so I know how warm I will need to dress for the day,” Wijegooneratne said.

Freshman Jack Welch is also an active follower of @MCPSsnow he checks the account every night so he knows if he should expect a snow day or not.

“I’m so disappointed when MoCoSnow is wrong about a snow day, but when he’s right I love waking up late because I turned my alarm off the night before,” Welch said.
Tisronis now has a facebook, twitter, instagram and website. He also began selling t-shirts on his website spring of last year. Last year he only sold around 30 shirts by November, but numbers are growing.