MANSFIELD — Judge Frank Ardis will not take a back seat to a groundhog when it comes to weather prognostication.
“I think I am more accurate than a woodchuck,” the veteran Mansfield Municipal Court jurist said with a laugh.
Fortunately, the two weather seers operate at opposite ends of the winter spectrum, meaning never the twain shall meet.
Punxsutawney Phil advises us in early February when winter will end. Ardis, using a secret formula he learned as a lad from a corner store owner, offers an early winter look at how many “tracking snows” we will see during that winter.
His prediction for the winter of 2021-2022?
24 tracking snows.
The judge’s definition of a tracking snow is as scientific and tongue-in-cheek as the formula used to predict it, annual prognostications he has shared with local media for decades.
He foresees quantities of snowfalls, not quantities of snow depth.
“A tracking snow is one in which a near-sighted man could track a rabbit,” the 72-year-old Ardis said. “It has to be within a 24-hour period. If it snows twice in one day … it’s still one snow.
“We have had three already and we will get 21 more,” he said with a confidence borne by equal parts weather hubris and the fact not even the National Weather Service is actually held accountable for prediction follies.
What’s the key to his prediction formula, a method he learned as a boy from the owner of a store at the corner of Helen Avenue and West Fourth Street?
“I grew up on Rowland Avenue and back in those days, we all hung out at a little neighborhood store. Scott Brown divulged his formula to me,” said Ardis, who took to the court bench via a gubernatorial appointment in 2010.
So … what is the formula?
“One important part is the date of the first snow … you can’t do it until we get the first one. The first one this year was Nov. 14. You gotta know the date of that first storm and also look at the date of the new moon,” Ardis said.
“I am not going to get much more into the formula than that,” he said with a solemnity not matched by the topic at hand.
Ardis, who is the midst of his last term on the bench, had better hope he is more accurate this winter than last — his worst on record.
“Last year was a fluke,” he said. “I predicted 45 snows and we only had 23. Everyone wants to blame everything on COVID. I am not doing that. I am blaming Mother Nature.”
Ardis has had winters of uncanny accuracy. In 2015-2016, his secret formula told him there would be only 11 tracking snows. There were exactly 11 that winter.
He has also come close on many occasions. Ardis predicted 26 snows in 2019-2020 and the total was 22. In 2017-2018, he predicted 30 and the total was 32.
Just don’t blame Ardis if his snowy forecast fails to accurately predict. The NWS office in Cleveland has a difficult time predicting snowfalls within a 24-hour window.
“And they have all those computers and models,” he said with another laugh.
