The "His Passion Always Was Climbing" Story

It was an ordinary day.  Walked out the drive to the curb and picked up my Sunday LNP Newspaper.  The Sunday paper is always the thickest paper of the week, since it has  several additional sections to it.  As I walked back toward the house I took a quick look at the front page and across the top of the national section was a small photo of Lancaster's longtime local meteorologist, Eric Horst.  One short sentence told me that he is putting his forecasting aside to pursue another lifelong passion.  Without even having to look at the "Local" section of the paper I knew exactly what the passion was.  

Eric Horst, renounced meteorologist and rock climber

It was close to 40 years ago that I had Eric in my photography class at Manheim Township High School.  Eric was one of my favorite students who seemed to excel at everything he did.  During his High School career he was a member of the Boy's Gymnastic team which perhaps unknowingly saved his life his senior year.  Eric was scheduled to go rock climbing with two friends on Mount Washington in New Hampshire on a weekend in January, but since he was scheduled to participate in a gymnastic meet, he opted out of the rock climbing trip.  His decision perhaps saved his life, since both of his friends, Jeff Batzer and Hugh Herr, became lost on the mountain and almost lost their lives.  Both lost multiple body parts due to the climb.  

Eric displays his skill

Eric's longtime passion is rock climbing and he has passed that along to both his sons who both are world-class climbers.  So, it's pretty easy to see why Eric plans to continue his passion upon retirement from his 32 year job as being Lancaster County's most accessible, trusted and straight-shooting meteorologists.  Eric will be retiring as director of Millersville University's Weather Information Center to go rock climbing!  He loved his job and was the best at what he did, but rock climbing is in his blood and he evidently misses it too much.  He will no longer have to endure all-night vigils of watching winter storms unfold, posting tweets and mentoring college students.  Eric was considered a "Superhero" to many people due to his very reliable weather predictions.  One such person is Warwick Superintendent April Hershey who counted on Eric for his predictions to see if she should cancel school during bad weather.  Many of Lancaster, Pennsylvania's emergency management coordinators also relied on Eric's long-range winter predictions to plan their budgets for the winter.  The eight counties in Pennsylvania Dept. of Transportation also counted on Eric's forecasting so much that they hired him to do weather forecasts tailored for each county.  For 26 years Eric helped PennDOT which brought in money for Millersville's meteorology department and gave hands-on training for Millersville' students.  I remember Eric as a perfectionist as a student who strived to make his photographic prints as perfect as he could.  He was the same way with his weather forecasting.  His online forecasts were viewed by close to 1.5 million website views a month.  The general public relied on his forecasts as did I.  Tune in to Eric's site and you knew exactly what to expect.  He had a special talent that many meteorologists just don't have.  He almost always had perfect predictions.  As a professor at Millersville, Eric had 20 students his first year in 1988.  When he retired last month it had increased to over 120 each year.  Boy will they miss him.   Eric does admit that his obsession to get his predictions right carried tremendous pressure.  At times it drove him crazy knowing he had to have a perfect prediction.  He seemed to have a second sense which went way back to his senior year when he missed that trip to Mount Washington.  Joe Calhoun, Lancaster's Channel 8 television station's meteorologist said he too is impressed with Eric's talent in forecasting.  He calls Eric a forecaster's forecaster!  He says, "You need to be a scientist first and be able to see when the data supports or doesn't support the model output."  Eric fits the mold perfectly.  

One of Eric's many books he has written.

Another one of Eric's strong points is he never made predictions before he felt enough was known about a storm.  We who live in Lancaster County know Eric best for his weather predictions, but in other parts of the country, and even the world, he is best known for his rock-climbing abilities.  Eric has written eight books and has a website titled, 

"Training for climbing.com", which gets more that 100,000 visits a month.  He hopes to have a chance to climb with his two sons, Cameron who is a professional climber and Jonathan who also climbs.   I have written blog stories about both in the past.  Although he will no longer be predicting weather for a profession, he more than likely will predict it for his climbing adventures he will have in the future.  I wish him the best in the future. It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.