What if you could know the timing of significant weather events for your area during the next six months with 91% accuracy?
Now you can, according to Gary Lezak, a former meteorologist with KSHB-TV in Kansas City turned weather entrepreneur.
Lezak’s business, Weather 20/20, provides weather-based data analytics on a global basis to its customers, who range from farmers to retailers to general consumers.
Eighty Years In The Making
Lezak learned in the mid-1980s that a weather cycle exists, an insight he attributes to Jerome Namais, who first addressed the concept in the 1940s. Namais, a renowned American meteorologist, was Chief of the United States Weather Bureau’s Extended Forecast Section in Washington, D.C. from 1941 to 1971.
“What it’s all about is the weather pattern above us – the river of air that goes across North America through the westerly belt, across to Europe, Asia, and then back around across the Pacific. That jet stream flow, that river of air above us, has an order to it,” Lezak told Andrew McCrea, host of the Farming The Countryside podcast, during a recent conversation.
For the next 20 years Lezak continued to study the weather cycling concept, refining what he learned as he went along.
By the early 2000s, Lezak was blogging about what he had learned, eventually calling the concept he developed the Lezak Recurring Cycle (LRC). He founded Weather 20/20 in 2008.
“The LRC is all about the cycle,” Lezak says. “After many years of practicing it, 20 to 30 years of using it, we are able to predict when and where and a little bit of the what,” with regard to weather, he told McCrea.
The core tenet of the LRC is that a unique weather pattern establishes itself every year. It starts to set up in early October, with develpment continuing through early January. By then, Lezak says the pattern can be identified and predictions of every day’s weather around the world can be produced.
Based on the LRC, Lezak says he can predict with a 91% accuracy level when and where there will be major weather events – from snowstorms to hurricanes to droughts – for the next seven to eight months in the U.S.
“That (timing) is the sweet spot of the LRC and fits agriculture perfectly,” Lezak says.
He adds that Mother Nature still creates weather disruptions he can’t predict 9% of the time, based on influences such as El Nino, La Nina and the Arctic Oscillation.
Lezak’s take on the accuracy of weather forecasts differs from what the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) reports, though an apples-to-apples comparison is not available.
The NOAA says a seven-day forecast can accurately predict the weather about 80 percent of the time and a five-day forecast can accurately predict the weather approximately 90 percent of the time. However, a 10-day—or longer—forecast is only right about half the time.
Agriculture Takes Notice
As Lezak was honing the development of the LRC in the early 2000s, fellow meteorologist, Dean Wysocki, then based in Nebraska, learned of it and reached out to Lezak for more details.
Wysocki started using the information he learned during his broadcasts, noting that Nebraska farmers were hungry for more accurate weather insights and predictions.
“I’ll tell you what, it’s a game changer. That’s the easiest way to put it,” says Wysocki, who joined Lezak on the podcast.
Wysocki, now based in Fargo, N.D., got LRC certified and began telling farmers in the Dakotas and Minnesota about its benefits.
“It’s a major piece of long-term weather forecasting, and the accuracy on it has just been amazing,” Wysocki says. “We’ve signed up between about 50 to 100 in our ag community and we’ve got nothing but positive feedback. Is it 100% correct? No, nothing is, but it’s a great tool to have on your tool belt.”
The Weather Outlook Ahead
During the conversation with McCrea, Lezak and Wysocki shared some of their weather predictions for late winter and early spring 2025, based on information the LRC has provided. Here are three of their predictions:
1. Lezak says a La Nina, which is the cooling of the tropical Pacific Ocean, has a grip currently on parts of the western and upper Corn Belt areas, but he expects that to ease up.
“That grip that it has tends to shift precipitation patterns to the eastern Corn Belt. That’s not good for Nebraska, Kansas, Iowa, Minnesota, North Dakota and South Dakota,” Lezak says. “It shifts precipitation patterns to the East, but that grip we think is going to be let loose by March.”
2. Wysocki says he foresees a wetter spring, in March and April, for most of the Dakotas.
“We’ll get our moisture that we need in March and more than likely into the first part of April, and that should be good for planting season,” he says. “I’m still concerned about the western Dakotas into areas of Montana and Wyoming, worried that they’ll remain dry.”
3. With regard to drought, Lezak encourages farmers to keep an eye on the weekly U.S. Drought Monitor, as he says droughts are constantly either shrinking or expanding.
“It appears that over the last year or so that areas of drought, as we look at the entire nation, have begun to decrease,” he says. “This one has been shrinking for weeks, and that is a good sign. The likelihood of that trend continuing is high.”
Wysocki and Lezak offered additional weather insights during their conversation with McCrea. You can hear more of those specifics on the podcast, available here:
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