Groton’s own ‘no hype weatherman’

The weather is more than just whether the sun shines or it rains or snows — it is truly a passion for Groton High School alum Drew Montreuil ’07.

Montreuil moved to Groton from Pennsylvania with his family at the age of 3. He said he has always been interested in the weather and can remember drawing weather maps of his own volition at the age of 4.

Local meteorologist Dave Eichorn, from WSYR in Syracuse, did a class presentation when Montreuil was in fourth grade, after which he was invited by Eichorn to visit the weather station. He visited, and there was no turning back after that.

Today, Montreuil is the founder and owner of flxweather.com — known for its honest, accurate, accessible, no-hype local weather forecasts for the Finger Lakes area — a website that has evolved since its humble beginnings in 2006 when he was a junior in high school.

Montreuil’s classmates were perpetually asking him if there would be a snow day, prompting him to put his forecasts on the internet. On his own, he purchased a website, named it Grotonweather.com (no longer active) and began publishing daily forecasts.

While obtaining his meteorology degree at SUNY Oswego, Montreuil continued to update his site from there. He was part of an honors program involved in a research project studying how the public interprets weather forecasts and how they choose to apply them to their daily lives.

This helped him to shape his style of forecasting, making it useful to people and emphasizing his confidence level — thus earning him the informal title of the “no-hype weatherman.”

Montreuil takes pride in not downplaying the seriousness of a weather event but also not hyping up events less certain to occur.
Montreuil earned his master’s degree in 2015 from Cornell University’s Atmospheric Sciences program. While at Cornell, Montreuil expanded his forecasts to encompass the entire Finger Lakes area and launched flxweather.com.

This mushroomed into marketing his personalized forecasting services to local schools, golf courses, farms, wineries, orchards, summer camps and construction firms. This helped them to plan around the impact of specific localized weather to minimize losses and increase productivity.

“Finger Lakes Weather is the fulfillment of my lifelong passion for meteorology and the Finger Lakes region,” Montreuil said.

Today, while Montreuil still offers personalized services, his primary focus is on fulfilling his no-hype promise to the public with three core values: honesty, accuracy and accessibility.

“Weather hype is a huge problem with news reports stretching the bounds of science by using hype to capture your attention,” Montreuil said. “Not so with Finger Lakes Weather. I mean every word of every forecast. You can absolutely rely on me to report the weather as it is.”

Montreuil takes great pride in his strive for accuracy.

“I am not always right. There is always more to learn,” he said. “Still, my experience forecasting and living right here in the Finger Lakes, combined with my healthy skepticism of computer models and reliance on experience, gives me a huge advantage. As I forecast, I rely on good old-fashioned experience, intuition and scientific reasoning to interpret computer projections, draw my own maps and deliver forecasts made by a human, not a machine.”

Montreuil is committed to getting the best weather information he can provide to as many people as possible in a timely manner, at no cost to them, including the use of forecast confidence ratings and live, interactive updates during extreme weather.

He even offers a free daily forecast delivered to an individual’s email address, as well as the ability to message him directly via email from the flxweather.com website or Facebook Messenger for questions or updates.

“I just don’t want people to not get the information they need to be safe because they can’t afford to pay for it,” he said. “The website is subsidized similarly to the model of public access radio or television via monthly donations or advertising on the site.”

Montreuil explained that he has held some major fund drives over the past three years, with the most recent one happening now to help underwrite the cost of his next exciting venture, which is a weather app currently in the testing phase but ready to launch very soon.

Another of Montreuil’s entrepreneurial ventures is primarily his wife’s, Maria’s, business, Ye Olde Goat Cart, which sells handmade soaps, lotions, bath soaks and more, made from the milk of the Montreuils’ own goats.

Drew and Maria met online in high school in a Narnia books and movies discussion forum and became fast friends. Maria lived in St. Paul, Minnesota, but eventually, they met in person in 2009, fell in love and married in 2011. They are now raising their four young sons, ages 7 to 6 months, as well as their eight goats.

Maria hand-milks the goats daily from May to October or so and makes all the soaps and other products. Drew handles the website, yeoldegoatcart.com, and promotions for the company.

Drew expressed their sadness over not being able to attend the vendor events they usually rely on to bring their goat milk products to the public, particularly the annual Groton French Club craft show, which would have been held Saturday, Nov. 14 this year.

Drew and Maria are planning a very special promotion in lieu of the craft show and ask that those interested keep an eye on the website or follow them on Facebook or Instagram for details.

If you are not currently following Finger Lakes Weather on Facebook, you may want to join its 17,400 followers there. You may also want to visit the flxweather.com website, especially with the season of snow and storms imminently upon us, and to stay abreast of the launch of the Finger Lakes Weather app.

Groton on the Inside appears weekly. Submit news ideas to Linda Competillo, lmc10@cornell.edu or 607-227-4922.

In brief:

Pulled pork in McLean

The McLean Community Church Women’s Fellowship will hold a takeout pulled pork lunch from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 7. Enter through the parking lot at 50 Church St.

The $10 meal includes a pulled pork sandwich, macaroni and cheese, coleslaw and homemade apple cake.

Annual Thanksgiving pie sale

Due to the restrictions of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Groton Assembly of God Women’s Ministries group will be unable to hold its annual Thanksgiving pie sale in the lobby of the First National Bank of Groton, as it normally does on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving.

In lieu of the bank lobby, pies will be sold via pre-order only and picked up curbside from 9 a.m. to noon Saturday, Nov. 25 at Groton Assembly of God, 701 S. Main St.

Traditional and Dutch apple, cherry and pumpkins pies are available for $10 each. Banana, banana nut, pumpkin and zucchini breads are available for $5 each.

To preorder your pies and breads, contact Caren Arnold at (607) 229-6552 or carend1625@gmail.com.

Library news

The Groton Public Library will open by appointment Wednesday, Nov. 11. Patrons may book a browsing (20 minutes) or computer (50 minutes) appointment by calling (607) 898-5055. Appointment hours are 4 to 7 p.m. Wednesday and Thursday.
Contactless curbside pickup will continue from 1 to 6 p.m. Tuesdays and Fridays, 1 to 7 p.m. Wednesdays and Thursdays, and 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturdays.

GPL also has movie bundles for the holidays. Each movie bundle comes with at least two movies, microwave popcorn and candy for the whole family. Bundles may be checked out for three days, starting on Thursday so you can have the whole weekend to watch. Keep an eye on social media to see the Thanksgiving-themed bundles so you can call and place a hold.

The monthly meeting of the GPL Board of Trustees will be held at 5:30 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 12. The public is welcome to attend the meetings on Zoom. Please request the link from director@grotonpubliclibrary.org.