John Farley

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Chief Meteorologist

 

John Farley has worked as a Meteorologist for more than 20 years and is honored to be the Chief Meteorologist for ABC Columbia. He understands the challenges of forecasting the ever-changing weather of the Midlands. That was never more important than on Saturday night October 3rd, when the worst storm of a generation dropped up to 21 inches of rain right here in Columbia. During that storm, John spent the night and following day in continuous coverage, warning viewers of the perils of the flooding. He says, “It’s a period of 36 hours that has left an indelible imprint on me. Seeing our neighbors, whose lives are now changed forever because of the power of this storm, is very impacting.”

Before joining ABC Columbia, he was the Chief Meteorologist for NBC Affiliate in Columbia for 5 years. Prior to that he was at KNTV, the NBC affiliate in San Francisco, where he was the Chief Meteorologist for 9 years. John is an EMMY Award winning meteorologist, and is a Certified Broadcast Meteorologist (CBM) with the American Meteorological Society. He holds a Master of Science Degree in Meteorology from San Jose State University, in San Jose, California, where he received the honor of Graduate of the Last Decade from the College of Science in 2001.

While in Graduate School, John worked with a team to create mathematical models that forecast the fog at San Francisco International Airport. His team was given the Excellence in Aviation Award from the FAA in 2002. John Farley is happy to report that the FAA still uses those models today. While in California, John also worked as a consultant for a power company which provides gas & electricity to roughly 16 million people. His responsibilities included temperature, wind, snow, and severe weather forecasting, as well as providing long-term electricity generation forecasts for proposed wind farms.

John loves to talk weather and he has visited with thousands of students over the past 20 years. He lives in Lexington with his wife and three children. They are all thrilled to call the Midlands home.

John Farley

Articles

July Was Hottest Month on Record

The European Climate Agency, Copernicus, has concluded that this July was the hottest month on record. They found that the global temperature was around 0.07°F warmer than July of 2016, which was the previous record holder.  NOAA and NASA also…

Today’s Forecast

Look for pretty typical August weather over the next several days.

September Asteroid Will Miss Earth

I have seen social media posts recently expressing concern that an asteroid (2006 QV89) might strike the earth in September. NASA and the European Space Agency have released their calculations and concluded that we have nothing to worry about. In…

Today’s Weather

Temperatures will run a bit cooler than average over the next few days. Besides that, look for scattered late-day storms through Monday.

Heatwave Causing Greenland’s Ice to Melt

You may recall last weeks record breaking heatwave in Europe, where many countries measured their hottest temperatures on record. Well that heat wave moved north to Greenland where temperatures are running 25° to 30° above normal. So this week's ice…