Matthew Charchenko was about 6 and a half years old when he first became interested in weather forecasting.

His family’s house was being repainted and they were staying in a hotel. There was nothing interesting on TV until Matthew landed on the Weather Channel.

“It just clicked,” he said.

Matthew is now 14 and his interest has never waned.

In September 2011, the ninth grader from The Overlake School started an organization called GeoEnvironmental Atmosphere (GEA) with a friend from Pennsylvania. GEA focuses on correlating the geo-environmental and atmospheric sciences into one to forecast the weather throughout the United States.

According to its website, GEA team members analyze the atmosphere and upcoming disturbances and then work to understand what effect this will have on the environment and landmasses.

Matthew said the latter is important in weather forecasting because different types of weather systems will affect different land conditions differently. For example, he said an area where the land is very saturated is more likely to flood during a rainstorm than an area that is not saturated.

Before starting GEA Matthew was part of another organization called AnalystWxCast, which also focused on weather forecasting but had less of an emphasis on the environment and landmasses.

Matthew said forecast models usually look at the next 15 days, but looking that far ahead is not very trustworthy because so much can change. He said trying to predict the weather closer to eight days in advance paints a more accurate picture, but there is still room for change.

In Western Washington, Matthew said it can be particularly difficult because the topography throughout is so varied with so many microclimates that a single hill could have four inches of snow at the top and only one at the bottom of the hill.

“(Weather is) very hard to predict (here),” he said.

While weather forecasting can be a challenge, Matthew finds it exciting. He said during the mid-January snowstorm he would stay up late monitoring weather models. Matthew admitted that he spent his days off from school looking at weather models instead of playing in the snow.

One of the things about forecasting that caught Matthew’s interest was how little things can cause big changes in the weather. He also likes that he is always learning something new.

“It’s constantly a learning process,” he said.

And Matthew plans to continue learning in the field as he plans to have a career in weather forecasting.

“I am hoping to become a broadcast meteorologist,” he said.