Joel Gratz is the founding meteorologist and Colorado forecaster for OpenSnow, a website and mobile app that provides snow forecasts and travel advice to over 2.5 million skiers and snowboarders annually.
Joel graduated from Penn State with a degree in meteorology and then earned his MS and MBA from the University of Colorado. As a die-hard skier and powder seeker, Joel spent years studying local weather patterns and made his first public snow forecast in 2007 to an email list of 38 people. In 2011, Joel left his day job to work on OpenSnow.com full time. The site has grown since then and now includes skiing weather forecasters across the country.
When he’s not forecasting and running the business, Joel talks excitedly about weather to anyone who will listen and he also finds plenty of time to enjoy the outdoors through skiing, biking, hiking, and even chasing and photographing thunderstorms and tornadoes. Joel, his wife Lauren, and son Levi live in Boulder, CO, but when the snow flies, they hit the road to personally test his forecasts.