While students endure the trials and tribulations of winter weather, local forecasters have been bearing the brunt of weather woes.

Local weather forecasting services have been more than a little busy in the past weeks because of some of the craziest weather this area has seen in a while.

"Basically, we've taken a normally cold and snowy time of the year and amplified it," said Jonathan Merritt, a University meteorologist.

Merritt works with the Campus Weather Service, an on-campus service that provides students, faculty and the general public with forecasts through Telephone Information Penn State (TIPS) and WPSU-FM radio.

Merritt said the center can get increasingly stressful when there is a big storm arriving, especially when rumors abound. He said a rumor about a 50-inch snowstorm on Sunday was a perfect example.

"When you take your 40th or 50th call about a storm that's not going to happen, of course you get stress," he said.

Merritt said people should turn to responsible outlets like radio, television or the newspaper to get their weather -- not rumors.

Accu-Weather, 619 W. College Ave., has also been feeling the brunt of the weather rumors.

"It gets to be a game of whisper down the lane," said Ken Reeves, a senior forecaster at Accu-Weather.

Accu-Weather provides thousands of customers worldwide with varying degrees of forecasts. Reeves said accuracy is always a concern when trying to predict the future.

Reeves said the center gets busy whenever a large storm is being predicted. Normally, there are seven or eight forecasters working at the center. But when a big storm is brewing, Reeves said there can be as many as 20 or 25 forecasters on the job.

But although forecasting services such as Accu-Weather and the Campus Weather Service are highly accurate, they do encounter some problems.

"I'd look kinda stupid if I said that we were never wrong," Reeves said. "Forecasters are not infallible, just like doctors are not infallible. You can't be right all the time, it's idealistic."

Merritt said the forecasters on campus are highly accurate and predicted temperatures are rarely more than 5 degrees off the mark.

Laurie Gerner (junior-secondary education) said she pays close attention to the weather and generally has no complaints. She said people may tend to rely on the forecasts a bit too much.

But Brian Burns (sophomore-business logistics) said forecasters' predictions seem right only about 50 percent of the time.

"I guess they can't always be right," Burns said.

Accu-Weather forecasters take various types of measurements to make their forecasts as precise as possible, such as checking their predictions after the fact to see how accurate they were and how they can be improved, Reeves said.

When forecasting big storms, he said forecasters try to look at past similar situations to make their predictions. No two storms are the same, however, and it can get very complicated.

As for Merritt, he suggests a more "simple" method of improving accuracy.

"It's called getting a degree," Merritt said.