I envision my job as the chief hurricane and long-range forecaster as someone who is wrestling a weight class.

Because of this, I stay out of other people's business and adopt a wrestling team mentality: If others like what I do, they will pick up on it. If they don't, then I am not going to waste time trying to convince them to do so.

After all, if God wanted 100 Joe Bastardis, what would be the point of me?

This was not done with a plan in mind. In 2001, after winning a national title in bodybuilding, I started thinking that I trained a certain way in wrestling, and I now did it in bodybuilding. It was immensely frustrating to me that I had no real gift for either of those but had gone further in them than I had in what I knew I was blessed and obsessed with: the weather.

I decided two things:

1) To start wrestling in my job. 

I approach my job the way I trained: going to the wall, always trying to win, and not being satisfied with simply "not losing." (To this day, when I do an exercise called the squat, I do so without a spotter. Sounds stupid, right? Well it's fight or flight, and that forces you up.)

2) To lay everything out in front of the Lord who gave me my gifts.

This is very very tough to do. Some people think "leaning" on God means using a crutch, but I think it means using a stick that keeps driving you. You are constantly asking questions of yourself that you cannot answer but must try anyway.

A passage in Scripture that is very important to me has to do with doing the work before seeing the result. Interestingly enough, this same idea can be found in some rock and roll that I listen to.

Steppenwolf's "Born to be Wild" -- "Fire all of your guns at once, and explode into space." If you work hard enough to be in the arena, get out there fight like it.

Then there is "Backstreets" by Bruce Springsteen -- A tortured heartbroken soul cries: "And after all this time to find we're just like all the rest." I never wanted to be like all the rest. I learned to prepare and go as hard as I could. My dad drilled it into me from the get go: "I don't care what everyone else is doing, you do what is right" and "Don't compare yourself to others, compare yourself to what happened."

And so I started wrestling again at work. It's that simple.

I started using my "teammates" to improve myself. If a person has a strong, passionate argument, I decide to take another look at it. The same thing happens in wrestling; if someone has a great move, I try to learn it.

For example:

Regarding this winter, there were those who shared my school of thought, which came out first in July and again in October. This called for a cold, stormy winter (much like the winter of '02-'03), but one that would be warm and dry relative to averages for the run up to the Olympics. It wasn't until a big mid-February in 2003 that we got ahead of normal snowfall, and look what is happening now!

Other major services, including the government, had a milder idea. The energy department put out a forecast for 2 percent less energy usage this winter when compared to last year. Natural gas has dropped from a 15 percent surplus to a 4 percent deficit in mid-January, and February is probably going to be a record month for usage, given the colder-than-normal pattern.

I am the smallest service in the field, and the larger ones (including the government and other private forecasters) were all saying the back of winter was broken and it would not be cold. That idea took over and depressed the market in late January. Therefore, my people were losing money based on what others are saying, even though their forecasts regarding the first part of winter had worked out to be the polar opposite (a little weather humor there for you).

My clients were calling me left and right the last week of January because at that time and this past weekend, other forecasts were calling for warm weather. Then we had the blizzard and cold set in, and this week I believe we will have a snowstorm this afternoon into Wednesday with 4-8 inches, and even more over much of the area east and north of us with near blizzard conditions. (Editor's Note: This forecast was made Saturday. Joe Bastardi's updated forecast calls for 8-16 inches of snow.)

I think people don't understand that here in the private sector, if I am wrong enough, I get fired. Even if I am right, if the economy is bad, I can get fired.

So it's a high-pressure job. The market sorts out the weak and is unforgiving.

But so was wrestling Andy Matter.

I had done my work, pulling out analogs from 1958, 1978, 1969 and 2003. Night after night were spent looking at maps and different setups.

It's no different from wrestling, the willingness to drill over and over again and constantly hone skills. As Coach Koll would way, what would you do for one point? You never know when you'll need it, but how hard would you work to make that kind of difference? Lehigh Coach Pat Santoro once told me when he was here as an assistant coach, he always took the mat with two options: win or win big.

I look at my job in that way too. The willingness to do anything for just one point will show itself in the weather pattern this year. The forecast from when it was warm in January was cold and storminess for the nation into March, and it remains the same now. If it's right it's because I worked to score that point.

Elliot Abrams showed me something seven years ago about a certain pattern that sets up foretelling of bitter cold three weeks away. It's like he showed me a move. I took that move and made it mine. It just got stronger.

If I had not picked up the move from my teammate, or simply ignored it, I would not have been able to use it. That he was still "in the room" to help in large part saved the day. He is still almost a coach to me. He will suggest something, then I will go and work at it until I make it mine. 

It was the toughest week I have ever had here. I can't fight ghosts, and I don't know what other people look at. But just imagine being on the phone with major energy clients who are telling you no one sees what you are seeing, and their position is being eroded.

Okay, I admit, it's not as tough as being in the room, because I was made to forecast. But for five days I slept a total of 15 hours to make up for what what other people were seeing. As you watch the weather make headlines the next few weeks, go back to who said what and when about this winter. Rest assured, there was some Penn State wrestling involved in my forecast.

So after an exhausting two weeks, I showed up in the room Thursday and Casey Cunningham (who is always playing around with me) says, "Where have you been? Get your gear and let's roll." I told him he reminds me of Andy Matter, but I think he wants to pound me hard enough, so I say he is better than Andy. (I would have loved to see those two go at it. I'll have to write a column on that topic: the current coaching staff matched up against former PSU wrestling greats or coaches.) 

Little did he know that I have been wrestling in my job every day. And considering how far I went in wrestling given what I was given, I hope I can feel that way about what I was made to do: the weather.

There is only one way I can possibly do it with my job:

Keep wrestling... Penn State style.