“Shane said it would”: Local musician excels at weather forecasting

Shane Pruitt poses with his son River at Fretwell in Spartanburg.

As he picked up his coffee order on Thursday morning in Spartanburg, Shane Pruitt was stopped by a friend who was raving about his forecast ahead of the Upstate’s recent ice storm.

“I told all my friends Shane said it would,” she said with a wide grin. “You said just what was going to happen.”

Indeed, Pruitt correctly called the temperature differences and the increased sleet accumulation - and lower ice totals - than what were being forecast area-wide. In fact, he was the only forecaster to make the correct call on the amount of sleet.

Not bad for a guitar player on Facebook.

Wait, what? We can explain.

If you’re a fan of live music in the Spartanburg area, or have been for a couple of decades now, you likely know Pruitt’s name. Yes, the guy with the mane of red hair you’ve seen shredding a guitar on stage with the likes of the Marshall Tucker Band, and ten times as many small local stages, is the same guy who’s earned his neighbors’ trust by forecasting the weather.

How’d he get so proficient at both? Practice, and an early start.

“I’ve been around here all my life playing music,” he explained. “I started playing when I was 15. I got a reputation early on when I was a kid that I was pretty good on an instrument. I had a lot of fire. It just came naturally.”

So naturally, that when Pruitt says he’s “pretty good on an instrument”, that statement is difficult to qualify as to which one he means.

“Guitar is my main instrument,” he said. “All my dad’s people played, old Southern gospel and bluegrass. I can play a little mandolin, a little banjo, lap dulcimer, guitar, bass, a little piano, drums. I can play just about anything I put my hands on.”

Playing music at all hours - basically a job that covers what would be a traditional late second and early third shift - allows for a little bit of free time and the pursuit of some hobbies. Pruitt’s hobby is predicting the weather.

“It’s probably my first,” he said. “I was doing the weather thing before I even played music at home.”

Pruitt’s son, River, is nine years old and already interested in the weather. He said his own interest began even before that.

“He’s nine now, and I think I was even a little younger than him,” he said. “Maybe when I was about seven. I was already into reading the maps and figuring things out. I was the kid who had a weather scanner in my room from elementary school through high school. And when it came time for snow, I was in my room all night listening to that thing until the sun came up.”

His proficiency at forecasting - and a reputation for it - followed quickly.

“Even back to elementary school, and continuing today, people knew I was calling the weather,” he said. “What’s it gonna do, Shane? It’s so funny, even still today I run into those people and they’ll ask if I’m still into the weather.”

Pruitt said he had a love for science and history in school, focusing on those subjects. That love and his fascination with the weather combined with a little bit of old-timey knowledge from his Appalachian roots. He said those time-honored portents can still help forecast the weather even in today’s tech-heavy age, if you know what you’re looking for.

“They’re all rooted in some sort of science,” he said. “Those old folklore signs, there are still five or six of them that I use today and if I see them I know something’s coming. Birds gathering - usually two or three days before, definitely the day before. Smoke coming out of a chimney, if it’s hanging low to the ground and not going straight up, snow or ice is coming in a day or two. There are others, but those are the two that signify the most now.”

The birds are reacting to internal signs. The low-hanging smoke means a drop in barometric pressure. The fact that the old mountain folk who watched such things didn’t know those terms don’t mean they were any less effective. Pruitt says they still are.

“Those signs are true to this day,” he said. “Like snow clouds - they’re a low-hanging stratus cloud, a ripple effect. You can tell when a really cold front is moving in with moisture like that. The deck just gets real low.”

Pruitt’s reputation for accurate forecasting has grown. Besides the people who stop him in public, he’s also got a loyal Facebook following, folks who tend to turn to him when forecasts from other sources tend to be alarmist, too conservative, or all over the place.

“It’s an honor,” he said of the trust others place in him to be correct. “It’s a passion for me, and it really hasn’t been until the last couple years. In 2022, I called that storm, and I called it literally down to the road. It was a magical moment for me. But it’s nice to let other people see a different side of me that they might not have known if I hadn’t started sharing it on social media.”

Those social media shares are never going to be something that Pruitt chases, however.

“I’m not looking for clickbait,” he said. “If it’s there, I’ll say it’s a possibility. If it’s not, I’m going to say that, too.”

Pruitt’s got one more advantage going for him when predicting the weather in the Upstate - he’s a local.

“This area here has got so many micro-climates within it,” he said. “Just in Spartanburg County, you go from Cross Anchor, around 480 feet in elevation, to Landrum which is 1,200 feet. That’s a big difference in the lay of the land as far as precipitation. That little bit of elevation can be the difference in a foot of snow and just slush.”

All that knowledge of the weather is something that Pruitt now finds he can share with his son. River, home from school for the fourth straight day due to the weather, sat in on Thursday’s interview. Pruitt said he’s tickled it might be something the two can share.

“I think it’s great,” he said. “I’ve been known as a musician Everybody always asks if he’s got a guitar yet. Well, he’s got it all around him. He’s got an organ there, drums, guitars. I’m going to let him make that decision. And if he wants to do the weather, or music later on, I’ll be the biggest cheerleader that he could possibly have.”