Outdoors/Adventure

Combining a passion for skiing and data science, Anchorage’s Eric Packer creates a forecasting app for winter adventurers

Eric Packer is the creator of Text Me The Snow, a service though which users can have snow forecasts for customized locations sent to them through text messaging. Photographed January 15, 2025. (Marc Lester / ADN)

Eric Packer grew up in Anchorage a standout skier, competing in cross country races at the highest level and tackling backcountry adventures.

He’s also an engineer who has a keen fascination with data science.

Packer’s newest project is a perfect merger of both his professional and recreational interests.

Text Me The Snow is an app he recently launched that delivers custom forecasts to users’ phones, allowing for pinpoint information throughout the United States.

While there are plenty of weather apps and sources for winter athletes and hobbyists, Text Me The Snow checks the weather and delivers info directly to the user via text or email.

“The other cool thing about it for Alaska is that you can drop a pin anywhere,” he said. “So not only can you track cities or towns, but you can look at backcountry locations, cabins, ski zones, snowmachine areas. I think that part is pretty exciting. And those locations are all private to each individual user.”

Packer’s history as a skier is extensive. He competed for South Anchorage High School and the Alaska Winter Stars. He was a multi-time All-American at Dartmouth, where he earned an engineering degree. Packer continued to compete as a skier, training with the APU Elite Team and acting as the first alternate on the 2018 U.S. Olympic Ski Team.

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Eric Packer is the creator of Text Me The Snow, a service though which users can have snow forecasts for customized locations sent to them through text messaging. (Marc Lester / ADN)

That experience made the job of developing the app fairly intuitive.

“Skiing has been a huge part of my life,” Packer said. “I was so lucky growing up here in Anchorage to be able to Nordic ski, Alpine ski, backcountry ski. It’s been a little bit since I’ve retired from competitive racing, but I also just really love snow. So it felt like it the tool coded itself in a lot of ways.”

Packer works at engineering consultant HDR in Anchorage, where he has a hybrid position as an engineer and data scientist. He said he initially started the process in Excel but it continued to grow. He had experience with C programming language from his studies in mechanical engineering at Dartmouth and spent a couple years developing the app, which uses NOAA’s National Weather Service data.

With all the time he’s spent on skis, Packer knew that conditions could be dramatically different in locations just a few miles apart. So, being able to order up forecasts to specific places and have a collection of pinned areas is a real game-changer for backcountry adventurers.

“There’s just so many days when we’re sitting in the office in Anchorage, and it might be sunny, but there can be 2 feet of snow forecasted north or south of town,” he said. “So the idea behind the project is that you get a text message and it’s just this little nudge to pay attention to the weather.”

There are two options for potential users at this time. Packer created a free email forecast version that includes five custom locations, backcountry locations and a 14-day trial for text forecasts.

The $20 “season pass” allows for up to 10 custom locations, backcountry locations and both text and email forecasts.

Text Me The Snow can provide weather data for locations all over the country, but so far, most of the subscribers have been from Alaska. Although it could continue to develop, Packer views it more as a passion project than a major business opportunity. He was surprised at the initial level of interest, saying they’d already sent out 1,000 custom forecasts by text within a few days of launching the project.

“I’m definitely a little surprised,” he said. “I’m looking at scaling the servers.”

While there’s plenty of snow in many parts of the Lower 48, this winter has been tough for Alaska skiers and riders. Packer said the most requested feature is, “Can you make it snow?”

“Sadly, that one is up to Mother Nature,” he joked.

Chris Bieri

Chris Bieri is the sports and entertainment editor at the Anchorage Daily News.

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