Alex Tsironis ’07 isn’t a meteorologist. The most the former P.E. teacher will admit to is being a “social mediarologist” who happens to love checking National Weather Service bulletins.
But it doesn’t matter to the tens of thousands of people who follow the “pencil predictions” he shares via his MoCoSnow social accounts, an outpost of his hyperlocal news site, “The MoCo Show,” covering the state’s most populous county.
“I never forgot the feeling of joy when I would see Montgomery County scroll by on those TV news tickers” announcing a snow day, he said. For the last decade and a half, he’s brought that excitement to a new generation of kids, using one to five pencils to depict the likelihood of school delays and closings—over and over again during this extra-cold, extra-snowy winter.
Since then, he’s expanded beyond weather into restaurants and retail openings and closings, crime reports and county council updates, gaining more than 400,000 followers across social media platforms and a record 3 million website hits in January. What started as a winter side project has become a full-time blogging job covering a kaleidoscope of topics.
“If you ask 10 people what ‘The MoCo Show’ is, you’ll hear 10 answers,” he said. “One person will say it’s the snow guy. Another person will say they post old photos. Another will say they always write about Wheaton mall, or all they do is write about the crime.”
That’s fine with Tsironis, who wants to help fill the void of the “local news desert” and reach the broadest audience possible. “We try to cover a road closing in Poolesville the same way as Rockville Pike, and a lot of people value that,” he says.
Back in 2008, though, Tsironis had just graduated from the University of Maryland’s College of Education and was just trying to get through his first year of teaching middle school health (a rite of passage for new P.E. teachers). His students were hungry for winter weather breakdowns before the age of ubiquitous social media and smartphones, so he set aside a few minutes to discuss at the end of class. They loved it so much that dozens emailed him even after they went on to high school for his takes. Rather than respond individually, he set up a Google site, and MoCoSnow was born.
When a student offered to set up a Twitter account for him in 2012, he gave it a shot, and his following quickly grew. The longtime Gaithersburg resident started throwing in restaurant recommendations and historic MoCo photos into his feed, with fun facts like how the first Toys “R” Us store was in Rockville or that Sylvester Stallone went to elementary school in Silver Spring. (Tsironis also co-hosted a related podcast for a few years, starting in 2015, which is when he changed the “snow” part of the name to “show”.)
Then in 2019, he got his first taste of breaking news when he was the first to report that Dave & Buster’s was coming to Rio Washingtonian Center in Gaithersburg and that Discovery was leaving Silver Spring, both thanks to reader tips. The stories got thousands of clicks and were picked up by local news stations.
“I realized people really care about this stuff!” he said, and started scouring property manager websites for new tenant information.
The site took its current form, with more than a dozen posts and 50 across social platforms each day, during the pandemic. Stuck at home, he wrote more articles, then brought on a colleague from the restaurant world who helped expand advertising. By the time school was back in person, he had a viable business, and in June 2023, he hung up his gym shorts. Now the team includes a full-time business manager as well as part-time contributors and a social media manager.
“Were really fortunate to have ‘The MoCo Show.’ It’s very much tied into Alex and his passion for the community,” said Jill McCarthy, senior director of marketing for Federal Realty, which owns, operates and develops retail and restaurants throughout the county. “There was a big gap in Montgomery County media with the loss of our institutional newspaper. Without ‘The MoCo Show,’ no one would find out about the smaller businesses opening.”
Those are some of Tsironis’ favorite stories, highlighting mom-and-pop restaurants, though he admits major chains get the most clicks—around 80,000-100,000 for a Dunkin or Chipotle opening. Readers are quick to alert him when they see changes in their local strip mall, and then he follows up either in person, squinting through papered-over windows to read signs inside, or contacting businesses to verify if they’re opening or shuttering.
He knows his strengths—“no one’s going to confuse us with amazing writers”—but he takes his role as a community news-gatherer seriously. While he runs ads (and occasionally gets freebies), he consults an FTC handbook, leftover from a UMD class, to ensure he’s disclosing them clearly and properly.
Being “Mr. MoCo” means very few breaks. Whether he’s grabbing groceries for the family or going out to dinner with his wife, he can’t help but take a lap around the nearest shopping center to see what’s new. And if a tree falls through a roof in Burtonsville at 8 p.m. or an updated weather forecast for a wintry mix arrives in his inbox at 3 a.m., he opens his laptop to share the news.
“We try to cover everything, but we will still miss half of it,” Tsironis said. “There’s no slowing down.”
This story first appeared in Maryland Today.
