When it comes to weathering the flu season, there’s never been a good way to predict when an ill wind might blow—until now. Thanks to a newly developed model, scientists might soon be able to forecast flu outbreaks in much the same way weathermen forecast sleet or sunshine.

If the model works consistently—so far it’s only been applied to data from New York City—it could create a new paradigm for flu prevention.

“Flu forecasting has the potential to significantly improve our ability to prepare for and manage the seasonal flu outbreaks that strike each year,” Irene Eckstrand of the National Institutes of Health told AtmosNews.

The study, published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by Jeffery Shaman and Alicia Karspeck, married weather forecasting techniques with a predictive model that incorporates earlier findings that flu outbreaks often follow dry weather, according to AtmosNews. Data from Google Flu Trends were used to create retroactive forecasts to test the model.

“One exciting element of this work is that we've applied quantitative forecasting techniques developed within the geosciences community to the challenge of real-time infectious disease prediction,” Karspeck told AtmosNews. “This has been a tremendously fruitful cross-disciplinary collaboration.”

The research team was able to make confident predictions of the peak of flu outbreaks more than seven weeks in advance, according to the report abstract. If the results can be widely applied, they could drastically change how the public responds to risk of infection.

“Because we are all familiar with weather broadcasts, when we hear that there is an 80 percent chance of rain, we all have an intuitive sense of whether or not we should carry an umbrella,” Shaman told AtmosNews. “I expect we will develop a similar comfort level and confidence in flu forecasts and develop an intuition of what we should do to protect ourselves in response to different forecast outcomes.”

Health officials would also be able to act accordingly, stocking up on vaccines and antivirals or taking steps to limit disease spread in the case of aggressive viruses, Shaman said.

Despite the promise that flu forecasting holds, folks shouldn’t tune into the 10 o’clock news for the flu report just yet, Karspeck warns. Flu outbreak timing and intensity vary greatly from region to region, and with only one region tested, there’s lots of work to be done.

“These are very exploratory forecasts,” she told the Boulder Daily Camera. “At this point, you could more refer to this as a pilot study trying to demonstrate the capability of doing this.”