After discussing AMS Conference, some of you may wonder, “What got those people into weather in the first place?” “What made those people bust their butts in thermodynamics, differential equations and coding classes?”
“Are those people a little crazy?” (Some of you would probably say the same for physics and mathematics majors.)
You may have heard how much these broadcast meteorologists on television devote themselves to weather.
Even those behind the scene folks- NWS (National Weather Service) forecaster, SPC (Storm Prediction Center) forecaster, researchers, digital broadcasters and so many more- are passionate about the weather. Some people focus in narrower weather-related topics, such as tornadoes, snowflakes and even clouds.
My answer is nobody has exactly the same answer, but all of these weather folks shared some common themes. From my personal experiences, some people fell in love with weather after seeing some phenomenon or event as a child. Some people happened to read about the weather or saw it on television before falling in love with it.
For example, The Weather Channel (TWC) biography website lists profiles of meteorologists appearing on TWC. Severe weather expert Dr. Greg Forbes, for a starter, fell in love with it when he started studying the weather in seventh grade.
Dr. Greg Postel, who specializes in hurricanes and tropical cyclones, started it all when he watched ordinary, everyday weather as a child. There are more TWC meteorologists listed in the website for more reading.
http://weathergroup.com/company/bios/meteorologists
My personal story was no different from most people. When I was six or seven, I used to be a huge superhero fan, and I recall watching an X-Men movie multiple times.
At some point watching the movie, there was a scene when Storm unleashed tornadoes to fend off enemy planes, and I used to repeatedly replay those scenes. Afterwards, I shifted from superheroes to weather, especially after watching coverage of Hurricane Katrina on the news.
At that point, I clearly remember when I became absorbed in weather much to annoyance of my family sometimes. I even preferred to look up pretty supercell pictures on the internet and watch lightning instead of playing princess.
Even some of my peers thought I was little eccentric because of my weather interests. I’m a weather die hard still.
I am a trained storm spotter and I spent years studying meteorology in my free times. Those blogs reflect my opinions on weather-related topics with some light humor and commentaries.
Also, the high precipitation supercell picture in AMS Part 2 article had a minor error in caption. It said that we were in Texas at that time. It was supposed to say that the supercell was near Oklahoma-Kansas border. The other one was in Texas for sure. I apologize for error.
