AS and Meteo student needing help

[Ash Bray]

I'm an Atmospheric Science and Meteorology student through the The University of Arizona, residing in West Virginia. Upon graduation, I hope to work with a weather team to develop new radar programs and help increase tornado warning times. With that being said, I am looking to sign up with a group to storm chase next spring. I am needing "on field" experience in order to graduate, so I am hoping I can team up with a group, tag along, and get a hands-on look into storm chasing and weather prediction. I have the ability to travel to meet up for chase sites, and I'm willing to pay for my own insurance, food, hotel, etc.

 

[Alex Elmore]

There are many groups/tours that you could go with to get storm chasing experience, but if it is for educational purposes, I suggest going through College of DuPage: http://weather.cod.edu/chasing/index.php?load=home

They go out on several 10-day trips through the spring and summer that are relatively inexpensive and the trips can count as credit hours. When I was earning my BS in meteorology, I took this class over the summer and was able to transfer the credits to count towards my degree. It was a great experience and I highly recommend it.

Regarding your goals upon graduation, there currently is a project ongoing in the NWS Central Region called the Tornado Warning Improvement Project (TWIP), where they are doing something similar to what you said you would like to do. I've seen several presentations on the project, but was unable to find a good source of information about it. This presentation has a short summary of what the project is about on page 16: http://www.weather.gov/media/gid/awareness/swaw/SWAW2017.pdf

If you are able to, it wouldn't be a bad idea to see if any of the participating WFOs are able to take on student volunteers that could assist with the project so that you could get experience working with this type of research.