Childhood Meteorology Stories

[Elizabeth Andrews]

Makes me regret that I didn’t follow my own childhood weather interest and make it a career… I considered it, but quite frankly did not have the aptitude for the high-level mathematics (and also had some practical concerns around availability of jobs - this was back in the late ‘80s, so the job market in meteorology may have been better or worse back then, I don’t know).

So, I became an accountant instead, which most people outside of the profession think requires “math,” but it’s really just arithmetic and algebra, occasionally involving some higher-level equations supported entirely by canned functions in today’s spreadsheet software… But there are parallels between meteorology and the corporate financial management I do at my current late-career level, in terms of analysis and pattern recognition feeding forecasts, and how those forecasts are communicated to users without the same expertise. Of course, at this stage of my career, much of what I do is about building and leading teams, which probably becomes a similar focus of a lot of meteorologists that ascend to management roles.

Anyway, I would venture to guess that while many meteorologists had a childhood interest in the subject, there are many, many more like me, that had a childhood interest and did not become meteorologists, including many on this forum… It would be interesting to know what lines of work they went into, and whether there are any that are more common than others because of some sort of underlying parallel, however tenuous, such as I noted for accounting.

I also had childhood aspirations to make weather my career, but I too struggled with math - I barely got through the "soft" Calculus II my junior year of college which prevented me from possibly pursuing a grad degree in meteorology later. I ended up majoring in geology at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, which ironically, given its location in 'hurricane alley' on the east coast, did not and still doesn't have a meteorology program.

I'm now an environmental scientist working as a consultant, but I spend a lot of time working in the field, which requires me to be weather-aware, so my skills that I acquired from being a SkyWarn Spotter for nearly 15 years have been put to good use keeping myself and others I work with in the field or the office, safe. This is especially important when there are discussions about severe weather outbreaks headed towards any of my various job sites or the office in Raleigh, NC where I am based from.

 

[Elizabeth Andrews]

I have two or three childhood memories that got me interested in meteorology and led to my becoming a SkyWarn Spotter by age 13, though I couldn't make any reports of my own for a little over six years. The first memory was when I was very little, probably a toddler. My mom, Dad and I were in our kitchen in Virginia one evening when a thunderstorm rolled through. At one point, lightning struck the antenna tower my Dad had set up for his ham radio gear and our television antenna, rattling the house. It startled my mother when it shook her chair. I was asleep in her lap and didn't move an inch. The second memory was when Hurricane Isabel came to town in 2003 (still in Virginia at that time) - at age six or seven. I remember when the storm came in, and during a calm period (my Dad says it's when the eye passed over our house) my Dad took me and my younger sister outside to check out the sky. It was one of the coolest moments of my childhood involving the weather.

The final memory took place when I was 11 years old on a summer enrichment trip to the Chesapeake Bay - 4 nights and 5 days at Fox Island (back before they closed the facility due to sea level rise). On our second day, we'd gone over to Tangier Island to learn about some of the local history and were coming back across the bay to Fox when several of us on the boat noticed a thunderstorm moving off shore and apparently following us. No sooner than we'd gotten back to the dock and disembarked from the boat, a brilliant flash of cloud to cloud lightning overhead made the hair on my arms stand up, and I immediately hit the deck (pun intended), to the amusement and confusion of my peers. A few seconds later, a massive crack of thunder could be felt through our feet, and my aforementioned peers immediately started freaking out. As we all got back into the cabin and waited in the main living room for the storm to blow over so that we could go back out on the boat and collect the crab pots we'd set that morning, I actually fell asleep and was roughly woken by one of my classmates also on the trip. As we headed out to where the crab pots were, one of the adults with us asked why I dropped down so quickly before the lightning struck. After I gave him my answer, he and the other 'counselors' on the trip made me the unofficial 'weather scout' for the rest of the trip, and even asked if I saw any more storms coming in whenever I went up to the crows' nest built on the roof of the fishing cabin.

As I said in my earlier reply to James Caruso, I had wanted to make my childhood fascination with the weather into my career, and at one point even wanted to be a storm chaser (before the 2013 El Reno EF-3). But due to my struggles with math and a mild dislike for public speaking (and as I got older, the reluctance of setting myself up for being constantly second-guessed if I was wrong), it didn't become much more than being a SkyWarn Storm Spotter (for nearly 15 years) with an amateur radio license and a near-endless love (and at times obsession) with severe weather. But meteorology still has a role in my career as an environmental scientist to a limited degree, as I spend a lot of time in the field in all types of conditions and have to be weather-aware at all times.