Navigating the Challenges of Private Meteorology with Mike Priante & Joe Slezak

Kyle David is joined by Mike Priante and Joe Slezak, lead meteorologists at WeatherWorks, to explore the world of private weather forecasting. Mike and Joe share their personal journeys into meteorology, their distinct roles at WeatherWorks, and the challenges of providing tailored forecasts for diverse clients ranging from schools to sporting venues. Learn how they balance the art and science of forecasting, their insights on future trends like AI in meteorology, and how they communicate complex weather information. 

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About the Everything Weather Podcast

A weekly podcast where we talk with people about the weather world, explore and discuss everything weather and the many things that connect to it, and have a little fun along the way. The podcast is hosted and produced by Kyle David, a meteorologist and digital science content producer based in New Jersey.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:16

Hello and welcome to the Everything Weather Podcast, where we talk with people about the weather world, explore and discuss everything weather, and have a little fun along the way. I'm your host, Kyle David, and today we have a very special episode in store for you. We have two people on the podcast for you today from the people over at Weatherworks. We're joined by Mike Priante and Joe Sleezak. Mike and Joe are both lead meteorologists at Weatherwork, and in in addition to being lead meteorologists, Mike is the director of social media marketing and Joe is the product manager. Hey Mike and Joe, thank you for joining me on the Everything Weather podcast. Yeah, it's nice to be here.

SPEAKER_01 0:56

Great to be here. Thanks for having us.

SPEAKER_00 0:58

Absolutely. Looking forward to the dynamic conversation that we're going to be having in just a little bit. But first, let's kick this off with a little bit of would you rather? Would you rather live in Miami, Florida and have the humidity and heat that comes with it, or live in Billings, Montana and have all the winter weather that comes with it?

SPEAKER_01 1:20

You want to go first, Joe?

SPEAKER_02 1:21

Sure. That's a no-brainer for me. I'm gonna take Billings, Montana. I'm not the kind of guy that likes the heat and humidity. I will also enjoy the includedness of Montana over Miami, Florida, on top of the weather.

SPEAKER_00 1:35

I'll give you that.

SPEAKER_01 1:37

Yeah, I guess we're gonna be different. I don't hate snow, but I don't know if I can live there 247, 365. So I gotta pick Miami. Yeah, it's crowded, but in the beaches, I I'm used to humidity. We live in Jersey and we get we get humid as well up here, so I'm used to it. And of course, hurricanes. I've never been in a hurricane. I know it's not a great thing to be in it, but as a meteorologist, that's something that would be interesting to track and even try to withstand. So I'd say Miami.

SPEAKER_00 2:08

Yeah, and you have that right in your own backyard too, if you live in Miami. Exactly. Another one for you. Would you rather have 76 and sunny weather, probably like California weather, or have it be more like Seattle where it's raining, clouding, cloudy all the time.

SPEAKER_01 2:27

Okay. I I gotta go with sunny in the 70s. Yeah. I know some people love that mood of rain and it cool and I just I need sun. That's personally me, but I need the sun.

SPEAKER_02 2:40

I'll take the opposite. I'll defend the rainy people. I honestly I I don't mind again, it's 58 and light rain right now, and I will take that in Seattle as well. Everyone always just loves the clear and sunny weather, but it's a good excuse to stay inside, number one. It's a good chance to relax. You don't feel guilty for relaxing inside. If it was every day in Seattle, that's a bit much, but it they still have their breaks up there. So I'll take Seattle with the rain.

SPEAKER_00 3:06

That's a fair point. I would definitely stay inside with that kind of weather. And I got one more for you. Would you rather storm chase a tornado and severe weather or storm chase a hurricane?

SPEAKER_01 3:21

I already said the whole thing about the hurricane, but I'm telling you, I I'd rather chase a tornado. There's something about storm chasing in the Midwest, in the plains, that you just really can't get with a hurricane. Now obviously hurricanes are pretty powerful, especially if they're a cat four or cat five. But just seeing just a tornado develop is something that everyone almost has to see in their lifetime. Maybe not be in it, obviously, but certainly chase it and just see how it develops. I would chase a chase a tornado for sure.

SPEAKER_02 3:49

So for once I'm gonna agree with Mike. I will take storm chasing severe weather slash tornadoes over hurricanes. The problem with pursuing hurricanes is that the devastation is over a much larger area and it's it's more difficult to get in, get out around the area. You can't just go right down the street to the hotel that's right around the corner, because they probably won't have power either, whereas in the damage is much more localized and you can still go somewhere at the end of the day when you're out there in the middle of nowhere.

SPEAKER_00 4:24

I didn't think of that. Hurricanes bring a whole bunch of different things, but I didn't consider it's gonna it's gonna bring a lot more impacts and stuff.

SPEAKER_01 4:31

Yeah, and I guess they're also both dangerous, and one would argue even tornadoes are a little more dangerous, but the fact that Joe brought up is makes sense, right? You could be you can chase a tornado and be so far away and still be able to say, wow, look at that tornado tornado. With a hurricane, you really can't chase it without being in it. It's really hard, even if you're like 200 miles away, you really can't see it so much as you can see like a funnel coming out of the cloud. So I would say, yeah, it's definitely a better experience and also a little safer, and you really can avoid it versus a hurricane.

SPEAKER_02 5:03

With the hurricane you're being chased. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 5:06

Exactly. Yeah. Some people like the thrill of that. Each person has their own cup of tea in a way. So let's get into talking a little bit about you guys. A question I always like to ask on the podcast is tell me about your weather story. What got you interested in all things weather? Okay. Joe go first.

SPEAKER_01 5:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 5:26

My weather origin story. I again, everyone seems to have one. It's like the moment that your eyes opened to weather and you you really got enamored by it. With me, I don't even know how old I was, probably in the ballpark of like five to eight years old. I remember we had a really impressive summertime thunderstorm, and it wasn't the wind, it wasn't the rain, but it was just frequent lightning, cloud to cloud, cloud to ground, uh just non-stop lightning. And I was sitting in my window on this upstairs window, just I was drawing pictures of the strikes. I didn't have a camera phone at the time. I don't think there were camera phones yet, but I was drawing the strikes as I saw them, and not long after that my neighbor next door neighbor's chimney got struck and exploded. So that was very like vivid in my mind, and I was absolutely awestruck by the power of it, and it made it very simple to decide what I wanted to be when I grew up. And a lot of people had difficulty in college picking what they wanted to do. With me, it was just how do I get a meteorology degree and get to work with it.

SPEAKER_01 6:30

Wow. Well, I can't say I had a experience like that with a lightning strike hitting a chimney. My experience might be a little interesting. Now I will say the event that really got me interested, but I was probably too young, was the Blizzard of 96. But I do v like faintly remember being in that storm and my parents saying that I loved it. I would say from an early childhood, I I always loved the weather, and I think there was a theory that my mom told me, and I kind of make sense, when she was pregnant, they always used to watch like the local news and even the weather channel at night, every night. And she was pregnant with me. The thought was maybe somehow that had an influence on me because when I was three or four years, four or five years old, I would, you know, Saturday in the morning would be putting on the weather channel and also watching cartoons. But the weather channel came first. So it was interesting because I always just wanted to be a meteorologist, even when I was so young. And it carried all the way through. I even have this little diploma from kindergarten that I still have on my desk here. It says June 2000 weather reporter. So I remember in kindergarten being the weather reporter, I would go to the makeshift thermometer on the wind window sill and tell them what the temperature was. So from an early age, I've always wanted to be a weatherman and I've never really left that. So here I am today working at Weatherworks.

SPEAKER_02 7:49

I wonder if subliminally now when you hear local on the eights music, you hear the weather channel background music, it just triggers some like dopamine release.

SPEAKER_01 7:58

I just I just go back to being six years old and all of a sudden I'm like, you know, just taken back, like, where am I? Um but no, I mean, the local on the eights, I mean, you can't beat it. Uh it's just such a great, especially the old ones, the old local on the eights. Oh yeah, it's great.

SPEAKER_00 8:12

Uh it's funny you mentioned that. I I'll just deviate just a little bit, but like I was scrolling on Spotify the one day, and there was a Spotify playlist with the old local on the eights music, and it was like that old the classic local on the eights music, and it was just like I I have that playlist saved.

SPEAKER_02 8:29

I have that playlist saved. It got recommended. The algorithm worked magic because I it showed up in my recommended feed. So I know exactly what you're talking about.

SPEAKER_00 8:38

I'll be honest, I I have that playlist saved as well. I yeah, I occasionally listen to that while I'm studying.

SPEAKER_01 8:45

Yeah, I wish they would bring that back, the jazz on there. I mean, I like the music now they have is cool, but I also like the jazz. The jazz just kind of it it's a mood, you know, it's a mood.

SPEAKER_00 8:56

It's a nostalgic element for all of us, the older generation that grew up on that. The people who are watching the weather channel now they won't be able to appreciate what the local gates was.

SPEAKER_02 9:07

Yeah. Now you just get this the scary music when there's storms approaching or hurricane or they're doing the live hits, and that's it's just the the uh high tempo, slightly horror film sounding music. Right.

SPEAKER_00 9:19

Almost borderline corporate music in a way.

SPEAKER_01 9:22

Yeah, I'm not here to trash them, but I mean it's something about a big snowstorm and you just hear like smooth jazz and it says blizzard warring in effect. I don't know. Something about that just made it very calm and and and peaceful.

SPEAKER_00 9:34

Yeah, absolutely. Um, and to touch upon what you said earlier, it sounded like both of you knew right out of the gate, like, hey, I want to be a meteorologist, I want to go to school for meteorology. So tell me a little bit more about the point where you realized you can make a career out of this, which obviously was very early, and what opportunities you came upon high school and then when you're looking at colleges that you participated in.

SPEAKER_01 10:01

Yeah, I guess I'll go first. I said that from a very young age I wanted to be in weather, and it's funny because there was a point probably when I was in like third grade, fourth grade maybe, where I said, I'm gonna be a storm chaser. So that was something that I wanted to do at that early of an age. But then as I started to get older, you know, I I think the becoming a storm chaser as a career went away, and then I wanted to maybe be on TV, like do the weather in front of the camera. But I you know I still had my options open. I wasn't someone that was set on like I have to do this, this is what I'm going to do. I wanted to learn about how to forecast, how to look at weather models all the way through high school. I I learned uh basic models like the GFS and the Euro. At that point, it was still very basic. I didn't understand the science behind it, I understand the dynamics, but I knew, okay, this is what meteorologists, real people in the field, use every day to make a forecast. So I looked at that and then looking for where are these people learning about weather? What are the educational options? And for me, I wanted to be local because there's so many great schools uh for meteorology, uh, but I wanted to be local. I looked at a lot of schools. A study had some pretty good programs there. I looked at Rutgers as well because I'm from New Jersey. Penn State was another option as well. I visited all the campuses, and the one that really stuck out to me was Penn State. I don't know if it was because it was just close enough to home, but far enough to get away from my parents. I think that's what really made it. And it's a three and a half hour drive to State College, and so I thought I can finally get away from my parents, but it's also not like I have to take a plane to get back home. So it was good for them and it was good for me. So I thought about it and I really liked it, and I'm glad because the program there was very good and it just allowed me to really just hone in on my skills. Uh also made me realize that maybe I don't want to be on TV, although there are options there, and I did do some on-camera stuff, which isn't the best, and I wouldn't recommend you looking at it.

SPEAKER_02 12:02

Um I've done I've dug up your old footage. It's it's kind of funny.

SPEAKER_01 12:06

Right, yeah, you just just don't don't even. But again, it it helped with public speaking too, and and I think it was just a good avenue because at Penn State you can go any route. You can try anything from forecasting to on TV to just also the research route for those that really want to go into researching about severe weather, snow, what have you. Go for your doctorate, right? Or your master's. So I was just grateful for where I was able to to come from at Penn State, and then lo and behold, it led me to Weatherworks, and I've loved it ever since.

SPEAKER_02 12:35

So yeah. So I am a Rutgers alum uh alumn alumni, alumnum. I'm sure alumni. Yeah. They didn't teach me that explicitly, but as far as weather, they taught me everything I needed to know, at least to get his foothold. And even before that, there were reinforcing significant weather things that kind of kept that train going. One of them was just after I graduated high school, going into college, that was the 2012 June Duratio. And I was like right on the northern book end of the Derecho as it went through South Jersey, and it was again kind of back to that lightning story. Lightning strikes every one to maybe two seconds, and I actually was sitting at the Jersey shore with my girlfriend at the time who's down my wife and mother of one and a half kids, the second one's coming. So we sat there, watched all the lightning, watched all the winds come through, watched a sailboat capsize. Like it was very impactful. Same thing goes with Snowmageddon in the Mid-Atlantic for anyone who remembers 2011. I had access to some model pages with some passwords that got passed around on some forms a long time ago, and it was the Euro was just really coming to like its forefront, and every single model run had a nor'easter and it was like, Oh, we're gonna get another foot of snow, oh, another foot of snow, and that just wasn't something that normally happens, and it continued reinforcing things as I went to Rutgers. It was nice to stay close to home. The program was good, it's a smaller program, but that allows much more interaction and and attention from the professors, and you get to build relationships with them. That also segued into talking to people at Weatherworks. I did some internships there and allowed me to get a jump start.

SPEAKER_00 14:21

Yeah, you guys even touched upon what eventually led you to Weatherworks as well. And I'll just take this moment to say, go are you, because I'm also a recorders alum.

SPEAKER_01 14:30

Um man, this is tough. I'm I'm like out outnumbered here as a Penn State fan. Um you need to get someone else from Weatherworks here as a Penn Stater because I feel outnumbered. I don't know. I don't think it's a coincidence.

SPEAKER_02 14:42

I don't think it's a coincidence they're doing so well in football since I was last in college, and now that we're talking about it.

SPEAKER_00 14:48

I will say I remember my time at Ruckers going to the football game. It was not that great, but it's good to see them now doing good. Even Penn State's doing good with their football program and the Penn State game. I remember the one year I went to that Penn State played at Ruckers, and that was just a blowout, but to see the difference is amazing. But let's turn back to weather, let's talk a little bit more about Weatherworks and what you guys actually do. Because even though you're both lead meteorologists, you actually have different roles, different sub roles, I would say, within Weatherworks. So tell me a little bit more about what you specifically do that. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 15:26

Yeah, go ahead.

SPEAKER_02 15:27

I'll take that first. Yeah, so uh every almost everyone at Weatherworks is a meteorologist, but also blank. And in my case, I am the product manager for FMS, which is our forecast management system. So when I am not physically doing a operational weather forecast, I'm managing one of our automated products, and that is a nationwide product that gives you site-by-site forecasts with hazards and everything like that. And it's a good way to consolidate thousands of weather forecasts into one Excel sheet or one PDF. And that is where I spend most of my time when I'm not physically forecasting the weather. But again, the whole point of having a lot of people be weather meteorologists first at Weatherworks is that even if you're a software developer, you understand the weather terms, you understand the correct way to program that weather to be included in that software or in that product. And so a lot of people start with weather and then we diversify from there in terms of coding, social things or other things with weather, but you start with that background first.

SPEAKER_00 16:35

And for those that don't know, what is forecast modeling? What is that specifically that you do?

SPEAKER_02 16:41

Specifically, what I do, the FMS, it's the forecast management system. It's an internet browser-based forecast service. The analogy I like to give is say, for example, you have to clear the snow from every single post office or every single Target or every single Walmart, every single Lowe's in the entire US, including Alaska. How do you know which ones need attention today? Rather than looking at a thousand weather forecasts, or in some of these cases, some of these clients service 10,000 plus sites. How do you know which 10 need the most attention, the most equipment, the most staffing? And so what it does is it kind of condenses a lot of information into a very concise format with timing and hazards, and it says here's the six properties that need snow plowing today, here's a couple that need de-icing. And we're in the example of the hurricane, here's the ones that are going to have the highest storm surge, the highest winds, the greatest flooding. So it is the best way to boil down a lot of information for a lot of areas down to some very concise formats.

SPEAKER_00 17:43

That sounds like a lot of important work that you're doing behind the scenes. Now I want to turn to Mike, who is actually on a different side of Weatherworks. What do you do specifically with Weatherworks?

SPEAKER_01 17:54

Yeah, so I don't work on a specific forecast product, although I am a lead meteorologist at Weatherworks. So I I am here early in the morning, crack of dawn, 3 a.m., sometimes 2 a.m. Joe will know that as well, doing forecasts for our clients. But on the other side, we're not just meteorologists, we also have other little labels here of things we do. I am head of our social media departments and I do some marketing for Weatherworks as well. So basically anything, if you go on Facebook, uh Twitter slash X, LinkedIn, YouTube, most platforms that people are on social media, and you see something that gets put out from Weatherworks, nine out of ten times it was made by me. Um other times someone gives me a suggestion or I'll let them post something. Um but more than often I'm the one controlling everything that goes out on our social platforms. That's something that I do outside of weather. Another thing we do with social media, again, most of our social media is just connecting uh what we do as meteorologists, explaining the weather and bringing it down to more of an understandable terms. Um, because of weatherworks, we always obviously have our clients and our forecasts, but we like to be able to, you know, put our two cents out there in social media. Along with that, I also am a producer for our own podcast called the Weather Lounge. We started back in 2020, right around the COVID era, and we've pretty much been doing episodes since. Our episode our podcast is related to everything about weather, anything you can think of, explaining weather, talking about sometimes events. We have cool guests on to talk about how their employment, how their industry is related to weather. We've had some pretty cool guests on, so that's what I do at Weatherworks as well. And it's interesting, kind of a side note. I was gonna mention this with the other question you mentioned about how you got into weather and and and how you got to Weatherworks. When I was a junior slash senior, I remember, and I should have taken this opportunity now that I know about it, but at Penn State there were a little sign-up board for events and and clubs and opportunities for work. And on that, and I think I still have the picture, I gotta find it, uh, was a sign-up for for doing some like part-time work helping out Weatherworks with certified snowfall totals. And it was interesting because I saw that and that was like my first instance of Weatherworks, but I didn't really I said I don't know who though who they are, whatever. But then when I went in to do my job search, I'm like, wait a minute, I recognize that name.

SPEAKER_02 20:20

So that's something we both do and did. I mean, like, I actually took that opportunity.

SPEAKER_01 20:27

There you go.

SPEAKER_02 20:28

And so I was doing so again, one of our other big products that there there is a product manager for it, but I am not. But at the same time, it is one of our largest nationwide products. It's certified snowfall totals. The example is I clear the property, Kyle owns the shopping mall, you get I get paid per inch of snow. I I want to say it snowed three foot, and you want to say it snowed two inches. Who's right? Well, you need an independent third party with meteorologists that say it snowed exactly X amount, uh, and then have a little like paragraph that describes what kind of snow, the nature of it, the wind, and everything like that. That's actually how I started at Weatherworks with the internship as well as doing the CSTs remotely for Weatherworks. So actually putting in those certified snowfall totals, writing those narratives, and getting started with that. It's good to build the relationships with people, and we still do that. We're still overseeing that product collaboratively as well as still occasionally doing some of those storms ourselves.

SPEAKER_01 21:21

So yeah, Joe knows I'm sure he had to do CSTs, and I still do certified snowfall totals as well as a meteorologist. But I think that collaboration with all our meteorologists is really what makes the product really good. And again, it it's something that you get on the news, you can go anywhere to get a total or a number, but the thing that really makes that stand out is that we really do a good job at quality controlling and saying, okay, is this the number that is more accurate to your property or to your location, your zip code? Because when you have these guys that are trying to bill for a storm, you don't want that, you don't want to be billing over too much, and you don't want to be billing too little. You have to have a nice in-between. And that's where I think the CST a number that you know has gone through rigorous quality control, looking at radar, knowing the weather based on your meteorological expertise and understanding how the area is, you can say, well, that was probably measured slightly wrong, or that was probably an average of a drift that wasn't correctly measured at certain time. There was melting, a lot of things. So I think that's what makes that that really well. And I think I as a meteorologist, I do a good job producing that.

SPEAKER_02 22:27

So you you do a good job, Mike.

SPEAKER_00 22:28

Yeah. Thank you. You both do phenomenal work. And I actually want to briefly educate people what Weatherworks is, because there may be some listeners that don't know what Weatherworks is, but I will say, real quick, I have listened to the Weather Lounge on my own a couple years now, and they do have some really great content there. So if you're listening to this, go check out the Weather Lounge. They got some cool podcast episodes and very educational as well. Um, so kind of plug in your guys' uh podcast there. But um going back to Weatherworks, um, for those who are not as familiar with BRC and the type of work that they do, just tell me real quick real quick what they do.

SPEAKER_02 23:09

You go ahead, Joe. So a lot of people again think broadcast meteorology, I'm not pretty enough for broadcast meteorology.

SPEAKER_01 23:18

No, you look great, Joe.

SPEAKER_02 23:19

Thank you. It's good that no one hopefully can see me too much on this. But the main thing we do is consultation and client-specific weather. If you call the National Weather Service and ask them for what's the exact snow forecast for your backyard, you might get some funny looks or funny answers. Our clients, we are a private firm, our clients can do that and they can say, How much snow will I get at this specific parking lot? It's the decision support services that add the value that clients are willing to pay for in terms of we tailor our forecasts, our products, all of our products, not just FMS, CST, storm alert. It's also that value added by talking to a meteorologist. And we have 24-7 consultations, so those clients call us and we help provide decisions for we help them with their decisions they need to make based on the weather and even just hearing the confidence on someone's voice. You can convey uncertainty in different ways by how you talk. You can select very careful ward choices, coulds versus shoulds versus woulds versus will. Again, that kind of tailoring in your phone calls with clients might mean the difference between some of our school districts having school or not, when road departments decide to staff things, even state DOTs. So that's our main job sector in terms of weatherworks and and where we make our living.

SPEAKER_01 24:40

Yeah, and I and I think to that end too, a lot of our meteorologists at Weatherworks, they're all meteorologists, right? The people that you're talking to and you're calling up as a client, talking to Weatherworks, getting the information, you're a meteorologist. They have had these, they have had the training, they've had the education, they understand how weather works. Not to try to make a pun there, but that's a dad joke, and yeah.

SPEAKER_02 25:02

That's a head job.

SPEAKER_01 25:03

Hey, you know, I'm getting ready for whenever that happens. I'm chock full of dad jokes. But on a serious note, our meteorologists at WeatherWork really love the job they do. You go into weather, you really love forecasting, you're passionate about it. That passion comes through in the forecast to tell the client, hey, there's rain coming this way, or but in the winter time, hey, there's a storm coming in, it's gonna arrive at uh anytime from like 3.30 to 4.30 in the morning, it's gonna start out as a light snow, the ground is still a little too warm, so it's probably not gonna stick, depending on if you have treatment down, but then eventually it's gonna get heavier and it's gonna start covering. Our meteorologists really have a good understanding of not only the meteorology, but how the client works. You know, how what are they doing? What is their operations to not just say, oh yeah, it's gonna snow, that's great, but how is that gonna affect your job? How is that gonna affect what you're doing to make a living? And we've been doing that forever. This has been around since 1986. We started in the basement of our founder's home, 1986, and now we were now in Hackett's Town, New Jersey, and we have a what do we have, Joe, like 35, 40 meteorologists, I think.

SPEAKER_02 26:05

Yeah, about that, and when you include all the other staff that does accounting, billing, and such, including my wife, which again, it's big enough that we are national, we cover the entire country, but we know everyone personally, and we are still a pretty close-knit group.

SPEAKER_00 26:21

Um and real quick before we go into break, you had mentioned clients a couple of times. What is your clientele look like?

SPEAKER_02 26:29

It's very diverse. I mean, everything is affected by weather, and therefore it is it's it spans all things. So I think NFL football teams, think sporting venues, think about some government entities, I think of Goddard and NASA. They have power outage concerns, they've been a longtime client. We have two state tees. Um, when you get your Wawa Hoagies, we're doing Wawa usually. They need to know when they can open stores, when they have to close stores, what kind of hazards, which stores. Same thing goes for FMS. A lot of those chains, even if they aren't a direct client, they are having contractors that service that property get forecasts from us. It's a very wide gamut of schools, DPWs, sporting events, and so on.

SPEAKER_01 27:17

Yeah, basically what Joe said, 100%. It spans everybody. And again, in the winter time, it's especially important for some clients that are specifically in snow and ice because their job is to make sure that the parking lots are clear and also for towns and governments, they want to make sure the roads are clear and safe for you to drive on. So having this information is crucial in the winter time, especially for some of these clients, so that not only can they make things safe, but again, if there's no snow, they sometimes can't make you know money for for their businesses and for their employees. So knowing when it's gonna snow and what's the impacts are gonna be is crucial to their operations. So that's another sector along with a sports team or Wawa or anything like that.

SPEAKER_02 27:55

That is part of the business that is forecast driven. There's again, in terms of those 40 or so meteorologists, there's also more staff that does they do forensics. And if someone slips and falls on a property and they need to go to through litigation, you need to know what the weather was and what conditions were and whether or not it was conducive for that slip and fall. There's an entire forensics department, past weather, there's data and statistics where if I need climatology reports or you need statistic reports. So basically, if it's weather, we do it and it's driven by clients' needs rather than trying to fit a specific government forecast header where it's a certain format or all caps or like the kind of things like we do look at and we do have a relationship with the government sector in terms of the National Weather Service. We use data from NOAA, but we're providing that additional layer of whatever the client needs more specifically, we can help them with.

SPEAKER_01 28:52

Yeah, I think basically to sum it all up, we do both public and private. If you're involved with weather or if your business is affected by weather, more than likely, you you can use weatherwork services.

SPEAKER_00 29:04

Fantastic. We're gonna take a quick break right here, but we got a lot more to talk about in the podcast with uh Mike and Joe from Weatherwork, so keep with us right here. On this day in weather history, we go back to the St. Elizabeth's flood of November 1421 in northwestern Europe. A powerful extratropical cyclone near the North Sea coast slammed parts of the modern-day Netherlands on November 18th and 19th and brought with it strong winds and heavy rain. The storm caused stormwaters to surge up rivers in the Grote Hollandese ward area, or areas of the modern-day Netherlands, causing multiple dikes to overflow and break through. The storm surge completely swallowed a number of villages and caused widespread devastation in Zealand and Holland, which are part of the coastal region of the Netherlands. The floods caused an estimated 2,000 to 10,000 casualties and also separated the cities of Hifenberg and Dortricht, which had previously fought each other in a long civil war. Most of the flooded land that separates the two cities remains flooded to this day. These floods would forever be known as the St. Elizabeth's Flood of 1421, getting the name from the feast day of St. Elizabeth of Hungary, which was previously on November 19th. Hello and welcome back to the Everything Weather Podcast. I'm your host, Kyle David, and today we're talking with Mike Priante and Joe Slezak from Weatherwork. We talked a little bit about their history with the weather, how they got interested in it, and what eventually led them to Weatherworks, which is a private weather company based out of Hackett Sack, New Jersey, and they work with a whole bunch of different clientele. And we're going to continue that conversation. But first, what is on the person's playlist? So what music do you guys listen to when you're working, when you're off of work to help you get through the day?

SPEAKER_01 31:15

Okay, Joe, you you go ahead first. I'm sure you have tons of playlists.

SPEAKER_02 31:20

I am a Spotify I am a full-on Spotify addicted person. I don't appreciate spending like eleven dollars every month on it, but I listen to music especially like every day when I'm especially when I'm forecasting. When I interned at the National Weather Service in Mount Holly, uh Lee Robertson would always have music on there when he was forecasting. And I got in the habit of listening to music while I forecast, because it is kind of an art. It is science, but it's also art where you have to carefully craft things and there's a bit of a nuance to it, experience to it. And so I got used to listening to music, and I will listen to everything from like Hank Williams Jr. to Skrillex. It depends on the mood for the day. If there's a giant storm coming, giant nor'easter or giant hurricane, I will, you know, put on some hard style dubstep and then put on some hardcore stuff, or like Metallica. But then if it's been a long, like a very long week and it's finally starting to quiet down, one of the weather songs that I'd like to put on is one of the lesser known ones. There's quite a few that are like Riders on the Storm or or Have You Ever Seen The Rain by C C R. Like those are the obvious weather songs. My deeper cut is Weatherman by Hank Williams Jr. And the lyrics to that are great.

SPEAKER_00 32:39

If you're not aware of I can't say I'm familiar with Hank Williams, is is that country or is it? It's country, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 32:46

I pulled up the lyrics, so if you want it, just at least a few parts of it. I mean, it's I've had too many highs and too many lows, too many storms and tornadoes. I need some blue skies and sunshine. I need a good outlook tonight. It's a good song.

SPEAKER_00 32:59

So did he have a meteor album just as a ghostwriter?

SPEAKER_02 33:02

Because like that too many highs and too many lows is just that's perfect. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 33:07

You know, that's something that I've noticed a lot of country singers can sometimes talk about the weather. And there you go. Obviously, tornadoes are a big thing in like more country-esque areas, right? So, but yeah, Hank Williams, Joe Gami on that guy. So, yeah, he's pretty good.

SPEAKER_02 33:22

We actually are always, you know, even when we're working remotely, we're always talking to each other through the morning to our forecasts. On a typical morning, I go down to Central Jersey and then it switches over to Mike. And on that 4 a.m. shift, we're just sharing playlists and songs, and like we're just sending Spotify links to each other all morning. So while we're forecasting, we're just passing off recommendations to each other. And that song made that list.

SPEAKER_00 33:47

Yeah, Hank Williams, Weatherman. Mike, what about you?

SPEAKER_01 33:50

Um, so I don't have songs catered to weather. Um, I probably should, right? I should probably look through Spotify. Joe's the Spotify master. I I I'm just a guy that uses Spotify, and I've I've gotten every single song I've I've found. I I just hit the like button and all of a sudden now I have like over a thousand songs on there. So I'm I'm really anybody that'll listen to really anything from like Taylor Swift all the way to like more indie stuff. Like Foster the People is pretty good. Anything like uh Tame Impala, that kind of vibe is kind of my expertise here with with music. Maybe not so much with like really hard like RB or rap and even country too. Like Hank Williams I'll give him a pass, right? For for country. Sorry, not not his father, yeah, Jr. Um I'll give him a pass because he has that one song and he's pretty good. Um but everything else, I'm not like a Keith Urban kind of guy, I'm not that kind of person that really listens to country in general. Um but I'll listen to a lot of things. Um big artist for me though, I'm I'm I'm a pretty big Coldplay fan. Just putting that out there. Um so that's in my mix as well. But I like listening to other stuff too from the 70s and 60s, Beatles, The Monkeys, who else? Um trying off the top of my head, I'm sure Joe, you probably listen to a lot of people in like the raw high rock era.

SPEAKER_02 35:09

I I'll listen like speaking of the hard rocks, like Metallica. I know I said that.

SPEAKER_01 35:13

Okay, Metallica, yeah, yeah. I mean, not all Metallica, but some songs.

SPEAKER_02 35:17

I will listen to All Metallica and ACDC But with Metallica, that reminds me. One of our clients, MetLife, they were having the concert there, and they have to have some meteorologists on site. So I got to be I was fortunate enough that I was selected for that. I literally packed up my briefcase with a laptop, a couple monitors, and I set up downstairs at MetLife for the concert. I got to be on site, got to watch people that were being arrested, thrown in the police barracks right there. There's these really neat experiences that you get to do as a meteorologist, and obviously there's quite a bit of stress with that, but also at the same time it's extremely rewarding to know that you're responsible for everyone's safety with the lightning and with severe weather in the area.

SPEAKER_00 36:00

Um you guys actually go on site for some things, some events that you forecast and work for?

SPEAKER_01 36:08

Yeah, that was recent, but certainly because I think in the past we would just have them call in, but recently they found more value in having someone staff there, not only just to coordinate from Weatherworks uh remotely, but also just to be there to explain it and show more to their bosses and people in the higher ups that to say, okay, here's what we're looking at and coordinate instead of just having one person on the phone and do like a conference call. Um so I know Joe went to Metallica. I was at a concert for the Rolling Stones. That was pretty cool listening to some stones. But yeah, that was something recent that we're doing. And I think this year also we went to City Field for some of their concerts.

SPEAKER_02 36:46

And yeah, it's it becomes less of an issue as we get outside of like lightning season in terms of the summer. Obviously, they still have football and other events that continue into the winter, but it it's the value of having us on site is basically anyone, either from Live Nation or someone from another type of event, even if they're not directly our client, there the state police, for example, would walk in and say, Hey, are we like looking good for at least the next 30 minutes or whatever? We want to take the helicopter up or something. It's just these kind of like off-the-cuff things that you wouldn't have happen on the phone. But us being on site certainly helps with that.

SPEAKER_00 37:22

It sounds like there's a lot of fun that you're guys are getting to explore with going out to concerts to events. But I'm curious about what the day-to-day looks like. It's different probably for the two of you since you do different aspects of work at Weatherworks, but what is the typical day-to-day look like at Weatherworks?

SPEAKER_01 37:40

I guess it depends on the shift. And Joe and I have two kind of similar shifts. We have a 4 a.m. shift that we have, and then usually a 9 a.m. shift. The 4 a.m. shift is more so weather related, so we wake up, depending if you have to drive, but I'm remote, so it's nice to wake out of bed and not have to drive an hour to work. We usually wake up for the 4 a.m. shifts, get in, start to brief in on the weather. We all have our own little zones as maybe as as forecast meteorologists, and these zones, parts of the northeast and the midwest that we do forecasts for, we brief in, takes a little bit of time. We all coordinate through a Slack, we coordinate what we got going on this week, anything big to watch out for. And we have our coordinating meteorologist, Zach Shibala, who does a great job, who kind of coordinates, okay, anything that's interesting that we got to watch out for, kind of breaks down some meteorology, and let's make sure that we're looking at this here and not going too crazy with that. So kind of coordination with our meteorologists and also doing our own forecast by ourselves. And we have zone partners that that also come in later on. But in the morning we kind of do that, we forecast, we send out the forecast because a lot of these clients that we have to have their forecast early on. That's why we wake up at four. We don't wake up at seven, eight o'clock and get the forecast out because by then everyone's doing their work, and a lot of these jobs start sometimes as early as four or five. And in the winter time, the job's gonna start before it snows. So it could be nine p.m. or ten p.m. or one a.m. And if it starts to snow, they gotta be out there. So we're also up at that time as well to make sure they get the forecast. So the 4 a.m. shift has a lot in the morning, and then afterwards it's like making sure our zone partner that comes in at nine o'clock comes in and takes over, and and then they can handle the weather, and then after that, it's just working on whatever other things I have to do, such as social media for me, and I'm sure Joe is more product manager side, getting things done on that side. So that's the 4 a.m. shift uh for me.

SPEAKER_02 39:36

Yeah. I mean I do 4 a.m. shifts as well. Uh and at that 4 a.m. shift, if there is a giant nor'easter that is just parked on the east coast for two days or something like that, or there's a long track hurricane that is just gonna absolutely pummel the area, w we just go to these 12-hour shifts where so you have to be very comfortable with working some crazy hours. Again, there's benefits to that. I permanently am on that early morning shift in the winter because the benefits of shift work is I'll be done at 12 o'clock, one o'clock, uh, and I have the rest of the afternoon to spend with my kid. It which you can kind of make it work to your advantage there. It also means I go to bed as the same time as my kid. They're going to bed at 7, 8 o'clock. Guess who also is going to bed at 7, 8 o'clock? So again, it's demanding in terms of that day-to-day. You kind of get in that sleep schedule, uh, and then you just go with it. Uh similar to Mike, though, we all, when Mike said briefing in, again, we're going through satellite, we're going through airport, ASOS, uh, the automated uh observations there at the airports, we're going through radar, we're going through webcams. Basically, any information you you would need to look at to get the full picture of not just what the radar shows, but the ground truth. That's what the briefing in part is on the 4 a.m. shift. Once we do that, that's where we go into the forecast. Because like Mike said, you want to have your forecast in your hand when the normal people wake up, which means we have to wake up before the normal people.

SPEAKER_00 41:02

And you had said it, Joe, it's a very demanding field. It's a 24-7 thing. The weather doesn't sleep, it doesn't stop, it works on its own schedules. And 12-hour shift, that sounds pretty gruesome at times. So I'm curious, how do you manage work-life balance in such a demanding 24-7 field with these kind of hours?

SPEAKER_01 41:23

Yeah, it's something that's not just common with us at Weatherworks. There's a lot of industries that have 12-hour shifts. I mean, the weather service, I'm sure Joe can can attest to that when you we intern with the the weather service, but they have long shifts as well. Sometimes shifts that go from like 6 p.m. to who knows, 5 a.m. or even weird hours, like midnight. It's already at midnight would be interesting. Um, but sometimes you have those those shifts. So for me personally, to try to not go crazy, especially when it's like crazy weather, I have to almost distance myself from the weather whenever it gets really bad. Like after my shift, I just shut off anything, everything with weather, because it's tough to not do that, especially if there's like a snowstorm. I just have to stop because I be I I get excited for snow sometimes. But after working a long shift, it gets a little bit stressful. So I just gotta turn off the weather for about an hour, hour and a half, maybe, and just do something else, watch a movie, play some video games, just something to get my mind off of it. If it's nice weather outside, well, probably wouldn't be stressing over the weather, but go for a walk or to get my mind off of uh the weather. That's what I gotta do.

SPEAKER_02 42:23

It so when I was in high school, college, and everything, I said I was looking at weather models. If I'm not working, I'll be on Twitter, I'll be on uh X and I'll be looking at weather anyway. So if I can get paid and work 12 hours while I'm watching the weather anyway, I'm I'm gonna do that. It kind of comes back to that passion career, and I might as well get paid to do what I love. And then, yes, 12 hours is long, and it does mean that again, I used to always watch the weather all the time, and it would be like I would stay up till ungodly hours watching the weather. I'm gonna be up at ungodly hours to work anyway. Uh and the consequence of that is after doing that for a long shift, I do try to unplug because I used to just be always be on there and now I can't do that after doing it all day. So the super weather weenie in me had to go early, and now it it's kind of like I have to get that over with in my shift so I can start to unplug. And uh having kids have put perspective on that where it's like that is my job, that is my role. I help clients as much as I can during my shift, and then afterward it it's I'm just gonna unplug and just go be a dad.

SPEAKER_01 43:32

Yeah, and uh, you know, I mean it it's tough, especially when you have also like a large group of friends that ask you a million and one questions about the weather, and then you get off of a 12 hour shift and they're like, What's this gonna do tomorrow? And I'm just like, I'll get back to you in an hour.

SPEAKER_02 43:46

I've deferred I've deferred to apps before.

SPEAKER_01 43:48

I need to break. Well, the problem with the apps, Joe, is that they'll come to me with the apps saying, Why is it showing this? And I'm like, Oh no, I now I've got to do some brain surgery here and try to figure it out. So I'm like, look. Just let me relax for like an hour and a half. I just got off work and I'll get back till later about it. So if it's dire, I'm sorry, but like I I just gotta, you know, de stress what I just talk to clients about, you know?

SPEAKER_00 44:12

It's always those moments where your friend or somebody in your family comes to you with the weather app and they say, Oh, the weather app says this. It's good for quiet weather days, but it doesn't help with the nuanced stuff with the weather and communicating those complex things with the weather. With that said, I actually wanted to ask you, since you both work in different areas of weather communication, how do you communicate complex weather information in your roles?

SPEAKER_01 44:38

Well, both of our jobs, we're trying to communicate weather from to our clients, it's kind of similar, right? We got to make sure that what we do and we communicate with them is is is easy for them to understand, not just every person on the street to understand, but just from their perspective as a worker working in their industry, like how is it going to impact them? So certainly that communication is specific to the client. But from my perspective, on the other side, with social media, I think the one thing that we try to do is a good job is making sure that what we're putting out and what people are seeing is not misleading. Because there's so many times when someone decides to post a snow map from a model, not just a model of 300 hours out, but just a model of a snow map that is not conducive, but not representative of what the storm is going to be like. Because if you take away the meteorology from that snow map, it makes no sense, right? Sometimes snow maps don't understand other things. Like a 10 to 1, which is 10 inches of snow for one inch of liquid equivalent, will not always take into account things like sun angle, ground temperatures, mixed precipitation. So people see, oh my good, we're gonna get 20 inches of snow. But in reality, if you take a look at the meteorology and understand how the storm works, the dynamics, temperature profiles, if you look at a sounding for once, you'll see that 20 inches is pretty much fantasy. It can't happen. It's very unlikely to happen. So I think the thing with social media is making sure that what people see online is is number one, not wrong, not hype. Hype is probably the number one thing that I don't like seeing on social. Uh and also misinformation, like posting something that's not right, like, oh look, look at this weather map. It's the forecast, it's a GFS, it's a model. It's not a forecast, it's a tool that we use to forecast the weather. It's a guidance. Guidance means it guides you, but it doesn't direct you to what it's gonna be. So that's something that I see on a day-to-day basis that I think affects our communication. And so we try to do a good job at just saying, here's all the facts, here's everything laid out, here's the best idea out of everything. Now, is that gonna be 100% guaranteed? No, because weather's not guaranteed, no matter what you look at. There are gonna be small nuances that change things, but it's at least something to give you a general idea of, okay, here's what's gonna happen, uh, here's what you could do to prepare for it. Um now, what could go wrong? This could be a little bit more to the east, a little more to the west, it'll shift things a bit. A model is not gonna do that very quickly. So sometimes you also have to have that expertise and that that kind of uh ingenuity and that just that skill of being a meteorologist to know that model is definitely biased or that, or it's gonna do this and that, and here's what's gonna happen. And you just can't get that from just looking at a weather map. You just can't get that from that.

SPEAKER_02 47:16

And going back to the answering the complex, communicating those complex like weather, you know, decisions. Sometimes it's as simple as, for example, there's a guy who owns a major roofing company, calls in every morning, and Mike's laughing because he knows who I'm talking about. But again, I know their I know their sensitivities. I know depending on what project they're working on, sometimes if they're seal coating or they're doing a certain section of the roof, or I know what their thresholds are in terms of their sensitivities. I can just immediately say, Yeah, today's not gonna work. And I can make it as simple as today's not a great day, or tomorrow is much better, or tomorrow you know, tomorrow you can certainly can get the rest of that project done. And and I don't even need to talk about weather because I already know what would guide their day. Or I don't need to tell them the wind if it's not a factor today, but if tomorrow's gonna be gusting 40 miles an hour, you don't want to get blown off a roof. So it's ignoring all the information that they don't need to know. I don't need to tell them it's 70 degrees today, that doesn't affect him. I don't need to tell them the wind, it's not gonna affect him, but there is a wall of rain coming in at two o'clock. I'm gonna say you're fine till two o'clock, and it's very simple like that. Or sometimes it gets more nuanced when again, if we're talking about someone who can deal with a little bit of rain, say you're doing some landscaping and you can deal with a little light rain, even then it's the value added in terms of saying, instead of saying a 30% chance of showers this morning, I can say, even if you did see a sprinkle this morning, it's a sprinkle, you're fine, don't worry about it. Like that confidence helps them make their decision as far as whether or not to work today. And the same thing goes for school closings and sporting events.

SPEAKER_00 48:52

I think you both highlighted perfectly all the different nuances of weather communications, not just for the public, but for private clientele as well, the people that you primarily work with on a day-to-day basis. And on that note, where do you see in the next five, ten, maybe even twenty years, if you're that ambitious with predicting the future, on where the private weather forecasting industry and weather communications will be?

SPEAKER_02 49:17

I'll take that first. Yeah, yeah, go ahead. Large language models, AI, and other forecasting tools will continue to improve. I still think in the next five to even 20 years, we're still talking adding value as a human in terms of understanding clients, understanding their sensitivities, is still gonna be hard to recreate with any sort of AI or large language models. It's still there might be ways that again the weather itself might get more confident. You have higher skill scores on models, you have better raw weather data, and still have better information in terms of the forecasts. It's still gonna come down to the margins for private business as well as even uh other sectors of meteorology, is gonna be adding that value to the personal weather decisions of the day. Understanding, like I mentioned, understanding thresholds, understanding what's applicable to that person for that day, and tailoring it more to specific people rather than the raw data being right now. There's still a lot of understanding biases, understanding models that do poorly with certain things, models that do well with certain things. Even if in the next 20 years you said all the models were perfect and you're gonna have an exactly perfect depiction of the raw weather, there there's still an interpretation and and a dissemination part of it.

SPEAKER_01 50:46

Yeah, I think in the future, five, ten years, you're gonna see every single weather app out there use large language models. You're gonna see basically this kind of artificial intelligence be added into almost everything with weather. Um, maybe from a private perspective, it might be used to help enhance things, but it's certainly not going to take away from the meteorologist side. Like you can't really teach an LLM meteorology. You could maybe you could 30 years down the road, who knows? But you could input it information and it knows it. But is it going to understand? Oh, yeah, I saw this happen last week, so it's gonna happen again, or it's not gonna happen again, because the atmosphere is not like an LLM, it's not something that you can like code and figure out. It's very chaotic. The atmosphere is like fluid, and I think that's still something that is not gonna get really like with big storms. Like obviously, AI is gonna do a good job with like when it's sunny in 72. It's really hard to mess that up unless maybe there's a few more cloud clouds in the in the forecast. But it's really gonna have a tough time when you have all of these different variables that come into play with a big major nor'easter because there's so many small little nuances that could change it five, six days in advance, especially when you have a storm on the east coast that's gonna originate from a wave that came off of Asia that travel traversed across the Pacific, makes its way into the to the to California, has to hook up with something from Mexico, and it's not gonna be able to know that because it's like the butterfly effect, right? There's gonna be things that affect it along the way that it can't predict. So it's gonna always be changing. So I think what us as meteorologists are gonna do a good job in the future is using the LLM to maybe make the easier things easier, but at the same time, I I don't know if it's gonna make the harder things easier. Maybe a little bit, but I think the easier things will be very easy, small things that can be easily forecasted that we don't have to do the manual work for. But the the difficult tasks of figuring out is the northeast northeast gonna get a big snowstorm or not, from all these complicated shortwaves or energy pieces of energy that come into the country, we're gonna have to do the hard work, unfortunately. I think that's still gonna be up to the weatherworks, the weather meteorologist ingenuity.

SPEAKER_02 52:58

We're kind of already seeing that. We have something we unveiled in the last few years, and again, it's already starting that in terms of transitioning to some AI enhanced things. We have a pavement temperature forecast model. So I don't know how to go around and measure pavement everywhere. We only have select sensors in terms of pavement temperature. Obviously, pavement temperature is crucial whether things stick or not in terms of snow, and as well as in melt and refreeze and rain that now temperatures plummet. Like we only have sparse observations for that. There's those sensors are extremely expensive to put in roadways. Some of the state DOTs have them. Well, uh, in order to generate a forecast for everywhere, for all roads, you need to use some sort of AI, and I don't know if AI is the correct word, but at least some sort of some post-processing and a very fancy way of interpolating, but also generating a forecast based on putting in weather data into that model and then training it on past observations. So we're already doing that with the pavement risk, which is again, now you can get a graph of pavement temperature within your forecast from us. So it continues to add value to what we do. I just still don't see it replacing us vermato.

SPEAKER_00 54:13

It sounds like a very interesting future for the weather forecasting and communications, especially with AI. I've got one last question before we get into our last fun section. Let's say you have the DeLorean from Back to the Future. You go back in time to your younger self, you got a little time to talk with your younger self. What advice would you give? What would you say to them?

SPEAKER_01 54:33

Number one, you're gonna be a meteorologist. Good job. Um, maybe, maybe, I mean, look, it's like not that I didn't ever thought I was gonna be a meteorologist, but uh maybe I can like wow my younger self and say, look, I'm a meteorologist, and he'd be like, Whoa, that's so cool. I'm talking to a meteorologist. Maybe look up as like my own hero, my own role model. But I guess maybe tell myself, like, obviously you're gonna run into issues because meteorology is a tough major, especially with math. And I know math was something that I always used to struggle a little bit in school. So I just to tell my younger self, look, eventually you're gonna get over it, and if you have that passion, keep it. Because the passion is what drives it. Even if you're struggling one thing, if you have enough of passion, you'll be able to overcome anything. It'll all work out, and the meteorology is in your future, and there's nothing that's gonna change that.

SPEAKER_02 55:25

I like that, Mike. Thanks. I kind of like the self-affirming you'll do it. It's gonna be difficult.

SPEAKER_00 55:31

A little bit of nation paradox there. Yeah, yeah. Or is that bootstrap? Were you self-fulfilling in a way? That's bootstrap, I think. Bootstrap.

SPEAKER_01 55:40

I wouldn't tell myself, oh, maybe I will tell myself like the lottery numbers. Maybe I'll do that.

SPEAKER_02 55:44

I was gonna say I would have been like, all right, so do buy some of these stocks, don't buy these other stocks. Oh yeah, buy bitcoin.

SPEAKER_01 55:51

Buy Bitcoin now.

SPEAKER_02 55:53

Yeah. Yeah. After Rutgers getting my bachelor's degree, college is so orientated towards research, I started working on my master's when in reality, if I could have told myself, don't even do that, just go work at Weatherworks. That's what I should have done. Because again, I spent money and time and effort working on that to really just end up going into the private sector right away and starting to forecast. So, in terms of something that I would have just said, just don't even worry about it, just immediately start working on that. It it's much more tailored towards research. Yes, I learned a lot, but in terms of working, operational meteorology, there's a lot of people that don't even have degrees that I know that are great at forecasting weather. They might miss some of the nuanced things, but again, it is so heavily experience driven in terms of if you can start looking at models and start looking at buff kit uh and start looking at data, you can start to learn things that you still won't get with a master's or a PhD. Absolutely for research, yes. Absolutely for commodities trading and developing other new products for meteorologists to operationally use. Sure, those things are you know valuable. But if I wanted to immediately start forecasting weather, I would not bother with the masters, and I would just immediately say, you know, diversify your meteorology with some other sort of experience in terms of sales, marketing, social, in terms of programming, in terms of being the person who integrates those LLMs and AI into weather. Do that instead of seeking higher education, if that makes sense.

SPEAKER_00 57:30

Very great piece of advice from both of you, Mike and Joe. Uh, with that said, it is now time for our favorite part of the episode, which is weather. I'll ask you both a couple of weather and non-weather related trivia questions. I've got a two for each of you there designed, but both of you can answer. Um so with that said, are you guys ready? I'm ready. Sure. Let's go. All right. This is whether or not your your question is severe related. The book and TV movie Night of the Twisters was based on a real tornado outbreak in 1980. Where did this tornado outbreak take place? Is it A, Lincoln, Nebraska, B, Grand Island, Nebraska, C, Dodge City, Kansas, or D, Tulsa, Oklahoma?

SPEAKER_02 58:19

I'm gonna go with C Dodge? I'm gonna go with D. And I'm basing that on I have no idea, but it's not the same letter as Mike's.

SPEAKER_00 58:29

So we got C Dodge City for Mike and D Tulsa for Joe. You are both incorrect. It is Grand Island, Nebraska. I would have not guessed that.

SPEAKER_02 58:41

I did love Nebraska. Nebraska was one of the favorite states when we went on the the storm trip there with Dr. Decker with Ruckers. Uh, Nebraska is my favorite state, and if I could live somewhere other than New Jersey, I would take Scotts Bluff over New Jersey.

SPEAKER_00 58:55

Can't say I went out that far, but I was out in the Black Hills for that same trip. It's nice out there, yeah. Very nice. Next question. This is whether or not your next question is related to fishing. What is the most common fishing method used globally? Is it A. fly fishing, B, sand fishing, C, net fishing, or D, line fishing?

SPEAKER_01 59:20

I mean, I think I know. I'm sure Joe knows.

SPEAKER_02 59:22

I'm gonna go with C. Net.

SPEAKER_01 59:24

I was gonna go with C. That or long lining, but net fishing.

SPEAKER_02 59:27

I'm gonna go with C.

SPEAKER_01 59:28

Well, my my my thing with net fishing is you throw a net in the ocean, that's how a lot of fishermen get fish. So nets, right?

SPEAKER_02 59:34

Yeah. But yeah, you gotta think about it, whereas these giant boats that are trawling giant nets, not not, you know, not Mike previously. That's why I meant that's why I meant. Yeah. All right. We're gonna take a collaborative C on that one.

SPEAKER_00 59:48

I'll I'll be honest, you made a fair point with that. Um, and I don't think the person when I was finding these questions, I don't think they took that into account. Technically, the right answer is D, line fishing, but because you made a convincing argument, I'm gonna give you the correct answer for uh net fishing, because I feel like it's neck and neck with that. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:08

Um for D, I think the uh that's like called long lining, and it's like they put out these long lines of it's like hook after hook after hook. Uh and then terms like tonnage. Yeah. That might be more proliferate, proliferated instead of uh nets, but yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:30

Yeah, I think they mean when you're fishing with a bait or you're fly fishing, you know, you got a line, you cast it out. I think that's what they mean. Um but I'll still give you both the right answer for that. Sounds good. All right. This is whether or not your next question is severe weather related. Ted Fajita studied tornadoes extensively, eventually developing a to rate their damage. This famous grad student worked with him and eventually became a severe weather expert for a television station. Is it uh I'll cut you off.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:03

It is it is Dr. Greg Forbes. Am I correct?

SPEAKER_00 1:01:08

I'll read you the answers and then we'll get into there. Is it A, Greg Forbes, B, Reed Timmer, C, William Gray, or D, Tim Samaris? Oh, wait, uh it's Tim.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:23

Oh, see now you're gonna.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:25

No, Joe, you said you said Dr. Forbes. Uh well now I'm gonna just have to stick with A, but I I yeah, I don't think it's Tim. But it could be it's either Tim or Greg.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:34

Um I mean What were the other options? Can you beat the other ones? Now I'm confusing listeners either.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:41

Greg Forbes, B, Rick Timmer, C, William Gray, or D, Tim Samaris. You know what?

SPEAKER_01 1:01:49

Uh I'm gonna go with with William Gray.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:53

So we got William Gray for you, Mike, and then Joe. You're thinking Greg Forbes is your final answer?

SPEAKER_02 1:02:00

Yeah, I'll take Greg, even though it might be Tim. You are correct, Joe. It is Greg Forbes. Now I got I I like I uh I shortcutted the answers before I even did it, and then I started second guessing myself.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:15

Your instinct led you right there. I will give you that. So it is great.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:19

I read I read Tim Tim Samaris's book, uh the book about Tim Samaris, and I can't remember the name of it, but that got me confused because then I was that then I over uh overthought it.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:32

Yeah, I I figured the Tim Samaris would have been like a little wild card there. Um it was a good wild card. Your instinct led you right with that one. Alright, I've got one more for you. This is whether or not your question is related to science fiction, mainly Star Trek. What is the name of the catch 22 scenario which Captain Kirk cheats to win during his training at Startfleet Academy? Is it A, the no-win scenario, B, the Kobayashi Maru, C, the Prodigy Test, or D, the Captain Readiness Assessment.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:07

Well, I know this.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:08

I I I know this as well.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:10

You know this too? Yeah, you go ahead, Mike. You want you want to go ahead?

SPEAKER_02 1:03:14

Sure. The the Kobayashi Maru. I believe that was B.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:17

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:18

Yes. Kobayashi Maru.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:20

There is B. Mike, both of you say B? Yes. You are both correct. It is the Kobeyashi Maru. And with that, that is our last weather or not trivia question. But before I let you guys go, where can people follow you and your work?

SPEAKER_01 1:03:36

Well, social media, pretty simple. Just search Weatherworks on Facebook, on LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, slash X. We're on YouTube as well. I think that's really it for now. We're trying to get it to TikTok. It's not going very well right now, but you might see us on TikTok down the road. We'll see. But basically every all the major social media accounts you can find us there. Just search Weatherworks.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:01

I'm on the Andrew. And Mike, Mike does a good plug there for Weatherworks socials. Personally, I have my personal Twitter account, but I am kind of otherwise. I I try to unplug. So again, I I will defer to the Weatherworks socials. I am not a social influencer by any means.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:18

Um Yeah, I don't really go on social. The only socials I go on are when I'm at work or I'm on Facebook.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:25

It sounds bad when you say it like that. The only socials I go on are when I'm working.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:28

Well, no, that's a good thing, right? Because when I'm done with work, I'm done with social, right? So like I don't have to be on Twitter or whatever looking at Doom Scrolling as they call it, right? But no, I don't have really an account that other I like post all the time on Twitter. I used to, but I don't think I've been on that account in like four years, five years. So I don't know. Uh but uh you know I'm on Facebook. Um but really, yeah, if you want to really get involved with me, um more than likely if you interact with someone on our social at Weatherworks, it's gonna be me anyway. So, you know, you'll you'll probably be like, oh yeah, it's Mike from the podcast, probably.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:00

So if you guys want to talk to, if you're listening to the podcast now, if you want to learn more about Mike and Joe, just spam WeatherWorks accounts, and somebody will eventually lead you to them. All right. Well, Joe, Mike, thank you for joining me on the podcast today, and thank you, the listener, for listening to the Everything Weather Podcast. And we'll catch you on the next episode.