A Celebration of You, The Weather, & 25 Episodes!

Join us as we celebrate the 25th episode of The Everything Weather Podcast! We'll recap all of the episodes so far, celebrating the guests we've had on and the fun times we've had along the way learning about the interesting world of weather!

Katie Frazier's Weather Song Playlist: https://www.katie-frazier.com/weather-playlist

'A Furious Sky: A 500-Year History of America's Hurricanes' by Eric Jay Dolin: https://a.co/d/fCrrSpi

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Have a question or comments? You can text us using the link above or email us at everythingweatherpodcast@gmail.com.

Thank you for tuning in to this episode of the Everything Weather Podcast! We hope you enjoyed it and found the content valuable. 

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

Kyle David 0:06

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 is a very special episode of the podcast. It's the 25th episode of the Everything Weather Podcast. And while it may not seem as significant as, say, the thousandth episode, like the Weather Brains podcast has recently celebrated, it's still a milestone that I'd love to celebrate with you, the listener, for because you guys tune in every week to hear me talk with different people about the weather world, learn some things about the weather, and have some fun along the way as well. So I want to take this special 25th episode to celebrate the podcast so far, go back to some of the best moments from each of our past episodes up to this point, and have some fun along the way. There's going to be some fun things in store for this podcast. Before I go into outlining what we're going to be doing, I have one important note about the podcast. We are going to be shifting from a weekly to a bi-weekly uploading schedule. So instead of every Monday, you'll be getting a new episode every other Monday for the Everything Weather podcast. And that's just because I want to produce better quality content that is informational, educational, and fun as well. As a one-person team doing the editing, the producing, the hosting, everything with the podcast. It's a lot doing it weekly. But I want to focus on producing the best possible content for you, the listener. So we will be shifting to a bi-weekly schedule again every other Monday instead of every Monday. And but we still have a lot of special episodes in store for the Everything Weather podcast. And I'll be announcing those at the end of the podcast after we've done our recap. And I'll get into that in just a second. But that'll come towards the end of the podcast, those teasers for what's coming in the pipeline for the podcast. Now, what are we going to be doing for this special 25th episode? We've got a few things. We've got a fun section that I'll be doing and talking about with you. And after that, we'll get into the best moments, or my opinion, the best moments from each of the past 24 episodes that we've done so far on the podcast. We'll take a break in the middle of that for on this day in the weather history segment. We'll come back with a fun section for you, the listener, to play along with. We'll go back into the recap and then at the end we'll have a sunset segment that'll give me a little bit of time to talk with you, the listener, about not only what's going on with the weather, but also share a couple things with weather resources, some advice that I've learned. And at the end, we'll have our oh and after that we'll announce some upcoming episodes that are in the pipeline for release later this year. And finally, we will wrap that all together with our weather or not trivia that you, the listener, will be able to play along with. So, with all that said, let's get into the first fun section. This is going to be a little bit more for me, but it allows you, the listener, to learn a little bit more about me, the person behind the microphone, behind the screen. And this is a little bit of a riff on the what's on the weather person's playlist for past we've done that we've done in the past. So, what is on the weather person's playlist for me? There's a lot of different music that's on my playlist. There's no real straightforward answer with that, but you know, I enjoy a lot of music it from ranging from different genres from rock to metal to synth wave, like 80s and 90s, electronic synth music to rap music, classic hip-hop from the 90s, the early 2000s. There's so many genres of music that I like, but to name a couple of artists, I really love August Burns Red. They're a Christian metal core band, or they include elements of that in their lyrics. While I'm not heavily religious, I do some of their lyrics because they're inspirational and they get me going through the day. Plus, it's very energetic as well. Some other bands that I like are Breaking Benjamin, who have some ties to my home state of New Jersey. The lead singer is actually from New Jersey. So a little fun fact for you there. I also like the classics like ACDC, Black Sabbath, Metallica. Metallica was my gateway band to the heavier rock and metal scene for me, and that came from my mom and my dad. And then like other artists like Lincoln Park, especially the new stuff. I've really loved the new songs that they've put out lately. Those are just a couple of artists, and they're honestly again, there's so many different artists that I listen to. It's hard to nail down how many I listened to, but this fun section actually comes with a little bit of something for you as well. It's not just me talking about what music I like, there's actually something for you as well. So a little backstory there's an on-air meteorologist, a broadcast meteorologist who has put together a weather themed playlist. So Katie Frasier, who was a broadcast meteorologist in El Paso, she now freelances for different TV stations to fill in with weather reporting and weather forecasting. She did the segment where she would take different songs that have some weather themes to it and use each of those songs to describe what the weather was going to be like in El Paso. And she's put together a really awesome playlist of a bunch of songs that have weather themes and not only the title, but maybe some of the lyrics as well. So I'm going to be linking that playlist for you, the listener, in our show notes as well. Because I think it's a really awesome playlist, even though I do think it needs a little more rock and metal. It's still an awesome playlist that allows you to listen to things that are not only great sounding, in my opinion, but also have some weather themes to it as well. So that'll be listed in the show notes for you to go and check out that playlist. All right, with that out of the way, let's get into recapping all of the past episodes that we've done so far. And to be honest, it's been a challenge for me whittling down more than 25 hours of podcast episodes down into an hour to highlight the best moments from each episode. And there were so many different ways that I could do this, but I ended up settling on what I thought was the best moment from each episode. So, in order, we're starting all the way at the beginning and recapping every episode that we've done so far and highlighting the my favorite moments from each of those episodes. So, first up, we're taking it way back to the beginning of the podcast with our first podcast guest, Rebecca Everard Martinez, who is an air quality specialist based out of Denver, Colorado. We talked about what the connection is between air quality and the weather and how that impacts daily life. But the one thing that I thought was the most interesting was actually her weather story. And she talks a little bit about how her family actually got her interested into the weather. And I'll let Rebecca's story kind of tell itself here.

Rebecca Evrard Martinez 7:51

My grandfather was a hurricane hunter for the Air Force way back when, before satellite imagery really became big and radar and all of that. And it was one of the only ways to get the word out about what might be coming. So I think it's just in my blood a little bit. And in eighth grade, we were allowed to put in the yearbook what we wanted to be when we grew up. And I put a meteorologist. And I had a friend from elementary school reach out to me in college, and she had just found that eighth grade yearbook. And she said, I just want you to know that I looked to see what everybody was studying and what they were doing. You're the only one who's doing what you put in the yearbook, that you're pursuing the same thing that you wanted to do when you were like 12 years old. So that was fun. I like that moment. And so when I was studying meteorology at Records, I wasn't 100% sure what I wanted to do with that degree. I didn't really know yet what you could do with that degree. I think at that time we all just know about the National Weather Service and television. And I wasn't necessarily sold sold on those things. So I went to grad school at Texas AM and I studied atmospheric science there. And when I finished up there, moved to Denver, Colorado. And I worked in weather for um a little while. I uh was a producer for television uh for meteorology. I worked at NOAA in Boulder. And while I was at NOAA in Boulder, um, a lot of atmospheric science funding was cut, including my program and my project. So I thought back to Rutgers and what had I studied and what would I be able to do? And I broadened my horizons a little bit to environmental science in general, and I came across a job posting for air quality work for a consulting firm. And so I applied for that and got that job. And and so now I've been doing air quality work for um a little over six years now. So that's my story of how I got to where I am now.

Kyle David 9:57

So again, I thought that story was really interesting, and that was one of the standout moments from her particular episode. And again, it was so hard to whittle each of these episodes into one specific moment, but that was one that stuck out for me from this episode. And as she had mentioned, she's also a Ruckers alumni, and that's a little bit of a recurring theme with our podcast guests because I'm also a Ruckers alumni. I love talking about Rutgers whenever I get the chance because it was a really awesome experience. And other people on the podcast who are also Ruckers alum have gotten the chance to talk about their experience with Ruckers as well. But we also have some other alumni on the podcast as well. It's not just a Rutgers-themed podcast with this one. And one good example of that is our next episode, which actually was our first of its kind episode where we had two guests on at the same time. So we had Joe Sleezak, who is a Rutgers alum, but we also had Mike Priante, who is a Penn State alumni. But the commonality between the two is that they're both meteorologists who work at Weatherworks. The company provides private weather forecasts for a range of different clients. And we talked about that on the episode, what it's like for forecasting for the private world, all these different clients. And I'll let Mike and Joe talk about that a little bit more with this clip from their episode and our conversation.

Mike Priante 11:27

A lot of our meteorologists, their weatherworks, they're all meteorologists, right? The people that you're talking to when 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.

Joe Slezak 11:46

And yeah, that's a head of the joke.

Mike Priante 11:47

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 in the wintertime, 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 downs, 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 in 1986, and now we were now we're in Hackettstown, New Jersey, and we have a what do we have, Joe? Like 35, 40 meteorologists, I think.

Joe Slezak 12:49

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. 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.

Kyle David 13:39

And while they talked about what the private weather forecasting world is like and what they do at Weatherworks, another reason why I like this clip is because of the dad jokes at the beginning, courtesy of Mike Priante, which there was a few of those sprinkled throughout our conversation on that episode. But next up on the podcast recap trail, we have Dan Peck, who is a weather and climate producer over at ABC News. And we've actually been in touch since doing this episode, just talking about what's been going on with the weather world and just keeping touch in general. Now, we talked about what it's like producing weather and climate content behind the scenes in a broadcast setting, but one thing that stuck out from our conversation was his journey. He talked about his weather story from being impacted by the blizzard of 96 up until getting into broadcasting and then eventually getting tapped in by Ginger Z, who is the chief meteorologist over at ABC News. And this clip was what stuck out to me the most from our conversation.

Dan Peck 14:47

I really remember getting really into the whole event and looking more into the details of it was the Blizzard of 96 here. It was well, what's a funny story, and I think this happens with a lot of people that end up being meteorologists, is my my family thought, oh, Dan just wants to get a day off of school. And I'm like, no, I actually really find this stuff interesting. We had well over two feet of snow in northern New Jersey, where I grew up, and that kind of just fascinated me. Like, how does this happen? I was still a smaller, younger kid, and just seeing that amount of snow, I that got me going. Like, how does that happen? How does this come from the sky? Accumulate these massive amounts and literally shut down cities. So that's where it all started. And then from there, I not only was interested in the snow and the weather part of it, but I was also really interested in the news. I was always watching, not only watching the weather, the weather channel all the time, but then also all the local broadcasts. And it wasn't just for the weather forecast, it was also just the news in general. I was always fascinated with how the news operates, really just the whole process. So that was my mindset from middle school through high school. I always knew that in some way or form I wanted to be involved with meteorology. And I initially just went out and I set out to do the news angle of it because it was something that I also found really interesting. So that's where I went. I went to school for meteorology, I went to Kane University. And then after I graduated, or actually right towards the end of my senior year, I was really lucky that one of my professors was in contact with producers at ABC News and they had asked me, uh, do you know anyone that wants to help us out this summer? We need help. And I couldn't faster raise my hand, and I said, Yes, I'll definitely do it. So I did that right after graduating and um did that for this for about a year. And then just like a lot of other people, I also was really fast away at the on-air part, and I wanted to be the local weatherman in a community. So I went down to Hakerstown, Maryland, did the on-air part for a couple of years, and I loved it. I thought it was great. Um, but at the same time that was happening, Ginger Z, who I've worked with now for many years, and we had met first when I was filling in at ABC News, she got promoted to chief meteorologist, and we had kept in contact, and she said, I have big plans for the ABC weather team. And uh I was like, this is interesting.

Tyler Case 17:13

Yeah.

Dan Peck 17:14

So I took a chance, I stepped away. I thought it was gonna be briefly, but here I am many years later, still at ABC, still with Ginger, and and a weather team that we've really built from a very small presence to what I like to think is is a is a real big force in today's weather and climate coverage.

Kyle David 17:34

And the thing I find really interesting about the weather world and all the people that are in it, is that everybody has their own unique story. And a lot of them actually have something to do with past weather events. And that's no exception. With me, for me, it was a multitude of different events that got me more and more interested in the weather from the Boxing Day Blizzard when I was just a nine-year-old kid looking at the skies and enjoying the weather to Hurricane Sandy, which had impacted my neighborhood in inland New Jersey, was a very impactful storm, and then several other winter events that got me interested in the weather back in 2018. And every person who is in the weather world has their own stories like this. I just thought this one was very interesting and how it eventually transitioned from, for Dan's case, getting interested in the weather because of the Blizzard of 96, going to Keen to further study the meteorology and weather and learn more about it, to eventually getting tapped in by Ginger Z and getting a position there as a weather and climate producer. So I thought that was a really standout moment from our conversation. Now, next up is our conversation with Matt Lanzen. He's an energy meteorologist with Center Point Energy, and he has a track record not only in energy meteorology, but also communicating the weather to a wide range of audiences. He has two blogs, the Space City Weather Forecast blog that's forecasting for the greater Houston area and the surrounding areas. And he also has the IWAL blog, which focuses more on tropical weather forecasting during the hurricane seasons, which is just around the corner as we are recording this. And he also does a lot of social media stuff on the side as well. Now, one really fun moment from our conversation was during our forecast frenzy fun section where we got to talk about forecasts for different historical and fictitious uh settings, and this one is no exception. We did a forecast with the Game of Thrones setting in mind. So we did a forecast for a normal day in Westeros and a forecast for when the White Walkers are coming, and this was probably one of my favorite moments of our conversation. Next up, we have Game of Thrones in Westeros. We're actually gonna do two forecasts because you have the normal weather and then you have winter. If you've not seen Game of Thrones, basically there's this long winter where the White Walkers come and other stuff. If you haven't seen or the show or what read the books, I highly recommend it. Um, so first we'll start off with a normal day in Westeros.

Matt Lanza 20:26

Yeah, so a normal day in Westeros is probably it's probably like any mid-latitude location, right? You're probably gonna have cold and snow up north of the wall. You're gonna have probably some uh chilly rain in King's Landing, and then you're gonna have super nice weather, tropical weather in the south. And I think that it it doesn't seem to me like it would be any crazier than that for the most part. What what I love about Game of Thrones and the weather there is that it it really plays into the story, obviously, from just from a day-to-day perspective, but then also just this whole understanding that everybody has that oh, winter's coming, and like it's like nobody has to say anything else, like everybody just knows what that means. And I'm trying to think what is that for like us in in reality, and I don't know what that is.

Kyle David 21:15

Poor vortex is coming, maybe.

Matt Lanza 21:17

I don't sure we can go with that, but but it's just understood by everybody, they get it. Um, so yeah.

Kyle David 21:24

So we've got the normal day in westers, now you got winters coming, white walkers coming. What's the forecast, Matt?

Matt Lanza 21:30

We've got ice dragons in the north, we've got heavy snow. My my guess is that all that snow would dub out though into the to the middle latitudes of of Westeros into the south, uh, and then it would be dry and cold in the north. Uh so you'd have just there, like light snow, but not heavy snow. But I think that somebody's got to get blasted during winter with snow. Like somebody's gotta get a good old fashioned blizzard or two from this winter that that's coming, in addition to the the ice dragons and the mic walkers and all that. But yeah, I mean, like that there was only It was disappointed. It's a good old-fashioned nor'easter somewhere in Westeros. I don't know who's gonna get it, but someone has to, right? I would love to see that by the castle or one of the castles just buried in three feet of snow.

Kyle David 22:13

Yeah, maybe even some ocean bay effect snow down towards King's Landing.

Matt Lanza 22:18

Absolutely. Yeah, and I I think that would make that would give King's Landing such a different personality, I think it would be fun.

Kyle David 22:26

It may even rival real life like effect snow for some areas in the US.

Matt Lanza 22:31

Yeah, exactly. I say institute it and see what happens. Add that to the story.

Kyle David 22:36

All right, George R. Martin, if you're listening, you got some uh weather inspiration for your next book. And if George R.R. Martin is actually listening to this podcast, this small weather podcast, hey, you've got some ideas to work with for your next book for the Game of Thrones series from our conversation with Matt Lans and talking about the weather in Game of Thrones. And I I will personally say this, even though all of my fun sections I've done with guests in the past, they're all fun, not only for me, but for the guests, and hopefully for you as well. I would probably say this is my favorite fun section that I've done so far with any of my guests so far. And again, all of them are fun, but this one was probably the one that stands out the most to me so far in all of the past episodes that I've done. And I'm gonna take a moment to cheat here because there were so many fun moments with this episode that I wanted to highlight one that was relating to what Matt was talking about between talking about the weather and then also his experience with the energy industry as well. Because it wasn't just fun sections we did talking about forecasts for Game of Thrones, Cloudy with a chance of meatballs, the battle of Trenton in the Revolutionary War. We talked about what he does professionally in the energy and social media world. And here's a little bit of a clip from our conversation of Matt talking about what it's like to forecast for the energy world.

Matt Lanza 24:04

The the number one driver of all this energy use is weather. And that has been this way forever and it will continue to be this way. And now, not only that, as renewables come into the energy picture, it's becoming forecasting supply as well. So you're just trying to forecast demand and forecasting supply as you're dealing with wind power and solar power. How's the wind gonna blow? How much sun are we gonna have in Texas and California where these big solar hubs are? Um, and it's uh really fascinating to me to see how much emphasis is being required now to place all these things compared to what it was when I started. Uh when I was at SoCal Edison, we had like three wind farms, I think, that we forecasted for. And it was just basically taking a look at a vendor forecast and you know what I call sanity checking it, making sure it looked okay. Uh, and then what you would do is say it gives a thumbs up, thumbs down, or just tell them what hours you thought the wind might underperform, overperform. And we're still doing that to some extent, but it's becoming such a big scale now that it's becoming critically important to understand how these renewables behave in certain environments. So a lot of wind forecasting, a lot of solar forecasting. And then, like I said, for for this company in particular, there's a lot of we we do things on shipping, on vessels. So are the winds gonna be too strong, move vessels? Is there gonna be too much fog if the ship channel is gonna close? Is there a hurricane in the Gulf that's gonna prevent ships from getting into the Gulf or getting out of the Gulf alternative? So, how is that gonna impact our schedule? How is that gonna impact our operations? Are we gonna have to shut the facility down because we're under threat of a hurricane? All these different variables that just go into it. So it's a lot of specific things for a lot of specific end users, and it never it never ceases to amaze me how deep into the weeds that gets. Everybody's got a weather interest of some sort for their business plan. And just being able to contribute to that is is a lot of fun and really interesting.

Kyle David 26:00

And this was such a great conversation with Matt. We talked a lot about the energy world. We also talked with his we also talked about his pot. We also talked about his blogs that he does on the side, the eye wall blog and the space city weather blog, and what it takes to communicate the weather, not just for the energy world, but also every possible person that is out there and wanting to know what the weather's going to be like across the country, and then also in the Atlantic as well when the hurricane season is going on. Now, next up we have Christina Special, who is a meteorologist in the National Weather Service at the Albany office, and we talked about balancing the need for conveying the weather story, what the weather forecast is going to be, trying not to include so much jargon, all those weather meteorology terms that may throw people into a head role, and give it in a way that is credible, it's trustworthy, and it gives the most important information up front. So here's a little bit of Christina talking about balancing science and simplicity when giving the forecast with the National Weather Service.

Christina Speciale 27:12

You want to have credibility. So you want to make sure that you're not just you want to make sure that people can trust you, that you know what you're talking about. And actually, I link it to COVID. If you remember a lot of the briefings we listened to, there are a lot of high-end doctors, and we don't have that medical knowledge. But at the same time, we're turning to the experts for guidance. And when they can balance communicating the science with recommendations, you you have more trust in them because they sound like they know what they're talking about. So you do want to give a little bit of science talk, if you will, to the point where you can build the trust in your audience that, like, hey, you can trust me, I know what I'm talking about. And here is the reasons why I'm telling you it's gonna snow, why I'm telling you we're gonna have freezing rain, whatever the case might be. So I think any kind of science expert, whether it's weather or health, engineering, whatever, you do have to give a little bit of science, of a little more science-y information, just so you can build credibility. But once that's established, then go into plain language. So definitely a balance. So you do want to, it's all practice though. I will say it's practice. And you can gauge if your audience receives a message by their questions. So if you're delivering your message, your briefing, and then you're getting questions back, you can gauge a level of understanding if you went over their head, if you didn't provide enough information. A lot of times people are sometimes a little, I'll say afraid, but they don't want to ask a question because they don't want to prolong a call. But sometimes it's necessary if you don't understand or you still have additional questions, like that's why we're here. So it's definitely a balance. It takes practice. It is definitely a Goldilocks method to it, where you want to give enough with a credibility and they have enough information to do their jobs, but then don't go overboard where you are um too verbose and you are making them people thinking like, oh my God, stop talking. I need to get out with my dad. So there's definitely a balance. You have to hit on what we call key messages. So usually go into a briefing with your head, okay, what are my key messages? What are the three things I need them to come away with? If nothing else, these are three bullets that they need to remember and take up when they leave my briefing. I want them to know these three things. So develop your key messages, make sure you hit on those a couple of times so it syncs in. And then again, anticipating the questions, think to yourself, what information do they need to do their jobs? If I'm talking to a road crew, they need to know snowfall rates, they need to know temperatures, they need to know start time, end time, they need to know about winds, refreeze potential. So I'm thinking what information do they need to do their jobs? And that's what I'm gonna touch upon in my briefing. I'm not gonna touch upon things that they don't care about. So you need to know your audience, what do they want to know about, what traditionally have they asked you about, and then hit on those topics and your key messages, and then you have to switch gears if you're talking to a different partner and you have to know what they want to know about. So, like a superintendent for school closings, they have different needs. They need to know about like busing and what are the temperatures that will be when students are waiting in a bus stop, for example. Early dismissal time, they need to know what are the weather conditions from like 12 to 3 o'clock, or I need an early dismissal. So, again, it's know your audience, know what they're gonna ask, and touch upon that in your briefing, and then if you can look at their questions to see if they got the message or if there's only some additional clarification.

Kyle David 30:37

And so that's a little something a little bit more for all of the weather professionals that are listening to the podcast, but it also gives those who are learning more about the weather an idea of what it's like to communicate the weather in a way that is simple, but also it keeps everything in there. It doesn't stray away from what the key messages are and what the science is behind those key messages. Now, next up is a different perspective of weather communications. Our next episode was with Alexa Trichler. She's a broadcast meteorologist down in New Orleans with WWL in New Orleans, and she's also an radio meteorologist for Longport Media in South New Jersey. And we talked a little bit about balancing forecasting for New Orleans and also New Jersey as well. But this moment stuck out from our conversation. It was talking about her experience forecasting and working in New Orleans, and she also gives a little bit of advice for those wanting to get into the broadcast world.

Alexa Trischler 31:40

I really like working in New Orleans. I like meeting people when I'm out and about and just being able to give people information here because people are so affected by weather in New Orleans specifically. Weather is it's a sensitive topic for people here. So being uh able to be a part of this city as they recover from Katrina, which was almost 20 years ago, they recur they recover from Ida, which was a few years ago, just being able to be part of this community is really remarkable. But then going back at my former jobs, being able to not only do weather, but also be a reporter or an MMJ, as they call it, just meeting deadlines that you feel are physically impossible, once you do those things, you realize okay, you can do a lot, you can do a lot of, you can do almost anything in the workforce. So being able to push yourself in your job, even though everyone says the quiet quitting trend, don't push yourself, blah, blah, blah, like clock in, clock out, do the bare minimum. Honestly, and you are gonna have to push yourself to become a better person. I know it's you don't have to do it forever, but in order to become well-rounded and pretty well adjusted, I feel like being a reporter and meeting deadlines and running from place to place and doing everything yourself, like having no help from anyone, just completely on your own in every capacity to get something on air, you you feel like you've accomplished something. So if a weather person, if a weather, I don't even know what to call it, if someone is in college and they are about to graduate or they will be graduating soon and they want to do TV, and that there's a job that says weather slash MMJ, meteorologist slash mmj, don't be discouraged. It might be really hard, you might hate it, but give it a try. It'll get your foot in the door for sure.

Kyle David 33:22

And I loved being able to talk with Alexa about her experiences, not only working in New Orleans, but also forecasting New Jersey and getting into the broadcast world. And I actually got to meet her at the last American Meteorological Society meeting that took place in New Orleans. And for those that don't know, it's a big collection of meteorologists, weather experts, and other industry professionals who come together to learn more about what's going on in the weather world, what's new, what's being developed. And I got to meet Alexa at this annual meeting that takes place in New Orleans this past January. And it was nice to be able to meet one of my past podcast guests and also a fellow Ruckers alum as well. And something else that stood out from my time making this episode and having this conversation with Alexa is that she had asked me questions, the podcast host questions about what I'm doing and what got me into the weather. I thought that was really fun that she was asking me questions, not only during the recording, but also during our pre-interview that I do with guests to help plan out the best episode and best recording that's not only fun for us to do, but also fun for you to listen to as well. Now, next up we have Tyler Case, who is a meteorologist with Baron Weather. He's actually a content development manager. He had started out in the broadcast world from interning with the weather channel to becoming a broadcast meteorologist out in Wyoming. And he eventually made his way over to Barron. He's focused more on the visuals of weather storytelling and what's the best weather graphic to show when telling the weather story, telling what the forecast is going to be. And I thought this particular clip from our conversation stood out and talking about what is in store for the future of weather presentation and also the world of meteorology as well.

Tyler Case 35:21

As we get more and more advanced in the digital age, there's more and more tools coming into our hands. So think about weather model upgrades as those get better and arm meteorologists with more information sooner and more accurate and higher resolution and all of that stuff. Where does AI come into play? How can we use that to our advantage? Sometimes that's scary to think about, but it's like, how do we use that to our advantage? It's just such a powerful tool. And where does that come into play? So that's exciting. But the technology in general and the radars are we're getting clearer pictures from radars, they can see farther, that kind of stuff. Satellite, it goes 16. We've had it for a while now. And I can remember being in college, and it's just like the best we had were those, what were they, 15, maybe 30-minute increments uh of satellite. And now you look at what we have, and we've had what one minute updates on on some of these higher resolution cuts. And it's like, how did we live with those 30-minute updates before? And that wasn't that long ago. That was only what five, maybe 10 years ago, certainly, that came out, and I can't remember when it was, but it's only getting better, and we're getting more and more data to use, and that data is power, that's information we can use to help forecast. And I I talk about mesonet networks a lot. I see a lot more prevalence with those and getting up-to-date information across various sites all the way across the United States and being able to probably bring it some PTSD back a little bit, but like drawing fronts and finding where that front is. I always used to laugh when I did it. I'm like, I'm never gonna need to do this by hand. Why do I need to learn this? And now I'm so thankful that I did it because you can start to see those things, right? Like you could visualize where you're seeing it. So I think it's just as we get further into the technological age, it's exciting to me the different tools we're gonna have. And that's gonna be, I think, on the display side too. We're gonna have more, we call it 3D studio at Baron Weather, but an augmented reality, that kind of thing. And it's how do I make it look cool while telling information? And how do I relate more to viewers by that allows me to do things like I could go out in the fields and I'm at this famous pumpkin festival and I'm giving you the weather, and it's just those how do you relate to people? How do you use that technology to like that? It's about getting that information in the hands of more people. And I think you do that by relating to them and going where they are and then showing you that, like, look, I can give you all this information, and I'm standing where you stood, and a lot of people really get a kick out of that. I think the biggest thing, and this is gonna sound like everyone's heard this, but a picture really is worth a thousand words. What I mean by that is put the smartest person in the world up there on a green screen. But if they don't have the visuals to back up what they're telling you, it's almost fruitless. The most important thing I've learned is that it really matters what's behind you and how you convey it. It's gotta be easy to read, it's gotta be quick and clear and decisive, and it's gotta be relevant. It's gotta tell that story that you're trying to convey. And that may seem like super broad, generic, but that's one of the most important things I've learned is just that those little things, the aesthetics, sometimes they matter a lot. And it's just making sure that information is out there. You can't just throw up a radar and not put a timestamp on it. It's those kind of things which sometimes we take for granted, but you have to make sure that all that stuff is is legible and readable. And I think that's one of the big takeaways I've gotten.

Kyle David 38:44

I feel like there were a lot of takeaways just for me in our conversation with Tyler, because that's how I professionally got started in the weather world, even though I did a bit of a time with the on-camera program at Rutgers, which allowed me to get into telling the weather story and communicating that to wide different audiences. My first real job after college was making weather graphics and weather visuals and trying to figure out the best way to visualize the weather story or visualize the weather forecast in ways that were not only simple and informational, but also eye-catching as well, make them want to see what is being talked about on the television or on the mobile device. And Tyler kind of talked about that a little bit with the baby and mother test, and there were a lot of different things in our conversation that were very interesting in terms of how to visualize the weather best. Now, next up, we talked with Alex Kalamia, who is a broadcast meteorologist with News 12. And something that's unique about him, and you can find out a little bit more about it in the podcast, and then also with this clip as well. He does a segment where he connects gardening and planting with the weather, and he calls it the garden guide segment. He talks about it a little bit more in this clip from our conversation.

Alex Calamia 40:09

We talk about plants and how important it is to stay in tune to the weather. I mean, that's not every segment, but that's a general idea, is that our gardening habits are going to change based on seasons, and if we're having, like right now, a big year with drought, then my segments are gonna be catered towards mitigating those hazards. It's all about appreciating nature and what to do to make your garden look really nice. And it's all local content. And I think that's my favorite part about it. It's nothing really super generic, it's all about like what you can do in New Jersey, what you can do on Long Island, what you can do in the Hudson Valley to keep your garden looking nice. I think that some of my favorites have been just people talking about how I think my favorite is actually not weather related. I think it's the plant stuff. Like I get involved with people, that's very interesting. I did a segment on watermelon two years ago, and very recently somebody came up to me and said, I love how you did a segment about like watermelon growing in containers because I never knew I could grow a watermelon on my patio, and I did, and it did really well. And I was like, this is amazing that they remembered something that I did two years ago, and I can't even remember what I had for lunch yesterday. I genuinely cannot remember. And so that was a real honor, and that they actually followed through with it and got something out of that. It's the closest thing I've ever gotten to celebrating the weather when it's nice. I think a lot of times we're always looking at the next storm, the next thing that's gonna ruin your week, your day. And that's really important. But I do like celebrating the now, and we're meteorologists, so our literal job description is to look ahead, but that doesn't mean that we can't enjoy the moment.

Kyle David 41:58

Now, while there were a few clips and more moments from our conversation with Alex that stood out to me, this was one that stood out to me the most, and it also highlights a little bit about the garden guide segment that he produces, and there are some other moments that he talked about in connecting the weather to gardening and planting. He talked about one instance where he was hanging from a tree while doing a segment, which I can't imagine doing that as a meteorologist. That's just awesome. And his particular example of here talking about how he talked about growing watermelons in different containers to get them into different shapes, and how he got to meet a guest or a viewer who used that and thought it was very helpful. I just loved that little moment, him talking about his segment being useful for a real life viewer. Now, next up on the podcast recap trail is my good friend Sam Coplin, who was with me at Ruckers for a duration of time while we were working on our degrees in meteorology. But towards the second half, he ended up transferring to Cornell and he finished out his degree in meteorology there. And before I introduce this clip, I want to take a moment to share an update about Sam Coplin. He has left WRGB in Albany, and he is now a broadcast meteorologist at the Weather Channel. So we had our first meteorologist who works at the Weather Channel on the Everything Weather Podcast, which I think is huge. And again, huge congratulations to my buddy Sam. If you are listening, congratulations again, man, for the huge step up. And to hear about how, you know, he transitioned into broadcast meteorology after graduation. I would highly recommend listening to our conversation. And while we're talking about the Weather channel meteorologist, or the first weather channel meteorologist to be featured on the podcast. Here's some career advice from Sam and one of my favorite moments from our conversation.

Sam Coplin 44:11

I am certainly not an old wise man who is speaking from decades of experience, but from the ex short experience I do have, I just really believe that you should have the mindset that life is short and pursue, at least attempt to pursue what you're passionate about. There is an understandable concern, especially for broadcast meteorologists, about the trajectory of the industry. I'm not gonna lie and say that it is completely rosy because the media landscape is changing. But the bottom line is if you have an interest in something, you gotta go for it. And I believe the money will follow. If you're very passionate about something, that passion will drive you to excel in the industry. You maybe want a little bit more money in your paycheck to start, you'll be able to get to a point where that will come if you're very passionate about something. And obviously passions change. Do I know for sure if I'm gonna be a broadcaster in 10 years? I don't know, but I'm so glad I tried it. But it's almost a boost of confidence. I think back 10 years ago where I didn't think I could do it. I didn't think I could be this weather communicator. Fast forward 10 years, it gives myself confidence, even though I know I may not be in it in 10 years. Knowing that I was able to tackle something that I really wanted to do tells me that I could tackle whatever comes next. So my advice would be not ever I know not everyone has a passion or at least haven't found their passion yet, but really think what you want to do. Think about things that you're good at, think about things you like, and just go for it. I'm speaking now as someone who is 24. I'm young, I worry a lot about the future. I gotta stay a little bit more grounded in the present and just appreciate the ride because life is short. And if you do what you love, it makes life especially through this chaotic time period that we're living in. So that would be my advice.

Kyle David 46:26

I feel like this career advice is not only great for those looking to get into broadcast meteorology or broadcast weather, but anybody who's interested in pursuing a career in the weather, and heck, let's broad it out. Anyone can use Sam's very deep career advice here. And wow, it just seeing the growth for him for me from interning with WABC TV in New York with Lee Goldberg with the weather team there to becoming a broadcast meteorologist in Albany to go to the weather channel at 24 is just phenomenal. So again, huge congratulations to my buddy Sam for getting to the weather channel. And again, there's so many good moments from our conversation, even though there are some things that are a little bit dated, even though because he doesn't work at Albany anymore. There's still a lot of great things from our conversation here. All right, so next up we have our conversation with Dr. Scott Weaver. Now he's a founder and chief science officer of his climate weather consulting company called Climate Consulting, and he has a lot of experience in the political world in connecting the weather, climate, and all of the different atmospheric related sciences to politics through his time with the White House in the House Science Committee, testifying in front of Congress. Here's something that stood out to me a little bit, and he talks about the surprise when he found there was bipartisan support between the two parties of the US government. But I'll let Dr. Scott Weaver talk about that a little bit more with this clip.

Dr. Scott Weaver 48:11

What I've learned is that, especially in today's world, people might not believe this, that if we're talking about politics, we're talking about two sides, right? One of the really neat things I got to learn both by working in the White House, but also I've testified in Congress three times in bipartisan hearings about weather issues, about disaster issues. And when it comes to the sort of let's say not hot button issues, there's a lot more collaboration and respect and even agreement amongst different political stripes when it comes to a lot of these issues. And I don't think the American public sees enough of that, like sees enough of the collaboration that actually does go on. Um, they think that the two parties just will never agree on anything. And that's mostly on the hot button issues that you see on TV at night, right? It's not necessarily on some of the day-to-day bread and butter. So I mean, there's always disagreement, but if you see something like I mean, I'm just going by my personal experience. What I witnessed testifying in the House Science Committee is that from what I see, a lot of people on both sides of the aisle respected each other, who you could tell liked each other, and who crafted bills together to advance the US leadership in all aspects of meteorology, not just modeling or satellites, but everything. Uh coordination, you name it, all different kinds of radar, satellite, modeling, uh, our observational infrastructure, how we partner with the private sector. The private sector plays a much bigger role now than they did 10 or 20 years ago. That's changed completely. Um, but in any event, I see a lot of collaboration in that space. Now it might not be happening in other spaces, but that was surprising to me, right? Because I guess I was of the mind like, oh, they just never agree on anything, but I've seen a lot of collaboration and really good spirited work around these issues. It could always be better, but I'll take it. You know, I'll take any kind of collaboration. So that's very surprising to me.

Kyle David 50:10

And this conversation overall with Dr. Scott Weaver, I thought was very interesting because somebody who has studied the meteorology, there's few times where you get to learn about the different connections to other industries and how it impacts the real world. And our conversation with Dr. Scott Weaver highlighted for me and hopefully for you as well, the connections to the political world as well, and how things in government are shaped by weather expertise, climate expertise, and trying to figure out what's the best approach for different scenarios relating to the weather. Now, speaking of weather scenarios, we've talked with also Michael Ehrenberg, who is a broadcast meteorologist down in South Florida, and he actually had to cover both Hurricane Helene a little bit and more importantly, Hurricane Milton, which produced a prolific tornado outbreak across South Florida and uh caused widespread devastation for parts of South Central Florida. And here's a clip that still sticks with me about Michael talking about his experience covering Hurricane Milton in his area.

Michael Ehrenberg 51:20

Hurricane Milton, I mean, my goodness, this was like an almost like an unprecedented tornado, a widespread tornado outbreak in South Florida. We had thought that typically when you're in the northeast quadrant of a hurricane, you're getting the most spin far away that there would be the potential for some isolated spin-up tornadoes. But nobody really expected, I think there were 127 tornado warnings put out in the state of Florida that day. This is back in October. And I think we had something like 18 confirmed tornadoes in our viewing area. So that was and bear in mind, this was when Milton was still out in the Gulf of Mexico, more than 200 miles from us. This is where we were getting all the tornado warnings well in advance of the storm center moving on to the coast of Florida. Nine hours straight of wall-to-wall tornado warnings, one after the other in rapid succession, being on the area, and then just so many visual confirmations of the tornadoes, clearly from traffic cameras, association cameras, and from viewers sending in the viewers and photos. Very interesting. How clear and vivid some of these tornadoes showed up on the Florida Turnpike as a network of cameras that were looking out to the west. I I-75 Alligator Alley had these tornadoes, uh, had these cameras as well. Just seeing that. And then other people said really a fatness of the tornado, the stovepipe look, the look of an Oklahoma or Texas or Tornado Alley tornado, which you just don't see in South Florida. They're usually weak, they're usually EF zeros and EF1s, they don't look anything like what we saw. We knew the day before, okay, my shift is gonna be 2 p.m. to 2 a.m. And then the morning shifts at 2 a.m. to 2 p.m. So I did I did figure I'd be talking about the hurricane coming in, and maybe there's been some severe weather, but I got up in the morning and I turned on the TV and I all of a sudden there's the first tornado warrant at 9 30 a.m. And I'm watching our morning crew talk about the tornadoes maybe showing the video footage, and then it just wouldn't stop. And I got in an hour or two early before my ship to start making weather graphics on another studio. The tornado warnings just kept coming in on my phone and on NWF check. And our chief came down and we're talking about it, and oh, it'll end there. No, it just keeps going, or we're looking at more ominous velocity signatures. And I'm like, we're gonna be walking right into tornado warnings once we go on when our shift starts at 2 p.m. And that's what happened. We just kept going on and on. It's very challenging because you have to always think about things to say.

Kyle David 53:42

Now, Hurricane Milton was just one of many active hurricanes in the previous the 2024 Atlantic hurricane season. I'll take one quick moment just to say that Hurricane Milton, the name Milton, was retired from use as well as the names Barrel from Hurricane Barrel earlier on the season, the earliest category five on record for the Atlantic, and Milton for its historic rapid intensification, like literally within under 24 hours, it strengthened from a low-end hurricane, strong tropical storm to a very powerful Category 5 hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico. And also, of course, Hurricane Helene was retired for its widespread devastation, not only in Florida, but also the Appalachians, North Carolina, Tennessee. Those three names were retired from use from the list of names that are used to name hurricanes and tropical storms throughout the hurricane season. And those names will be replaced by other names that'll be used until hopefully those don't get retired as well and cause more widespread impact damage and devastation. Now, next up, we talked with Megan Klee about what it's like to forecast for the energy world. She's another energy meteorologist that's focused on forecasting utilities, the impact to utilities. And here's a particular clip that stuck out to me about her talking about forecasting for Christmas morning and how that impacted power for some areas across southern Kentucky, Appalachia Mountains.

Meghan Klee 55:22

On Christmas morning, all these people woke up without power, and I just felt awful. And that's a situation where you're like, oh my goodness, like what could I have done differently? But as meteorologists, we have to look at those events that maybe we flopped and learn from them. But this one particularly hurt my heart because it was Christmas morning. Um, and it was cold, and there's nine inches of snow on the ground. It took a long time to restore power because it was hard to get around. And some parts of southern Kentucky are very mountainous, too. So that's an event that I will forever hold in my heart of something that I I wish I would have done better at, or communicated the risk maybe a little bit more. But man, I felt like I was somewhat confident that it was going to be a transitional snow event. And it was, it just there was just enough heavy wet snow at the start of it before it got cold, and the snow transitioned to more dry snow that um it unfortunately caused widespread power outages on Christmas morning.

Kyle David 56:25

Yeah, that's something that not a lot of people want to wake up to on the Christmas morning. Not the unexpected Christmas gift of not having power.

Meghan Klee 56:33

I know. I mean, I ruined a lot of Christmas mornings for a lot of kids. It it stinks even to this day to think about.

Kyle David 56:39

Well, I'm sure some kids were waking up and were ecstatic, like, oh wow, there's snow. We have a white Christmas.

Meghan Klee 56:46

Oh, look at you finding the silver lining.

Kyle David 56:50

I will say I love white Christmases, even though we don't get any up here in New Jersey. But I'm sure a lot of kids were excited to have that white Christmas as a Christmas gift that morning. I'll just take this moment to say that weather forecasting is in no way easy. It is very, very difficult. And when it comes to very specific things like forecasting how the weather will impact utilities, energy, power, uh, how it'll affect water, uh, different insurance policies, not just for homes, but for businesses as well, emergency management. It is challenging. Don't let anybody tell you that weather forecasting is simple. And if I had a dollar for every time somebody said that meteorologists get paid to be wrong half the time, let's just say I would be making a lot of money just off of that. It's not the case at all. It's a very precise science, and there's a lot to it as well. I won't get too far into that because we're gonna take a quick break right here, but don't go anywhere, we're still gonna continue with our recap of all of our favorite moments from the Everything Weather podcast and tease some upcoming things for the podcast. We'll be right back after this. On this day in weather history, we go back to April 1st to the 6th of 2018 for an uncommon April snowstorm from an active winter season. On April 1st, a strong cold front swept down south to the mid-Atlantic United States, bringing widespread cold for the northeast and midwest United States. As this cold front began to stall across the United States, a fast-moving low-pressure system formed and tracked along the front, bringing widespread snow from the central plains to the northeast. While this wasn't as significant as other snowstorms from just a few months prior, it was still very impactful. 5.5 inches of snow fell in New York City, with the outer areas across the metropolitan area receiving heavier snow. This heavy snow forced the New York Yankees to postpone their home opener game against the Tampa Bay Marlins. It also led to the New York Mets to also reschedule their home games, becoming only the second time in franchise history that a game was postponed due to snow. Across the Northeast, numerous motor vehicle crashes occurred due to slippery driving conditions, and several other traffic delays had swept across the region. In New Jersey, almost 8 inches of snow fell at Newark Liberty International Airport, making it the second biggest April snowstorm on record for Newark. To the west, another low pressure system would form east of the Rockies on the 2nd and sweep across the northern plains and Great Lakes on the following days. This second area of low pressure brought up to 12 inches of snow from the northern Rockies to the Great Lakes and wind gusts as high as 70 mph across the central and eastern United States. It also brought lots of rain to areas of the northeast from April 3rd to the 4th, wiping away any remnants of snow from the previous system. While this active stretch of weather was far from the most impactful winter weather ever to occur, let alone in the season, it ended an active winter season for the United States. And before we get back into recapping all of the podcast episodes so far, here's another fun section for you. Avoid saying the same thing as me, weather edition. As usual, I've got five themes all related to the weather, and your job is to think of a word for each of those themes. And if you think of the same word that I'm thinking of, the same thing that I'm thinking of for each theme, you will be eliminated from the game. But if you make it all the way to the end without thinking the same thing as me, you win this fun section, this fun game. With that said, let's get started. Name a word used to describe warm weather. There's a few words that you can use to describe warm weather. The word I'm thinking of is blistering. If you thought of blistering to describe warm weather, I'm sorry you are out for this game. Next up, name a city that is frequently cold. There's a lot of cities out there in the world, in the country that are cold all the time. But if you've thought of Billings, Montana, I'm sorry, you are out for this game. Next up is name a state known for wet weather. Name a state in the United States known for wet weather. If you thought of Louisiana, I'm sorry you are out for this game. Next up we have Name a Past Guest from the Everything Weather Podcast. You've got a few to choose from here. You've got 24 to choose from for this theme. If you thought of Matt Lanza, I'm sorry you are out for this game. And the last one up is name something you'd encounter during a severe thunderstorm. You could encounter a couple things during severe thunderstorms, a few different things, but the one thing that I'm thinking of is hail. If you encounter hail, if you thought of hail, I'm sorry you are out for this fun game. You did not make it to the end. How'd you do? Let me know on social media or in the comments for this podcast episode. Hello and welcome back to the Everything Weather Podcast. I'm your host, Kyle David, and today on this special 25th episode of the Everything Weather Podcast, we've been recapping some of my favorite moments from our past episodes, our past conversations with everybody in the weather world, and learning different things about the weather and how it connects to everything and also to you, the listener, as well. So we're gonna pick back up with the podcast recap trail and start off the second half with Mike Carmen. He's the Summit Weather Operations Manager at Mount Washington, at the Mount Washington Observatory, to be specific. And for those that don't know about Mount Washington, well, it's home to the most brutal weather on the planet. And I do mean brutal, with hurricane force winds, not just gusts, winds at times, some of the coldest temperatures ever seen, and sometimes it's in another layer of the atmosphere. That just to wrap your head around how extreme the weather is at Mount Washington. This is in New Hampshire, the highest elevation in the northeast. And you know, I'll let Mike talk about how extreme the weather is in this memorable clip that we had from our conversation.

Mike Carmon 1:03:42

One of the biggest challenges with uh the observatory, as you can imagine, is getting up there, especially in the wintertime, getting up and down the mountain. The shift changes are once a week. And so I remember a couple months into my full-time job up there, um, it was our day to come down from the mountain. And in the in the wintertime, we use the snow cat. It's what you'll see at ski resorts. They groom the slopes there. That's what we use for transportation up and down in the wintertime, and so we just go on top of the road and take our time. And this particular day we were coming down, it was particularly brutal. I think it was late January, early February day, extremely low visibility. A lot of snow had fallen. There was a lot of heavy snow drifting on the road. And so we started down in the snow cat. The road is about seven and a half miles long. Um, that trip down took us about six hours in the snowcat. So barely crawling along at one to two miles per hour for most of it, just because the visibility was so poor. And part of what sometimes needs to happen when the visibility is that bad and you're trying to get up or down the road, is the the big challenge in blizzard conditions is lack of contrast. Everything's white. So making out where's the road versus where's the edge of the road can be very challenging when everything's covered in snow and in rhyme ice. And so what we were basically taking turns doing is uh we would get out in front of the snow cat dressed in our brightly colored clothing and just walk in front of the cat. Basically, for the operator who's driving the snow cat, find the road for the operator because even just that little bit of extra added visibility helped. And so when it was my turn to do it, I was in first time I'd ever done it, I was completely overwhelmed. This kid grow up that grew up in central New Jersey is now like up here leading a snow cat in like we're talking like Mount Everest level weather conditions. And I it was extremely humbling. It's one of those things where you don't necessarily realize until you experience getting out in white out conditions and what that disorientation is actually like. And it's one thing if you're just walking yourself through them. But it's another thing if you have a bunch of people in a vehicle behind you that are counting on you to find your way through and make sure you're not leading them off the road or anything like that. So that was a very humbling experience for me. We did get down safely. We take all sorts of safety precautions when we do those sorts of things. We're tied to the cat. If we ever get overwhelmed at any time, we have signals that will signal back to the operators, say, all right, no, I'm done. I can't do this anymore, or I'm sorry, I can't find the road for you anymore. Um, so there's all sorts of safety precautions that are taken in those situations. But it was very humbling for me. And it was my first sort of real taste of um, yeah, the mountain is a whole nother it could be a whole nother world, really, uh, when you think about it, once you get above tree line.

Kyle David 1:06:49

And for those that don't know about the Mount Washington observatory that's at the summit of Mount Washington itself, is home to the some of the oldest records in terms of weather observations in the country and in the and we talked about that a little bit more because he's had years of experience collecting observations there, which I do not envy. I do not want to go out in that cold. I I can't handle below zero a little bit, let alone well below zero at Mount Washington with the 100 mile-an-hour winds at times. I will pass on that. We also talked a little bit about his experience with STEM education and forming the White Mountain Science program in New Hampshire that educates kids and young adults on STEM, the different aspects of it. And it was a very fun conversation. I recommend you go and check that out, as well as the other podcast episodes as well. Now, next one up is probably one of my favorite ones. I'm a little biased when I say this is because this is a former co-worker of mine, and one of my favorite ones during my time at Foxwear, and that is Ian Oliver. We talked about a lot of different things during our conversation. It was so hard to uh pick which moment was my favorite from this one because there were a few from uh talking about his experience flying with the hurricane hunters to talking about joining Foxweather, the the newest national weather coverage team on the block, going toe-to-toe with the weather channel, AcuWeather, and talking about also as well reporting on space launches, but this one in particular was my favorite. And if you don't get the reference, I'll explain after this quick clip.

Ian Oliver 1:08:42

I had a professor, Dr. Atkins, and he always said the atmosphere is a fundamentally chaotic fluid. Chaos in the sense that there are unforecastable elements, there are small-scale things that will never be able to be resolved by forecast models. I guess I shouldn't say ever. We're in the AI world and stuff, and we're seeing all kinds of crazy advances in the science. But that's sciencey way of, I guess you could say stay humble, right? And it doesn't matter how many forecasts you get right. There are always going to be events that humble you. So uh it's like Star Wars that only a Sith deals in absolutes. Do not deal in absolutes. This business is conveying uncertainty with certainty. This is what we know, this is what we expect to happen, this is where we have some questions, some question marks. And effectively, both in an entertaining and informative way, communicating that is the business if you're doing your job right, in my opinion. So I've never forgotten that that motto, which is a scientific way of saying stay humble and have respect for this planet, this atmosphere, and what you're trying to do.

Kyle David 1:10:06

And for those that don't get the reference from Star Wars, this comes from, in particular, episode three, Revenge of the Sith, where Obi-Wan talks to Anakin Skywalker as he turns to the dark side. Spoiler alert for those that have not seen Star Wars at this point. But there again, there were so many fun conversations from or so many fun moments from my conversation with Ian. But this one stuck out to me the most and his analogy for the weather and using Star Wars to deal, talk about what it's like to forecast and give a little bit of advice as well in terms of weather forecasting, and then a little bit of life as well. I feel like nobody can deal in absolutes with life. Now, this wasn't the only time pop culture and other movies made references in terms of weather experiences and weather forecasting. Our next podcast guest was David Tedesco, who had a time in Antarctica as a meteorologist there, and we talked about his Tolkien experience because he's a Lord of the Rings fan. We had to make that connection between the world of the Lord of the Rings and his experience down in Antarctica, which was otherworldly. I wouldn't imagine why living there, let alone Mount Washington. But here's a clip of our conversation about David talking about a marathon that he did down in Antarctica.

David Tedesco 1:11:36

So on Christmas Day 2019, we had a race, and it was a race around the world, literally a race around the world. So it's a two-mile race from the station, and then you run all the way to the South Pole telescope, and then you run around that, and then you run all the way back around the ceremonial South Pole, which has many different flags around it, but that's not the actual South Pole. Then you run past the geographic South Pole and then you go back around to where the start was. And all in all, it's maybe like two miles long, and I think the temperatures were around with the wind, maybe minus negative forty degrees. And if you weren't running where everyone else was running, the snow was maybe like you sunk a little bit into it. I can't I can't tell you exactly the snow depth before everything got too compact. But it was crazy. I I thought that you know I could easily run, you know, five miles, but I was dead after like half of a mile because of how cold that was, how much it takes out of you. And then I brought these goggles and they fogged up instantly because I'm exhaling and you know that's going right up through some of these lenses and fogging them up. I'm like, now I can't even see. But just doing that in such extreme temperatures and weather, I literally ran across the world, you know, circumnavigated, across every time zone. And that just adds to a level of thrill. Like you really just ran across the world. It was fun. It's something that I will absolutely never forget.

Kyle David 1:13:24

And while we talked about different things in our conversation with David, ranging from his work as a hydrometeorologist and working with weather modeling to his prior experiences to Antarctica. I thought this one was one of my favorite moments in the episode, and there were also some great fun sections as well from David. Now, deck now, next up we had Dr. Megan Lincoln, and she's the senior vice president of innovative risk solutions at Swiss Re-Corporate Solutions. Now, that's a mouthful, but let me explain real quick what that is. She basically provides meteorological and climatological expertise in providing reinsurance, and that's different from insurance, but I'll let Dr. Megan Lincoln explain a little bit more about what reinsurance is as opposed to insurance, and one of my favorite clips that explains what she does and one of her most rewarding parts of her job.

Dr. Megan Linkin 1:14:20

Parametric natural catastrophe insurance pays out not on the actual loss that's incurred by the insured, but on the intensity of the underlying event that causes that loss. So hypothetically, if your house is impacted by a hurricane, claims adjuster is going to come out, they're going to review the damage, they're going to say you need to fix your roof, you need to fix your shingles, whatever damage is observed, and you will receive a check from your insurance company to make those repairs. And what we focus on is not so much that part of the loss, but more on when a hurricane happens or when an earthquake happens, or when a major flood happens. There is going to be all sorts of costs that particularly my segment of clients that we focus on, which is commercial and public sector clients, are going to incur. They're going to be worried, can I get to my location? If I have to shut my facility down, if I have to shut my brick and mortar store down, how is this going to impact my ability to run my business and generate revenue? If I am in the hospitality industry and the area has been impacted by a hurricane, even if my particular hotel or restaurant or whatever is hardened and built to withstand that storm, is the area broadly going to be disrupted enough where my long-term revenue is impacted because people aren't coming to visit or there's not conferences being hosted? So that's what these parametric insurance policies are designed to address. And again, we've said a we'll say not if the hurricane causes X dollars of loss to your location, but more if the wind speeds caused by a hurricane at your location are 90 miles an hour or higher, you are eligible to receive either a partial or a total payout on your parametric insurance policy. And I think the times that my job has been most rewarding is when we've paid out on those policies and when we've received feedback from customers after delivering our conclusions and then the funds about how easy and straightforward we made the claims, the insurance claims process, and how appreciative they were of making one small piece of the recovery easy, straightforward, and uncomplicated in what's a really challenging aftermath. So that's when it's been the most rewarding.

Kyle David 1:16:49

I thought this was just a very interesting interview and conversation overall because I didn't know about the world of reinsurance and how that connects to the weather. And our conversation with Dr. Lincoln dives into that a little bit more. And a little bit of a fun fact before we introduce our next episode. Dr. Megan Lincoln and Dr. Scott Weaver actually know each other from the University of Maryland. Dr. Scott Weaver was doing a degree there while Dr. Lincoln was also doing a degree there. I believe it was both at the same time their doctorates. Just a little fun fact for y'all there. This just goes to show how small the weather world is and just the world in general is. Now, next up we had Justin Godnick, who is a broadcast meteorologist at NBC 10 in Philadelphia. And he's had a lot of different experience from covering in his first stint in broadcast meteorology, the Boxing Day blizzard in 2010, and covering a wide ray of different events, one of those being the widespread tornado outbreak that occurred in 2021 in New Jersey. I'll let Justin talk about that a little bit more in one of my favorite clips from our conversation.

Justin Godynick 1:18:08

I want to go back to that uh 2021 outbreak because that was probably the craziest um coverage I've ever done of any weather. At the time, we still had COVID protocols. I was working out of my kitchen and I was live in my kitchen and I was tag teaming with Dave Kern, who was at the studio News 12. I had worked the morning shift, I had been up since 3 a.m. And the tornado started around 5 p.m. And we tag team and I worked in double shift. And I just remember you have the first tornadoes were popping up. There was one in in Ben Salem, PA, which, you know, is now part of my DMA, uh very close to where I worked, uh the town north of Philly. And then that crossed into Jersey, and that's when all things just broke loose. Uh, there were tornadoes in the southwest corner of New Jersey, Gloucester County, Camden County. But the craziest part of that night was I'm on air, live television with Dave, and all of a sudden my wife's phone goes off right on top of my house, tornado warning. You couldn't script it. You couldn't script it better for TV. And the people watching, when they still mention it on my Facebook friends, viewers who who still follow me, are like, I just remember that night, like you literally got a tornado warning and you had to get off air. And I had to practice what I preached. I went in the bathroom. I had a newborn daughter and my wife, and we went in the bathroom because literally that signature was right above my house. It was insane. That was just absolute chaos. Tip of the cap to anyone uh in Tornado Alley, anyone in the southeast who deals with that on a routine basis. Uh, here we don't, but wow. Uh the trial by fire. I learned how to really do live tornado hits uh from that 2021 session. And then when I got to Philly, uh, it's almost like the tornado is like following me. Uh, my first weekend in Philly, wall-to-wall warnings. We were live for two hours straight. I was live two hours straight. I think we had like 16 warnings. It was unreal. Two weeks later, same thing. So, yeah, I've had a lot more tornado experience than I guess your average Northeast meteorologist has. I guess it's just been it's been wild the last few years.

Kyle David 1:20:20

Now, this is just one example of the many examples that we got to talk to Justin about and his weather experiences, whether it be he's covering different weather events uh in the New Jersey Northeast area, but also how the weather seemingly follows him from the Boxing Day blizzard to the time when he went away in his honeymoon and his car got damaged due to flash flooding from coastal breezes colliding each other at the Jersey Shore and just dumping inches of rain on his open top car. And there's just so many fun. Well, I I guess that's not really fun losing a car, but there were so many memorable experiences that we got to talk to Justin about on the podcast and his experience in the broadcast world. And I want to just take a moment to congratulate Justin on the birth of his new child and his family as well on the the new kid. So congratulations, Justin, and the Godnik family. Now, next up on the podcast recap trail is Dr. Alyssa Stansfield. Now, she's an assistant professor at in Utah at the University of Utah, where she focuses on research that describes how extreme weather is changing with climate change, which if you haven't seen or haven't been impacted by it, it has been changing over the last few years to decades. And I'll let this clip, which is one of my favorite clips from our conversation, talk about what her research was about and what is actually changing with extreme weather events.

Dr. Alyssa Stansfield 1:21:55

One of the main findings of my PhD and something I thought was most important was we expect to see generally an increase in hurricane rainfall with climate change. And that's because we know with climate change the atmosphere is warming, and as the atmosphere warms, it can actually hold more water in it. So when a hurricane comes through, we expect the hurricane to be able to turn all that extra water into rainfall. And what I was interested in, my PhD was we also expect hurricane intensity to increase. Intensity meaning the maximum wind speeds and the maximum upward motion in the hurricane that produces the rainfall. So I was trying to understand how much of the increase in precipitation or rainfall from hurricanes in the future comes from just that increase in moisture in the atmosphere versus an increase in hurricane intensity. And what I found was that actually most of the increase in rainfall from hurricanes actually just comes from the increase in moisture in the atmosphere. And very little of that increase is due to a change in hurricane intensity. And so I think that's important because that means that as climate change continues, even if we don't see a big increase in hurricane intensity, we're still going to continue to see an increase in hurricane rainfall. And researchers have already shown that hurricane rainfall has been increasing. And so it will continue to increase even if the intensity of hurricanes tends to stay the same. And I think that kind of brings up the point that the risk uh during hurricane landfalls is not solely from the wind speed of the hurricane, which is what we classify the hurricane on, right? Category one through five. That's just based on the wind speed. But actually, the most dangerous part of the hurricane and where most of the injuries and deaths come from is water, either from storm surge or from rainfall or both. And so it also gets to the point that we really need to be making sure that people understand that water is the most dangerous part of the hurricane, not the wind speed.

Kyle David 1:24:16

There's a lot of good moments from my conversation with Dr. Alyssa Stansfield in her research and getting into the world of academia and adjusting to all the different changes that are going on in research at academia as we're doing this episode. Now, next up on the podcast recap trail is my conversation with Ashley Morris. Now, interesting story with Ashley. She's a meteorologist turned certified emergency manager. She's an emergency manager for the Mid-Atlantic. And if you don't know, there's a lot of different connections between weather and emergency management that we talk about in our conversation with Ashley. And there were a lot of good moments from this episode to pick from for this episode in particular. But this is one that stands out to me the most. And it Ashley talks about how you can be more informed about your local emergency management office, which is important because they provide a lot of life-saving critical data services for your communities. So I'll let Ashley talk a little bit more about that.

Ashley Morris 1:25:22

I think really what I want people to know, and it doesn't even matter if it's meteorologists, emergency managers, or even just general public. I want people to know how the disaster system works. So going back to that discussion with local, like it's really important to be engaged in your local government, understand your local systems, your local agencies, your local resources, more than just emergency management, but for public safety. What's your fire department look like? What's your police department look like? What are you voting for? Where do your taxes go? All of those things are really important locally. And with many things, and even like with elections and things like that, there's always an emphasis on national over local. Um, local is your neighborhood. So keep in mind that your local emergency management, just like we talked about, they're working for you every day. They're working to build local emergency response plans. They're working to build local capabilities, they're gonna be the ones setting up the shelters during your disaster. They're also pre-planning them with churches, with schools. They're gonna be the ones doing food and water distribution or coordinating nonprofits to come in and help with that. They're also gonna be the ones sending your alerts. So it's really important to understand what that looks like for you? Do you have a really strong emergency management office protecting your home, your school, your city? Do you not have an emergency management office? Do you have one staff? Do you have 20? Just do some research on that. And if you can, definitely advocate for it. I think everybody understands the importance of disaster prevention or mitigation, stopping floods from happening, stopping hurricane damage, building better codes. All of that stuff's done local. So if you don't have staff in your government at a local level to apply for federal grants, do the federal projects, and actually do the project in your city, it's not going to get done. The state doesn't do that, and the feds don't do that unless it's state property or federal property. And so the ultimate change in terms of disaster prevention or even disaster resilience is really all about our local communities and our local government. So please take a look at your local emergency management office, get to know them, and definitely advocate for them because we've got a lot of hazards and disasters going on, and we definitely need it.

Kyle David 1:27:40

And again, there was a lot of good moments in talking about the connection between weather and emergency management, which again was not an area that I knew a lot about before my conversation with Ashley and this particular guests on the podcast. But I thought our conversation was very interesting. And if you hadn't known already From the conversation that I had with her. She's also working on her doctorate in emergency management on top of being an emergency manager, not only for a county level, but the state level within the Mid-Atlantic. And hats off to you, Ashley, for being able to balance all of those different things and also do doctorate on top of that as well. Now, next up we have Jane Minar, who is another person that I went to school at the same time at Ruckers, even though it was a little bit briefer than my time spent together with Sam Coplin. Jane went to Ruckers as well. She was a senior when I first got to Ruckers. But we met again during my time at Fox Weather when I was a weather producer there. And I'm gonna cheat with this one again because there were so many great moments with Jane and talking about her experiences, covering different weather events, telling not only the weather story, but also the human story as well, how the weather impacts people. And this particular clip was one that still stands out to me to this day, and how Jane was covering the aftermath of Hurricane Helene in North Carolina and one story that stood out to her the most.

Jane Minar 1:29:20

And then when I started to tell these stories, and then the emotion would hit me. After I apologized, I realized well, wait a second, people connect with that, and I can't always be strong all the time. It's impossible to have somebody feel that way and act that way. I can try to the best of my ability, but I can also be human. And that's where I started to turn the page and I grew myself as a reporter. It's important to be tell their story and to be as concise and for lack of a better word, strong as possible. But also don't be afraid to show how it's affecting you. As I went, I kept a journal as I was there and just would write down the stories of people that I'd come across. Like there was one young family in the hotel that I was staying in. I felt guilty for taking even a hotel room because there were so many people who were displaced. And this hotel room was quite literally like taking our reservations down on a notepad because they didn't have anything and we didn't have water in our hotel rooms. Like it was purely a disaster zone. And this one young family and a little boy got on the elevator with me, and little boy was hitting all the buttons, and I could just tell like on these parents' faces, just it was like a mixture of relief and stress and heartbreak and worry. And the little boy had no idea what was going on. He just pressing all the buttons, and the mom felt the need to apologize to me. And I was like, Oh, please, no, no worries, we're going on a ride. I was like, I'm sure you guys have been through it. And I asked, I said, What's your story? And she was like, We just got out. And like just she was like tearing up, like as she's saying it, because she has this little boy who their house is gone, they've got nothing left. She was like, the creek came, it was rising, and we just got out, and like we found word hours later that it had collapsed in. Then the next day I meet a young family with two young kids under two, whose house also too was shifted six feet off its foundation, and they've lost everything, and they just got out. Like so many stories like that. And there's so much there was so much to learn from Helene as well as a communicator, and not only just from me as the meteorologist on the ground in the field, but also too as our network, as the government, the National Weather Service, there's so many levels to that. I think Helene's a really great case study that I hope we we take the time to learn from.

Kyle David 1:32:07

Now, the if the story uh you just heard from Jane, and if you go and listen to the episode and her talking about the coverage that she did on the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, the devastation was just at times indescribable in North Carolina and the Appalachia Mountains. But as I said earlier, I'm gonna cheat a little bit because again, there were so many great moments from my conversation with Jane. And there were some upbeat moments as well. It wasn't just about covering the devastation of weather events because she's covered a lot of different weather events during her time at Fox Weather, during her time in Augusta, Georgia. We also got this deep clip from one of our fun games, uh, our fun sections, on talking about ranking clouds. And for her, she put Cirrus Clouds as the number one cloud in her blind ranking. But like I said, I'll let Jane explain this a little bit more.

Jane Minar 1:33:04

Can I explain why I put Cirrus as one? Because people are probably like, what the heck?

Kyle David 1:33:08

Yeah, go for it.

Jane Minar 1:33:09

Listen, you know I love severe weather. It's what got me into wanting to be a meteorologist to begin with. Shelf cloud, uh cumulative cloud, mimatous clouds, all of which in that same vein I'm obsessed with. But the reason why I love a cirrus cloud is because to me, it is such a subtle way of telling you that something is changing without it being such a in-your face dramatic look. For me, one thing you learn about cirrus clouds is that the highest altitude clouds, they are made up of ice crystals. Oftentimes they are coming from a storm that is thousands of miles away. And I've always thought of cirrus clouds as like a way of an early warning that they're beautiful for now. Enjoy your life in the moment, but start preparing for change. And I've just always looked at that as a beautiful way for Mother Nature to tell us she's about to show up.

Kyle David 1:34:13

I thought this was a very philosophical moment in a way, in her description of Cirrus Clouds showing or telling the sign of change coming to the weather, and her connecting that to signs of change with life and being in the moment, preparing for change. I thought it was very deep, and especially for the beginning of the our conversation, because that was at the beginning of the episode before we even get got into talking about her experiences with interning at NBC for Janice off going to Augusta, the challenges of getting out into the adulting world, and then eventually making her way to Fox Weather. Now, next up, this one's a little challenging to do, but this is the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration National Weather Service deep dive episode. It was the first David's deep dive episode that we did on the podcast, and there are there were so many great moments from the episode overall. And if you have not listened to it yet, I highly recommend you listen to it because unfortunately it is still an issue as we are recording this episode, and it's just growing into a much larger problem as multiple offices is now are struggling to keep up with their mission of providing life-saving and important, up-to-date weather information and forecasts. A number of weather offices have suspended balloon launches. We talked about in the episode that it was only two offices, now it's multiple offices suspending balloon launches, and that's there's just so many trickle-down effects with this that we explore in the episode more. And it's still an issue that's still being discussed, and unfortunately, we're dealing with to this day. But one moment that stood out to me from this episode is Tom DiLiberto, who was a former NOAA employee and climate scientist. He's award-winning for his series with NOAA on educating people about weather and STEM. He talked a little bit about what the weather is all about and that it's a global thing. It doesn't just stop at one country, but it's a global thing.

Tom Di Liberto 1:36:29

The oceans and the atmosphere don't stop at country borders. You can't run a weather model without global data. You can't. By its very nature, weather, climate, oceans, all of it has to be international. You have to collaborate internationally. Otherwise, you're gonna get a bunch of really bad weather models and results, just like really bad stuff. Take a look. We have those geostationary satellites up in space. We cover about half the planet. The other half of the planet's covered by geostationaries from Japan and from Europe. All of that, a ton of that information is what goes into our weather models to as the initial condition, understanding of our atmosphere is from satellite data. We're getting that from Japan, right? We're getting it from Europe, just like they're getting our information for running their models to paint as complete a picture as we can get. If you hurt that system, or if you stop international collaboration, you stop giving data, that's gonna lead to a lot of problems. But even beyond that, there are researchers across the globe who are working on these topics about improving weather models, about improving our understanding of extremes. And for in order to basically improve the research, you need to have communication between scientists in the United States and scientists elsewhere. A lot of this happens at meetings, a lot of it happens at working groups related to broader international agreements, like with the World Meteorological Organization. But even now, the ability for US scientists and the government to work with international colleagues is incredibly hard. A lot of meetings have been, their travel has been canceled, their ability to basically even just do what they did before is going to be canc is canceled. And again, it's such a self-inflicted wound if your goal is to improve anything related to the science of the atmosphere.

Kyle David 1:38:11

And it just this clip overall is just one of many people that we got to feature on this special deep dive episode on what NOAA and the National Weather Service are, why they're important to you, the listener, to the weather world, and to a wide array of industries overall. And uh, on a side note before I go to the next episode in our podcast recap trail, this particular clip from Tom DiLiberto reminded me of a quote from a book that I'm reading called A Furious Sky: The 500-year history of America's Hurricanes by Eric J. Dallin. And the book recaps basically the 500-year history of the United States of America's hurricanes from the founding days, uh, well before that, actually, when colonies were first being developed in the Americas to almost present day, where forecasting has come a lot more better. We can see hurricanes and know when they're coming. But there was one particular quote that stuck out to me when I read it, and it reminded it, I got reminded of it when I talked with Tom Liberto, and he was mentioning these things about the World Meteorological Organization, the International Weather Collaboration that would be hindered by the cuts to NOAA and the National Weather Service. And this quote comes from actually a letter that was written by John Ruskin to the Meteorological Society of London when he was 18. Kudos to you for writing this at 18. But in his letter, he wrote the following The meteorologist is impotent if alone. His observations are useless, for they are made upon a point, while the speculations to be derived from them must be on space. It is of no avail that he changes his position, ignorant of what is passing behind him and before. His desires to estimate the movements of space and can only observe the dancing of atoms. He would calculate the currents of the atmosphere of the world while he only knows the direction of the breeze. And in other words, the meteorology to achieve its fullest potential and its greatest good for society, meteorologists need to be able to share their observations. This was coming at a time where you know weather observations and communications of those observations was limited at the time. And John Ruskin was advocating for better weather communications among meteorologists to better forecast for the weather, and it applies to these days as well what is going on with the NOAA and the National Weather Service and these cuts as well. So, again, that's a quick quote from this book, and I highly recommend you read it. I'll include it in the show notes as well. Very interesting book on some of the historical hurricanes that have happened in America's history. And again, if you have not listened to it yet, I really recommend you listen to the David's deep dives on the NOAA and the National Weather Service, why they're important to you, why the cuts are a detriment to the weather community, but also other industries as well. We talked with people from aviation, emergency management. There's so many ripple down or trickle-down impacts from these cuts. But besides that point, next up on the podcast recap trail, since we are recapping all of our past episodes, is our second and final episode before we've gotten to this point. And that is with Andrew Marquitz, another energy meteorologist. But something special about him is he's also a social media meteorologist as well. And he does a lot of forecast content on different platforms, primarily TikTok, where he's gotten the most attention and following from. And we talked with him about not only forecasting for the energy world, but also what it's like doing social media weather content as well. And this clip was my favorite because he compares what it's like being a meteorologist, wearing the different hats of a meteorologist, a weather communicator, and how they're different when he's an energy meteorologist and he's talking to energy traders, and then he's doing social media stuff where he's talking to the public.

Andrew Markowitz 1:42:35

I also think that when you're a meteorologist, you really have at minimum three different jobs. You're a meteorologist, you're also an analyst, you're also a translator. I would also argue you're a firefighter because there are always things going wrong and you have to figure it out. I'd also argue you're a programmer, developer. So there's a lot of different hats that we wear if you're a meteorologist, and people don't really get that. But the idea of being a translator is like I was saying before, you look at all of the model data, and there's a lot that you can look at, and you really have to prioritize certain things in order to meet tight deadlines. And so you have to basically take all that information, and if I'm on TikTok, look at the model data, and then I figure out okay, what are some graphics that look clean on social media and that people could understand? And then what are some annotations that I could put in to maybe explain my points further? And when I'm on social media, what I try to do is tell a story. So if there's a weather event that's coming in, I like to basically talk about the setup as in okay, this is the why. Because anybody can be like, oh, this run of the GFS is showing a snowstorm 13 days out. And a lot of people do that, by the way, and it's very easy cloud, but I don't believe in that. I try to just do it, I try to just base it on the science. So I start off by saying, Okay, this is the bigger picture, this is why things are happening, and then I talk about things like affected areas, timing. I also like to talk about the risk, which is a big thing in my day-to-day job, too, of like, okay, this is how things might change. And so, again, the point of the TikTok is to give people accurate information, but you also have to be entertaining just because of the way the algorithms work. You have to make people want to pay attention to it because otherwise people are just gonna tune out in the first second, or not even that. That's the thing about social media algorithms. If you don't catch their attention in the first second or even millisecond, they're just gonna tune away and that's about it. So that's really that second piece that you have to, and it's a delicate dance too, because there's a problem of clickbait, like people posting outrageous graphics because they draw attention and they end up being somewhat deceiving. It is playing the game to some extent, and that's what you have to do. You have to balance being entertaining with being informative, and that's very difficult for someone to pull off, and it's something that I've tried extensively to do. And then when it comes to my day-to-day job, a lot of it is just the same thing, looking at all the model data, but then translating into their world. So, like if I was talking to energy traders, I would talk about the things that they care about the most, like what things about the weather are going to be influencing demand and what is the risk to the forecast in terms of what would be areas that I think would trend colder, areas that would trend warmer. And in different seasons, that means different results to the market. Also, if you're doing a wind and a solar forecast, you want to talk about the risk. And again, all that paints the picture of making sure the lights stay on for everybody. So that idea of being a translator, I think that's universal. It's certainly probably the most important part of my job, both from the day-to-day with my regular job, and then on the side with TikTok.

Kyle David 1:45:50

And there were a lot of great moments from my conversation with Andrew and some things that got into the non-weather world with our fun sections where we talked about different pizza places and ranking pizza. We also talked about TikTok as well, growing a platform there. He also dropped some very insightful wisdom on paying down his student debts. He was able to do that within 10 years of graduating from Penn State, which is where he went to school for his meteorology degree, which I commend him for being able to pay off his student loans and debt that quickly. Now, just phenomenal. Now, the last episode on this recap trail comes from our latest deep dive episode on the world of phenology, the changing natural cycles, and how the weather plays a role in all that. And we got to talk with Dr. Teresa Cremens, and she's the director of the USA National Phenology Network, and we talked a little bit how the weather is impacting these changing cycles. And for those that don't know, we talk about it in the podcast more. But phenology is basically the study of natural cycles. And one obvious example of this is pollen. And we talked a little bit about how the pollen season is changing because of weather and because of the climate. But here's one clip that kind of highlights all of or some of the major impacts that you'd be seeing, not only with the pollen season, but also agriculture as well.

Dr. Theresa Crimmins 1:47:24

There's ways that it can affect us directly, even in our pocketbooks. So the big picture, you might start to see activity in your yard earlier in the spring than you used to, or you may be raking your leaves later than you used to as things shift on a long term. But more direct impacts, when we have earlier springs, we often see earlier start to the allergy season because those plants that produce the pollen that irritates nasal passages start pumping out that pollen earlier in the year. And unfortunately, recent research has suggested that as we are experiencing warmer years and higher concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, we are seeing longer pollen seasons. The seasons are starting earlier, they're sending longer, and there tends to be more pollen in the air overall. And we see pretty clear increases in just the past 30 years. The amount of pollen in the air coming from wind-pollinated plants is somewhere around 20% greater than it used to be. And unfortunately, that is a trend that looks like it's likely to continue. And then with these changing conditions, we are seeing some significant impacts to agriculture. And that takes a number of different forms, but some of our produce plants are getting hit really hard. For example, when we have years with really early springs, like we've had in a couple of the most recent years. If we have warmth that is significant enough to get the plants going, and then we experience a freeze event, that can be devastating for some of our landscape plants for sure, but also for some of the fruit crops. So for example, there were major losses to cherries in the north in 2012, like something like 70% of the cherry crop was lost because of those sets of conditions. And we've seen similar impacts to peaches in Georgia in recent years. Apple crops, similarly, they can be devastated for those when we experience those sequences of events. And even out in California, where the conditions sometimes seem less susceptible to those kinds of events, we're seeing a lot of impacts. The kinds of impacts we seem to be experiencing out there more is that again, going back to the plants that require a particular amount of chill, we're starting to now experience situations where, on a regular basis, those crops are not experiencing sufficient chill. And so that has a really problematic effect of reducing. Reducing how many flowers are produced, and if you don't have flowers, then you won't have fruits. And crop smaller crops is bad for all of us. That researchers are now trying to experiment: can we breed plants that don't require that chill? Or are there ways that we can trick the plants into thinking that they did experience the chill, even if it wasn't cold enough? A lot of the plants that we rely upon at the grocery store are starting to be affected by changing changes in phenology. And if they're not experiencing yet, they're probably at risk because things are changing so quickly.

Kyle David 1:51:01

So thank you for your time, all the guests who have come on to talk about your experiences, your stories, and what you do out there in the weather world. And more importantly, thank you to the listener for tuning in every week to the Everything Weather Podcast. It really does mean a lot to me that you are listening to my podcast every week and listening to me explore the world of weather and having a little fun along the way. Now, I'm excited to announce some upcoming episodes that will be released in the next few months, and then a teaser for a couple of episodes that are currently in the works. So in the next few months, we'll be releasing episodes with John Kosak. He's a certified aviation meteorological certified aviation manager, and we actually had him on for the NOAA National Weather Service deep dive earlier on in the podcast. But we're bringing him back on for a full episode of the Everything Weather Podcast, games, stories, and all. And after that, we'll have an episode with Ashley Rossi. She is a meteorologist, turned information scientist, and she's a professor at Western Kentucky University. And we're going to explore her transition from meteorology to information sciences. After that, we'll have Dennis Kruloff, who is going to be graduating soon from Penn State. And he's also a founder and CEO of PA Weather Plus, a company and weather group that's dedicated to forecast the weather for the state of Pennsylvania. Following that, we'll have an episode with Becky DePodwin. She's a meteorologist turned consultant for a wide array of things, including customer experience, change management, emergency preparedness for businesses. We're going to explore that transition as well, which I think is interesting. Following that, and this is the last episode that is going to be set in stone, is another returning guest from the NOAA National Weather Service deep dive. That's Tom DiLiberto. He's a meteorologist, climate scientist, and he's also an eminated meteorologist and climate communicator. And we're going to talk a little bit more about making educational and engaging content around the weather and his experiences within NOAA as well. And then some stuff that I'm working on currently right now. No release date yet, but they're in the works as we speak. Working on episodes with Brielle Philippe. She is a broadcast meteorologist down in Virginia. Good friend of mine, also as well from Ruckers. And she's also in the running for the Miss Virginia pageant. And she's also working on her own platform called Inspire Her STEM that is aimed at bringing STEM education for women, which there's a lot of things with Brielle that she's doing these days. And then following that, I'm also working on an episode with Stephen DiMartino, another returning guest from the NOAA National Weather Service deep dive episode. And he's the owner and lead forecaster for New Jersey New York PA weather. Following that, I'm also working on some stuff with Meredith Garfalo. She's another broadcast meteorologist, and she's also in the space weather industry as well. And finally, I'm also working on an episode with Jason Fraser, who is another broadcast meteorologist, and he's actually started up his own business called Drizzle Weather. But those will be a little bit further down the road, and those are still in the works. But with that said, thank you again for tuning in to the Everything Weather podcast. And if you do enjoy listening to the podcast, please be sure to give the podcast a review from wherever you're listening. Comment. I'd love to learn more about you, why you're listening to the podcast, and what you'd like to see from the podcast going forward. And speaking of the thing the podcast, the future is bright for the podcast. I'm looking forward to exploring more things with the weather with you all and just having some fun along the way. So thank you, thank you so much for tuning in to the Everything Weather Podcast and for all of your support. With the future looking bright, I guess we can call this our little sunset segment. The sun is setting on this podcast, but it's not the end of the podcast just yet. We have one more fun game for you before the end of the episode, and that is our weather or not trivia. We've got four trivia questions, two weather themed, two non-weather themed trivia questions for you. These are all past trivia questions that we've had on the show, and they may sound a little familiar to do, so that's why. So with that said, let's get into our weather or not trivia. First question is related to weather records. The lowest recorded temperature on Earth was negative 89.2 degrees Celsius or negative 128.6 degrees Fahrenheit on July 21st, 1983. On which continent is it A, Asia, B, North America, C, Europe, or D, Antarctica? Again, the lowest recorded temperature on Earth was negative 90 89.2 Celsius, negative 128.6 Fahrenheit, July 21st, 1983, on which continent? Asia, North America, Europe, or Antarctica? And the correct answer is D, Antarctica. Next question is related to general trivia. In what country did the first Starbucks open outside of North America? Was it A, Canada, B, United Kingdom, C, China, or D, Japan? Again, in what in what country did the first Starbucks open outside of North America? Was it Canada, United Kingdom, China, or Japan? And with that, the correct answer is D. Japan. Next question is related to hurricanes. At what wind speed does a tropical storm become hurricane? Is it A 25 miles per hour, B 34 miles an hour, C 74 miles an hour, or D 100 miles an hour? Again, what one at what wind speed does a tropical storm become a hurricane? Is it 25, 34, 74, or 100 miles an hour? And the correct answer is C 74 miles per hour. Last question coming up is related to U.S. geography. What is the longest river in the United States? Is it A, the Colorado River, B, the Mississippi River, C, the Missouri River, or D, the Rio Grande River. Again, what is the longest river in the United States? Is it the Colorado, the Mississippi, the Missouri, or the Rio Grande River? And the correct answer is the Missouri River. A little fun fact about rivers in the United States. You'd think it's the Mississippi, but sneaky Missouri River is just a little bit longer than the Mississippi River. And with that said, that is the last whether or not trivia question and the end of the podcast episode. Thank you so much to the listener for listening to the Everything Weather podcast, and thank you for all of your support for 25 episodes. And we'll catch you on the next episode.