WeatherBrains

Our guest WeatherBrain this evening is Dr. Ray Russell from Ray's Weather from the mountains of North Carolina. He calls Ray's Weather his hobby gone berserk. Dr. Russell is a Computer Science professor at Appalachian State University. His PhD is in Computer Science from Georgia Tech (1989); weather has been a long-time passion. He started posting a "snow forecast" on the university website back in the mid 1990's; this evolved into RaysWeather.Com in 2000. Ray lives in Boone and has taught at Appalachian State since 1991.

Tonight’s Guest WeatherBrain #1 is currently a forecaster for the National Weather Service at Blacksburg, VA. His interest in remote sensing and drone technology was piqued during his time spent at NOAA/NESDIS "flying" GOES weather satellites. During his time outside of the weather office, Mike is an avid mountain biker and self-professed "bird nerd".  Michael Sporer, welcome to WeatherBrains!  Tonight’s Guest WeatherBrain #2 has been the Warning Coordination Meteorologist at the National Weather Service Office in Charleston, SC for 8 years, and has been in the NWS for 25 years.   He has been a Lead Forecaster in Tampa and a SOO at CRP.    Ron Morales, welcome to WeatherBrains.  Tonight’s Guest WeatherBrain #3 is an Unmanned Systems Atmospheric Scientist at Cherokee Nation Technologies (CNT), working in support of the NOAA UAS Program Office.  Prior to that, John worked in various positions, supporting the NASA Natural Environments branch in development of the Space Launch System heavy-lift rocket, the University of Alabama in Huntsville as a research meteorologist, and the Von Braun Center for Science and Innovation as a consultant meteorologist.  John Walker, welcome to the show!

Guest information typically goes here, but for tonight we are guest-less, so you are stuck with the WeatherBrains gang and whatever topics they bring to the digital mahogany table. Plus the episode is being recorded on Tuesday night, not the typical Monday night. There was a gasoline pipeline explosion and fire in Central Alabama on Halloween, so our moderator assisted with our on-air coverage of the event, so we moved the show to tonight.

Tonight's Guest WeatherBrain #1 is the President of the Teachers in Space organization. She is formerly the Vice President of Client Technology at Morgan Stanley, but now she splits her time between developing and sharing exciting ways to bring space into the classroom and speaking at aerospace and education conferences. Elizabeth Kennick, welcome to WeatherBrains!  Tonight's second Guest WeatherBrains is President of WeatherExtreme, Ltd, a research and consulting firm. She has served in the NWA and AMS for many years and is the Chair of the Board of the CCMs for the AMS. Her CV is too long to read and includes many prestigious honors and accomplishments. Her recent book, Treading on Thin Air, was published by Penguin Books. Dr. Elizabeth Austin, welcome to WeatherBrains!

Tonight's Guest WeatherBrain is a Senior Fellow Meteorologist at the Savannah River National Laboratory and is the 2016 President Elect of the American Meteorological Society (AMS). Matt Parker, an active AMS Member, an active Fellow of the AMS, and an AMS Certified Consulting Meteorologist. He is a Fellow Meteorologist with the Atmospheric Technologies Group at DOE's Savannah River National Laboratory. He serves the AMS Community as Past Commissioner from 2014 to 2016 of the AMS Commission on the Weather, Water, and Climate Enterprise, having completed terms as Future Commissioner (2010 to 2012) and Commissioner (2012 to 2014).  And tonight's Guest Panelist is currently a senior high school student who plans on pursuing a degree in meteorology. He wants to be a television meteorologist in a top ten market or at one of the networks. Alex Forbes, welcome to WeatherBrains!

Tonight’s Guest WeatherBrain was on Episode 416. He needs no introduction to weather fans which is most of our audience. He has worked in hurricane awareness and education since graduating from UNC-Wilmington in 1995. Over the past eighteen years, he has had the privilege of working with local, state and federal agencies to develop award-winning hurricane awareness projects. In addition, his work with business and industry to reach out to communities on a local level has led to several large-scale hurricane preparedness campaigns from Texas to Maine. He is the Founder of HurricaneTrack.com. Mark Sudduth, welcome to WeatherBrains.

Our Guest WeatherBrain for this show is Dr. Phil Klotzbach, a Research Scientist in the Department of Atmospheric Science at Colorado State University. He received his Ph.D. in Atmospheric Science from CSU in 2007. Dr. Klotzbach has been employed in the Department of Atmospheric Science for the past fourteen years where he has been co-author on the Atlantic basin hurricane forecasts with Dr. William Gray. He became first author on the seasonal hurricane forecasts in 2006. Klotzbach developed the two-week forecasts currently being issued during the peak months of the hurricane season between August-October. He developed the Landfalling Hurricane Probability Webpage (available online at http://www.e-transit.org/hurricane) in partnership with the GeoGraphics Laboratory at Bridgewater State College. This webpage provides hurricane landfall probabilities for the entire United States coastline from Brownsville, Texas, to Eastport, Maine, as well as the Caribbean. He has published over 20 articles in peer-reviewed journals such as Journal of Climate, Weather and Forecasting, and Geophysical Research Letters.

Joining us tonight from the Kansas Turnpike Authority are Chief Executive Officer Steve Hewitt and Eric Becker, Roadway Operations Director. They employ about 500 employees and handle roughly 236 miles of turnpike. They use a private weather firm, AccuWeather Enterprise Solutions, and they have been using them since 2000. Mr. Hewitt was the City Manager of Greensburg, KS, when the EF5 hit that community wiping out 95 percent of the town.

Our first Guest WeatherBrain is Dan McCarthy, the Meteorologist in Charge (MIC) of the National Weather Service in Indianapolis, IN. Dan is a veteran of WeatherBrains.  Our second Guest WeatherBrain is a meteorologist with Fox 59 in Indianapolis, IN. Danielle Dozier, welcome to the show.

This week's show is all about the 2026 NWA Annual Meeting!