WeatherBrains

Our Guest WeatherBrain for this episode is Nick Walker of the Weather Channel. His hometown is Fort Worth, TX. He has a B.A. in Communications from the University of North Texas and a Certificate in Broadcast Meteorology from Mississippi State University.  When he's not on the air talking weather, he enjoys educating young people about weather through school and community appearances. He is the author of "Sing Along with the Weather Dude," a book and musical recording for children. As a singer and songwriter, he has produced several recordings of original music, including "Don't Get Scared, Just Get Prepared," a CD of severe weather preparedness songs for young people.

John Zarrella is this week's guest WeatherBrain; he worked for CNN from 1981–2013. In addition to covering numerous hurricanes and tropical storms, he was the principal correspondent for CNN’s coverage of the U.S. space program, covering such events such as John Glenn’s 1998 return to space, the Mars Pathfinder mission and numerous space shuttle launches.

Our Guest WeatherBrain for this episode is a Senior Meteorologist at FedEx Global Operations Control Center, Jeremy Scott Smith. He's also a contributor for Ray’s Weather Center, covering the Appalachian Mountains of NC at VA, a former meteorologist at the United States Air Force and Air Force Reserve with 10 years of experience in aviation meteorology. He has 2.5 years on the media side with a B.S. from Mississippi State and he is working toward a M.S. at University of North Dakota in Space Science.  Tonight's Guest WeatherBrain is a suggestion of listener and contributor Tony Rice. Jeremy, welcome to the show!!!  Joining Jeremy as tonight's second Guest WeatherBrain is a flight dispatcher for a major legacy carrier in the U.S., Greg Dubin. Since he is not an official spokesperson, we will call his employer "Global Airlines." Depending on how tonight's show goes, he will be entering the WeatherBrains Guest Protection Program. He has spent many years in flight operations including several as a dispatcher. He is a ham radio operator, loves aviation and traveling, and, of course, weather. Greg, welcome to WeatherBrains!

Our guests include the leaders running the 2016 NWA Annual Conference which will be in Norfolk, VA. There is a link in the web site section to the NWA conference page. These guests include Janice Bunting, Trevor Boucher, Michael Vescio, and Trisha Palmer.

Our guest WeatherBrain tonight is Tony Rice. Tony is an information security engineer and Virginia Tech alumni working at a telecommunications company in Research Triangle Park, NC. His career has spanned various areas of research and development in software engineering, analytics, and information security.  Tony speaks in area classrooms, museums and libraries. He also helps broadcast meteorologists across the country share the night sky with their viewers. He is also a frequent guest on local television news in Raleigh, NC, discussing current NASA missions and astronomical phenomenon, and he has been known to hold impromptu sidewalk astronomy sessions with passers-by.

Our guest WeatherBrains tonight is the WCM from WSFO Honolulu, Charlie Woodrum.

Our guest WeatherBrain for this episode is Trevor White. Trevor started at Virginia Tech as a Business Information Technology major, expecting to graduate in four years and go into the corporate world. He joined the student newspaper in 2011 as a photographer. He’d always loved photographing lightning, and one of his photographer friends pointed out to him in May, 2012, that the “Hokie Storm Chasers” had left for the central US. He resolved to try to embed and shoot a piece on them and met with Dave Carroll in 2012. He talked his way into the first trip of the 2013 storm chase. He absolutely fell in love with severe weather and chasing. Searching for things to do with his programming background in the weather enterprise, he settled on big data type applications. Beginning in 2014, he returned west with Dave as a trip leader. After a brief and disastrous career as a PhD student in BIT, he transferred to Geography and joined the Cube project, developing analysis software. He wrote the dual-Doppler analysis software that has formed the basis of more recent visualizations. He has just taken a job at Center for Severe Weather Research with Josh Wurman and company. He plans on finishing his degree from Boulder.

Tonight's Guest WeatherBrain is a Lead Forecaster for the Capital Weather Gang. Angela Fritz, welcome to WeatherBrains.

Tonight’s Guest WeatherBrain is the Director of the Oklahoma Climatological Survey, Dr. Kevin Kloesel. He is also the Associate Dean for Public Service & Outreach in the College of Atmospheric & Geographic Sciences at the University of Oklahoma. He is also an Associate Professor at OU.  Dr. Kloesel is Associate Dean for Public Service and Outreach in the College of Atmospheric and Geographic Sciences at the University of Oklahoma. He is directly responsible for outreach programs and tours for the over 30,000 people that visit the National Weather Center facility in Norman annually. In addition, he is an Associate Professor in the OU School of Meteorology with teaching and research interests ranging from synoptic meteorology to societal impacts and decision making in weather-impacted situations. He led the team that won the Innovations in American Government Award from Harvard University and the Ford Foundation for their work with the emergency management community in Oklahoma.

Tonight’s first Guest WeatherBrain is a show alum, having appeared on show number 223 on May 4, 2010. He is a retired operational satellite meteorologist who worked for 36 years for NOAA’s National Environmental Satellite, Data and Information Service (NESDIS) located in Maryland. Working as a meteorologist and specializing in the satellite analysis of precipitation, he interacted daily and around the clock with NOAA/National Weather Service (NWS) weather and river forecasters, who are tasked with issuing flood, flash flood ,and winter weather advisories, watches, and warnings to support NOAA’s mission of protecting lives and property. Sheldon Kusselson, welcome back to WeatherBrains!  Guest WeatherBrain number 2 is a forecaster at the National Weather Service in Charleston, WV. His undergraduate degree and Masters is from Millersville University. He started working for the NWS in late winter of 2015. He loves weather photography as well. Mike Charnick, welcome to the show!  And rounding out the trifecta for the show tonight is the Chief Meteorologist at WOWK in Charleston, WV. Spencer Adkins, welcome to WeatherBrains!