Why weather?

If you’ve known me for a while, you probably know that I have always been obsessed with weather. I’ve wanted to be a meteorologist for almost as long as I can remember. Here’s one of my mom’s old Facebook posts to prove it:

Some things just never change I guess! As a little girl, thunderstorms were my biggest fear. As I got older, though, my fear began to turn into curiosity. I liked reading books about weather and I liked watching the Weather Channel on TV. When I was seven, my mom and I went to New York City with my dad for a business trip. My mom wanted to go watch the filming of the TODAY Show, so I came with her. I was a really talkative kid (shocker), and I wanted to talk to the news anchors when they passed by. One of them stopped to talk to me, and would come by during all their commercial breaks. His name is Bill Karins, and he was the fill in meteorologist that day. I thought it was SO COOL that someone could talk about the weather all day as a job! Here’s a photo of us:

Since then, I have always wanted to be a weather girl! Not necessarily the on screen face, though. I wanted to go into the research field for the majority of my life. I absolutely love real-time radar analysis, and always thought that a job at the National Weather Service was for me. That’s definitely something I’m still considering; however, I have recently been considering the broadcast meteorology field more.

One of my favorite hobbies is watching radar during a severe weather outbreak. On December 10, 2021, there was a massive severe weather outbreak across Missouri, Arkansas, Tennessee, and Kentucky. I started watching around 4pm. There were several tornado warnings and severe thunderstorm warnings, but nothing incredibly memorable had happened just yet. At around 9pm, a tornado touched down in Western Kentucky. It seemed just like a typical tornado warning at first, but 30 minutes passed by and it was still going strong. The supercell was looking incredibly mature, and wasn’t showing signs of letting up. It was dark outside, so the true size of the tornado was still unknown. As the tornado moved on to Kentucky, storm chaser Eddie Knight was able to take this photo of the storm when it was illuminated by the lightning:

This photo changed the game. We now knew that there was a large, violent tornado on the ground, and it was heading directly for a town called Mayfield, Kentucky. I remember sitting there watching the radar scans go by as the tornado got closer, and I prayed that the people there were watching the weather. At 9:26, the National Weather Service in Paducah issued a Tornado Emergency for Mayfield. The warning description language was some of the strongest I have ever seen:

“A confirmed large and destructive tornado was observed over Mayfield. You are in a life threatening situation. Mobile homes will be destroyed. Complete destruction is possible.”

I watched the radar scans go by in eerie silence. The supercell only strengthened the closer it got to the town.

The tornado went straight through the heart of Mayfield. Here’s a photo of the radar scan from that night:

The bottom right scan is called the “Correlation Coefficient”. The dark blue color represents places where debris is being picked up by radar. After the tornado went through Mayfield, the debris signature exploded, indicating that massive damage likely occurred when the tornado went through.

That night changed my life. As I sat in my room staring at the radar scans, I have never felt so helpless in my life. To know that with each second that passes by, people are dying. Homes are being destroyed. Families are being ripped apart. Lives are being changed. I wanted to cry, and scream, and beg the families in the path to get to safety. But I couldn’t. There was nothing I could do but pray, and watch each scan tell a more horrible story than the last.

Over 80 people died in Kentucky from that storm. 80 people that maybe would still be here if they knew the danger they were in. I knew that day that I wanted to consider going in to broadcasting. I realized that in life or death situations like Mayfield, the tone of the broadcaster could mean the difference between someone taking shelter or just going to bed. If you want to keep people safe during severe weather, the job of the broadcaster cannot be understated.

So, broadcasting is now something I’m considering. I have always felt like God has given me my passion for weather and a gift for public speaking for a reason. Maybe it’s broadcasting, maybe it isn’t, but I’m definitely going to keep it as an option. In whatever I do, glorifying God is my main purpose, and I am excited to see what He has in store!

I currently am attending UT-Knoxville, where I’m majoring in Geographic Information Science and minoring in Broadcast Meteorology and Mathematics. This should give me a good combo of both research and broadcasting, so I’ll have a better idea of what I want to do over the next four years.

I’m a weather anchor for VolNews, which is SO exciting. I am so thankful for an opportunity to get hands-on experience in a studio. You can find all my forecast videos under the “VolNews” section on this website!

I’m also helping a graduate student and one of UTK’s meteorology professor’s conduct research on “tornado possible” tags and risk perception, specifically with regards to the August 7 EF2 tornado in Knoxville. I am absolutely over the moon to get to participate in research so early on, and I can’t wait to see what we discover!

All this to say, I still have SO much that I’m trying to figure out! But I’m trying to dip my toes into all the waters that I can. God has blessed me immensely, and I am grateful beyond words for it!

Thanks for reading my first blog post! I love you all, and as always, stay weather savvy!