This collection features oral histories with NOAA staff who worked in weather, including meteorologists and other researchers.
As a child growing up in Havana, Cuba, Dr. Lixion Avila became fascinated with tropical storms at a very young age. Dr. Avila has always believed that hurricanes “are a part of his soul.”
Dr. Eddie Bernard refers to himself as the “accidental tsunami guy.” In graduate school, a professor asked him to assist with a research project on tsunamis, and what followed was a 40-year career at NOAA.
Jerome “Nick” Heffter, a meteorologist and modeler with NOAA’s Air Resources Laboratory, was a pioneer in modeling the dispersion of nuclear radiation and other atmospheric pollutants during the Cold War era.
When Dr. Pam Heinselman first joined NOAA as a summer intern with the National Severe Storms Laboratory in Norman, Oklahoma, she was interested in analyzing weather radar data. Instead, she found herself out in the field.
A self-described “sciency kid,” Dr. Edward Johnson’s intellectual curiosity led him through diverse jobs early in his career, including building mathematical models to figure out how to get rid of garbage in the Detroit suburbs.
Dr. James “Doc” McFadden was a dedicated public servant who, over the course of his 57 year career, immeasurably influenced the evolution of airborne data collection at NOAA.
Do weather professionals innately show interest in weather from an early age? Dr. Edward Rappaport’s colleagues seem to think so, and he did - at 3-years old - fascinated by the occasional rainy day at his Los Angeles home.
David Vallee comes from a musical family, but the weather bug bit him early and stayed with him. He is considered an expert on the behavior of New England’s hurricanes and the region’s hurricane history.