An Essay: Applying Classroom Theories to Real Weather Experiences

Most of us who have been through a course or two in meteorology know that it requires more than just looking outside your window and seeing what the current weather is.  I remember my days as an undergraduate student sitting in a cozy classroom surrounded by di-fax maps along the “map wall” during my meteorology classes and wondering how in heck are all of these topics relevant to weather forecasting especially in severe weather.  I was a little green back then.  I attended Millersville University which is about 60 miles outside of Philadelphia where the terrain, road network and the abundance of trees made it less than ideal for storm chasing, although it did not discourage the hardcore students from going out.  Their adventures usually ended up in wild goose chases.

Image taken from e-education page from PSU.

Fast forward to my graduate school days, where I attended Texas Tech University for my master’s degree.  Although I lived in a great area where supercell thunderstorms were plentiful, I was not the type of storm enthusiast that would deploy for every slight risk day issued by the Storm Predication Center.  I was more of a calculated storm chaser.  I opted more for textbooks and theories than going out in the field this is what I was accustom to in my undergraduate study.  

It was not until my second year at Texas Tech that I saw my first “live” tornado.  I had been out various times storm chasing with my buddies before that day. My previous chases were unsuccessful with respect to observing a tornado.   I still recall that moment when I saw my first tornado somewhere near Altus, OK.  It was such an adrenaline rush and thrilling experience. I was hooked after that day. 

While finishing my Ph.D. work at Saint Louis University, I still ventured out once in awhile in pursuit of these elusive weather phenomena.  During my time at Saint Louis University in the early 2000s, professional storm-chasing tours were becoming very popular.  I recalled having a conversation with a friend and discussing why we couldn’t get academic credits for storm chasing by providing our observations in a written report with data about our experiences.  In my academic journey, what I have learned is that visual observation helps to correlate the difficult theories much better than reading from a textbook alone.  

A LP supercell west of Julesburg, CO in 2013.

My belief is that as meteorologists, we are trained to be keen observers in and outside of our work environments.  Seeing weather phenomena up close is a way to understand them better, providing a natural connection with theories that cannot be taught in the classroom with still images.  In my current position as a professor of meteorology at Metropolitan State University of Denver (MSU Denver), I wanted to develop a course that would require students to experience “real” weather instead of looking at a computer screen or reading a textbook all the times. 

El Reno on May 31, 2013.

In recent years, numbers of programs that have started taking students out storm chasing officially (University of Illinois, SUNY Brockport, Rutgers University, Western Kentucky University, and College of DuPage to name a few). The trend of this type of a course/experience has been gaining popularity among 4-year institutions offering a bachelor degree in meteorology.  So during the summer of 2012, I teamed up with Scott Landolt (who works for NCAR, an alumnus of MSU Denver and an adjunct professor) to co-instruct a course that requires students to go out and experience real weather. The course is called, “Weather Analysis and Observation.”

Supercell west of Sidney, NE in 2014.

This field-based course is intended to combine classroom theories with actual field observations.  Students who are enrolled in this course are at various stages of their meteorological education.  This course requires students’ to make their own convective forecast in the morning, which they then discuss with other students and professors, take observations of basic weather variables at different stages of a storm’s evolution, and lastly, write a detailed report on their storm observation periods (SOP) after the course’s 2-week “observation” period is over. This report typically consists of a case-study analysis of multiple SOPs where they discuss initial forecasts, how the storms evolved, whether or not their forecasts verified and an explanation if it did not along with photographic evidences of the storm at various phases with explanations of the storm structures observed. Ultimately, the end goal of the course is for students to apply what they have learned in the field and be able to bring it back to the classroom environment.

Students taking in the awesomeness of real weather.