Growing up in a town near Seattle, Washington, I experienced many severe weather events and had many opportunities to express my enthusiasm for meteorology. My passion for weather at around age five when I became intrigued by tornadoes that I read about in books and saw in movies. At age seven, I started checking the Weather Channel daily after seeing my father scrutinize the weather report one day. In particular, I was interested in finding the places with the most extreme climates, such as Death Valley, CA. Concurrently, I kept track of monthly high and low temperatures in a Word document, starting with January 2006.

In sixth grade, I created my first annual weather booklet entitled “The Weather of 2010” (for Bothell, WA), which was comprised of an array of weather data I recorded daily from online resources. The following year, I received a Davis Vantage Vue 6250 Weather Station (about $350) for Christmas, which included a thermometer, hygrometer, anemometer, wind vane, barometer, and rain gauge, and mounted it on the roof of my house. Enabled to collect personal and accurate weather data, I expanded my annual weather booklets to include over twenty categories of weather information and paragraph summaries of each day’s weather.

During seventh grade, I spent over thirty hours making a PowerPoint presentation about weather forecasting, which was so spectacular that I was excused from several other classes to present my presentation to the other three science classes in my grade, received commendation from my computer teacher, and even impressed my principal. In the following years, I visited my seventh grade science teacher and gave him my annual weather booklets, which he used (as well as my weather forecasting presentation) to show to his students every year.

In addition, I took advantage of opportunities to meet various meteorologists and travel. I shadowed two graduate students at the University of Washington and an operational forecaster during middle school. Moreover, I toured local National Weather Service offices and the headquarters of AccuWeather, talked with meteorology professors at a number of universities, and visited the John C. Freeman Weather Museum in Houston. In addition, I attended the Penn State Advanced Weather Camp, receiving awards for “Best Weekly Forecast,” “Best Isoplething Map,” and “Best Vertical Temperature Profile.” At the camp, I learned that there was a time when over 50% of all living U.S. meteorologists graduated from Penn State. Later, I decided to attend Penn State University, valuing that it has one of the best comprehensive undergraduate meteorology program in the world.

While no meteorology classes were offered in high school, I focused on doing well in the International Baccalaureate (IB) Program and my extracurricular activities, knowing that I would have many years to explore meteorology in college and beyond. Towards the end of my senior year of high school, I wrote a twenty-page research paper (“Extended Essay”) on Hurricane Katrina, which I briefly summarized in my first blog post.

I graduated from Penn State University in December 2019 with a Bachelor of Science degree in Meteorology and Atmospheric Science. While I am open to different career opportunities, I will always enjoy talking about severe weather. Thank you for checking out my blog, and I hope you find the topics interesting!