“Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody ever does anything about it”

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“Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody ever does anything about it” – Mark Twain   

Well hopefully over the next thirteen weeks, I’ll learn how to understand and prepare for it. 

Well this Old Dawg is at it again and this time, I’m learning about the weather.  More importantly how the weather impacts flying, and ultimately my goal is to keep my wife from cashing in my life insurance policy because I ignored the weather when flying .

Truthfully, I have been a weather geek since I was in the sixth grade.  For my Foreman Elementary School (in Hobart Indiana) science fair project I decided to monitor all the weather information for an entire month;  temperature, precipitation, wind speed and direction, etc.  I compiled all the stats and drew my conclusions.  Looking back:  it was February in Northwest Indiana, so I’m guessing it was COLD and SNOWY at least 50% of the time and  COLD and sunny the remaining % of time.  Anyways, for my effort I got a blue ribbon and got to compete on a city level.  A local weather forecaster (in the days before the word Chief Meteorologist was used)from Chicago heard about my efforts and paid a visit to my school.  His name was Harry Volkman and worked at WGN-TV.  Since then, I’ve been fascinated with weather.

My 20 year military career has taken us to North Carolina where we experienced hurricanes (which is not fun when you are a young married couple living in a trailer); Ohio where we experienced tornados, Colorado where we had our share of Chinook winds and snowstorms; Guam where we experienced two typhoons; San Francisco CA where we had all known types of fog and St Louis for where the weather changes every 15 minutes.

Our instructor for the next 13 weeks is Richard Korich, a seasoned weather veteran of over 30 years that I know I’m gonna like.  He’s very personable, loves weather and as a special bonus… is close to my age!

Last night was our first class and as I expected, it was a getting to know you roundtable.  Rich wanted to know everyone’s geographical background to get an idea where everyone is from and has been. Kind of hard to talk about the gale force winds of a hurricane when you’ve lived never left St Louis right?

I’m really looking forward to learning more,  and I hope you’ll check back to see how our class is progressing.

I seriously don’t think Cindy, Mike, Scott and Anthony at the KSDK weather center have anything to worry about from me. 

-Rik out