Into the Storm by Reed Timmer

Author:Reed Timmer
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Penguin Group USA, Inc.
Published: 2010-08-30T23:00:00+00:00

I consider myself an optimist even when I’m inside a spinning truck, but after earning quite a bit of money from the Manchester, South Dakota, video, I’ll confess that I wondered if I’d ever do it again. I didn’t pretend to imagine that another Manchester-type F4 would drop down in front of me anytime soon. But I contemplated another idea that might fund an entire chase season.

When I wasn’t chasing, or spending time with my girlfriend, I put in plenty of hours in my graduate-student office, working, studying, and daydreaming about big weather with my OU meteorology friends. They always lamented the fact that we couldn’t be graduate students forever. Our peers who were already grinding away at real jobs liked to remind all of us that our day would come. They said that we’d ultimately land in a cubicle somewhere, putting in the hours under some tough boss.

I’d throw out the occasional suggestion for permanently avoiding a nine-to-five existence.

“Why don’t we all run a weather consulting firm? We could each take turns overseeing the business,” I thought aloud to fellow grad students Don Giuliano and John Esterheld one late afternoon in the spring of 2003. We were in room 1510 of Sarkeys, a graduate-student office that I shared with Don, John, and a couple other guys. The fifteenth-floor office had a fantastic view of storms that came from the south. “Between us, I bet we could create forecasts for any company that relies on the weather. If we all had a slice of the business,” I added, “we could each generate some income and all have free time during the days.”

“We all know where a certain someone would be on his free days, don’t we?” said Don, looking over some wind shear research on his desk. He didn’t have to look up. John and I both knew that Don was referring to me. “Three people need to earn three salaries, and they would each have to work hard,” he continued. “I don’t know. Maybe the answer is academia.”

If working for Dr. Lamb was any indication, I was not convinced that I was cut out for a life in academics despite my love for science and research. Lamb was very exacting, and his demands were tough on me. At that moment I was working on an involved report for him that concerned Pacific sea surface temperature anomaly patterns. Lamb wanted to know more about the relationships between Pacific SST anomaly patterns like El Niño—which is characterized by notably warm temperatures in the equatorial Pacific—and energy usage in the United States. I didn’t mind the subject matter, and actually enjoyed studying climate variability. But I’d already written the report twice. Another revision was due back to him the next day.

“I’m going home to tank up on caffeine, eat, and push through these changes,” I said, packing up my papers. “See you guys tomorrow.”

I was only telling a half-truth. Late that evening, I met with my friend Dean Schoenick. Dean and I

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