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By Melissa Rake The sky darkens on a Wednesday afternoon. A classic spring thunderstorm is on the cusp of unleashing a gutter-flooding torrent. People scatter to classrooms, residence halls and offices as a canopy of umbrellas covers campus. This could be a big one. Ron Isaac's students are counting on it. Like a beacon, the threatening clouds draw a handful of students to their favorite lookout atop Clippinger Labs. The small classroom/laboratory, home to Ohio University's meteorology program, provides a bird's-eye view of what's brewing in the atmosphere. "When something's coming on - rain, snow, sleet - we'll all just gather up here," says Jim Maczko, who graduated this past spring with a master's degree in meteorology. "We talk about how long it's going to be before the weather hits, how much precipitation we'll see and whether the storm will stay together." It's not unlike the reaction these students had as youngsters watching from their front porches as lightning streaked across the sky. That unabashed curiosity, coupled with a mind to manage complex science, is what connects the 20-some students who major in meteorology each year. Although the program's evolution during the past three decades has been as unpredictable as the weather, one component has been consistent: its students' early enthusiasm for the elements. "A lot of people have the 'I wanna be a meteorologist' dream that started when they were young," says Isaac, meteorology program founder and director. "It makes sense because weather affects everyone." Joe Bilinski's dream took shape while watching lake-effect snow bury his native Cleveland each year. Thunderstorms near Chrissy Smith's hometown of New Lexington, Ohio, jolted her interest. And Katy Fitzpatrick always wanted to study things beyond her reach, her aspirations soaring from astronaut to astronomer to pilot to meteorologist - all by age 10. Now, Bilinski, who earned his degree in meteorology last year, is working on a bachelor's in mechanical engineering and considering a career in weather instrument design. Smith, a senior this year, wants to earn advanced degrees and possibly become a college professor. Fitzpatrick, who graduated in the spring with a double major in meteorology and computer science, wants to get into the Web end of the weather business. Their career goals match their program's ambitious education, public service and research missions. Besides tackling meteorology courses that include mind-boggling math and physics, students must develop and present local forecasts that elicit nearly 700,000 queries a year. What's more, two courses recently added to the major qualified it for U.S. Air Force certification and prompted a name change from premeteorology to meteorology. The certification makes Ohio University meteorology students eligible for valuable Air Force scholarships. Creating a snowball effect
Isaac, fresh out of Southern Illinois University-Carbondale's climatology graduate program in 1970, remembers the first time he saw the makeshift weather station atop five-story Porter. Professor Emeritus Hubert Wilhelm, then chair of the Geography Department, led Isaac to the roof and told the fledgling professor, "It's all yours." "I thought, 'I don't wanna get up at 6 a.m. and take these readings every day,'" Isaac recalls. "So what did I do? I created a class." Geography 304 was a two-credit course in meteorological observation. Isaac, hired to teach climatology and physical geography, had reservations about teaching meteorology because he lacked hands-on training in the field. And later, in 1978, when the premeteorology degree was created, he doubted many would sign up given the rigor of the program. But they did - and the undertow of students' enthusiasm hooked him. "Meteorology chased me rather than vice versa," he says. In the early 1980s, meteorology students Mark Miller and John Coulter approached Isaac with the idea of issuing a daily forecast. Standing atop Porter, the two pointed their weather radios to the sky to pick up National Weather Service reports. They posted the forecast on a bulletin board inside the building. As student interest climbed, Isaac found lab space they could use to prepare their forecasts and study. Named Scalia Lab in remembrance of late meteorology student Tim Scalia, the room - more like a narrow hallway - led to the roof and housed a desk, phone, fax machine and, on a good day, three people. A few months later, Isaac purchased an answering machine so local residents could call for a recorded forecast. He was baffled, though, when the machine conked out after a few weeks. "I figured we were getting 10 or 15 calls a day, but we were receiving about 150 calls, and the answering machine couldn't handle it," Isaac says. "Realizing we were getting well into the weather business, we installed more phone lines and Dictaphone machines." A new home opened up for the growing program in 1989, when the Geography Department moved to Clippinger. The secluded top-floor lab, accessible only by elevator, looks out onto the building's pebbled roof. Its size, more than three times that of the old lab, provides a classroom venue and plenty of room for weather instrumentation and equipment. Today, as meteorology becomes more automated, Scalia Lab resembles many other campus computer labs. A modern weather station - now atop Clippinger - tracks temperature, wind speed, rainfall and other weather parameters, instantly logging the data onto Scalia's Web page at www.scalialab.com/index.htm. The site attracts 40,000 hits a month. But new technology has yet to eliminate one 17-year-old fixture: Scalia Lab's forecast phone line, (740) 593-1717, which residents dial some 200,000 times annually. Getting under their skin It's spring quarter finals week, and Katie Davison and Chrissy Smith are lounging in Scalia Lab. A rerun of "Golden Girls" is muted on the lab's TV, which typically is tuned to The Weather Channel or a regional news station. Davison, Isaac's teaching assistant, is grading final exams while Smith helps classmate Scott Baptista wade through pages of math notes. "I think I'm going to get a little man dancing under a sun and a lightening bolt," says Smith, looking up from her notebook. Davison grins. "I already know I'm getting the symbol for a hurricane." They're talking about tattoos. Just days before the end of spring quarter, the two decided to pledge their passion for meteorology with permanent ink. Soon they were able to show off the symbols scored on their hips. "This really means something," Smith says. "It represents what we love, and we'll always remember each other." It's not too much of a stretch to compare their camaraderie to the allegiance that draws military types to tattoo parlors. "My friends have changed through the years, but these guys have always stayed the same," Davison says. "I guess this is what sticks." Meteorology majors are bonded by experiences they've weathered together: sleeping overnight in the lab to monitor perilous ice and snow storms, competing with one another in forecasting contests and enduring endless "What's the weather today?" inquiries from friends and family. Then there are the program's formidable academic requirements, which take most students five years to complete. When talking to prospective students, Isaac delivers a notoriously frank - and depending on their SAT scores, sometimes painful - lecture outlining expectations. "People have this romantic idea of what meteorology is, but we do almost as much math as math majors," he says. "We can look at a cloud and see 15 different equations. Our students must be sharp. As I say, 'There's no use playing basketball if you're 5-foot-2.'" Students can choose from three meteorology sequences: operational, research and broadcast. The first two generally lead to forecasting and research careers at agencies such as the National Weather Service. The broadcast sequence molds the Al Rokers and other prognosticators of the media world. Regardless of their academic path, students pay their forecasting dues in Scalia Lab. Assigned to develop and present weather updates four times each day, the novice forecasters serve a critical role in the region because southeastern Ohio weather isn't comprehensively covered by Columbus stations or the National Weather Service, Isaac says. To expose students to forecasting in other geographic areas, Isaac challenges them to make predictions for cities across the country. In recent years, no one has been able to out-forecast Jim Maczko, whose intuition, Isaac says, is "off the charts." "It's kind of a game to me. If you can play the game better, you're a better forecaster," says Maczko, who served as associate director of the program while completing graduate coursework this past year. "A lot of people think the weatherman's job is easy because he can be wrong all the time and still keep his job," he adds, only half-joking. "But the atmosphere is chaotic, and it's hard predicting chaos." Not all students find their niche in forecasting, though. Davison, who graduated this spring, says predicting the weather "feels like it's just guessing." "Some people have a natural ability for it, but I'd rather be doing research," she says. This year, Davison is studying tropical meteorology at the graduate level thanks to a Penn State scholarship. Ohio University's meteorology program consistently produces talented graduates who go on to earn advanced degrees. Three new alumni have earned competitive American Meteorological Society scholarships in recent years. From the perspective of weather agencies and media outlets, the best grads not only are good forecasters and researchers, but they can explain in simple terms what makes weather happen. "People now want to know the 'why' behind the weather," Isaac says. "That's why in the early '90s, we had to teach the news media new words. We had to teach Dan Rather about El Niņo, which was responsible for damn near everything." But dumbing down a complicated science isn't easy. Just ask any meteorology major who's been quizzed by friends about hurricanes or heat indexes. Or ask Isaac. "The weather is a complex business, and that drives my wife crazy," he says. "She says, 'Just tell me: Can I mow the lawn today?'" Melissa Rake served until recently as assistant editor of Ohio Today. |
Weather is everywhere, whether you're navigating a snowstorm or tonight's TV lineup. Meteorology's media titans - The Weather Channel, high-profile forecasters and flicks such as "Twister" and "The Perfect Storm" - have heightened our awareness of weather predictions and research. But 30 years ago, at least at Ohio University, weather was whatever fell on the roof of Porter Hall.