WeatherBrains Episode 549 is now online (July 25, 2016). If you are crazy about weather, this is THE netcast audio program for you!

Our guest WeatherBrain for this episode is Trevor White. Trevor started at Virginia Tech as a Business Information Technology major, expecting to graduate in four years and go into the corporate world. He joined the student newspaper in 2011 as a photographer. He’d always loved photographing lightning, and one of his photographer friends pointed out to him in May, 2012, that the “Hokie Storm Chasers” had left for the central US. He resolved to try to embed and shoot a piece on them and met with Dave Carroll in 2012. He talked his way into the first trip of the 2013 storm chase. He absolutely fell in love with severe weather and chasing. Searching for things to do with his programming background in the weather enterprise, he settled on big data type applications. Beginning in 2014, he returned west with Dave as a trip leader. After a brief and disastrous career as a PhD student in BIT, he transferred to Geography and joined the Cube project, developing analysis software. He wrote the dual-Doppler analysis software that has formed the basis of more recent visualizations. He has just taken a job at Center for Severe Weather Research with Josh Wurman and company. He plans on finishing his degree from Boulder.

Other discussions in this weekly podcast include topics like:

• Extremes: 122 at Death Valley, CA. and 27 at 4 miles southeast of Gould, CO
• Main severe weather in North Central US
• Hot weather across Central US
• Warming in the NW US
• Atlantic Basin is quiet – still!
• Astronomy Outlook with Tony Rice
• and more!

Our email bag officer is on the horn, so she brings us up to date on incoming messages from our listeners.

From The Weather Center:

WeatherBrains 101: Meteorologists use models in order to develop understanding of how the atmosphere works as well as using them to predict what the atmosphere will do. One of the earliest models was developed in the early 1900s and is still the basis for our understanding of how the atmosphere works.

Listener Surveys: Okay, we continue to drive this topic into the ground, but we really do like to hear from you. Many thanks to everyone who has taken the time to fill out the Listener Survey. The survey takes just a minute or two to complete and provides us with an opportunity to learn where you are and hear your thoughts and comments on the show. Click here to take the survey.

Web Sites from Episode 549:

Center for Severe Weather Research

Institute for Creativity, Arts, and Technology at Virginia Tech

To subscribe to the brand new SkyWritings, an email newsletter from the WeatherBrains gang, click HERE.

Picks of the Week:

Bill Murray – bows out early

Morgan Palmer – BlueSky smoke forecasts for wildfires

Brian Peters – MODIS image gallery

Kevin Selle – Gets the fog horn

James Spann – Lightning strike on Empire State Building

Trevor White – Visualization of Velocity from Goshen County, WY

Aubrey Urbanowicz – Lightning explodes pole, Chicago

The WeatherBrains crew includes your host, James Spann, plus other notable geeks like Nate Johnson, Bill Murray, Aubrey Urbanowicz, Rick Smith, Kevin Selle, and Brian Peters. They bring together a wealth of weather knowledge and experience for another fascinating netcast about weather.