The Snow Day That Never Was
Pretty much every meteorologist you meet will tell you that they wanted to be a weatherperson from as far back as they can remember.
C+S 2020 students are blogging about topics that interest them for Applications in Climate and Society, a core spring class.
Pretty much every meteorologist you meet will tell you that they wanted to be a weatherperson from as far back as they can remember. If you ask them, you may be lucky enough to hear their blissful, cheeseball story about the first time they got the weather bug. For some, it was the day they got caught out in the rain on a warm summer’s day and frolicked around in the puddles. Others will tell you about the magical moment when they were on the beach and saw a beautiful rainbow stretching across the sea. But for me, it wasn’t rainbows and frolicking. It was darker.
It was a cold February evening back in 1988. There had been rumors earlier in the day that a Nor’easter was heading our way. Any minute now, meteorologist Lloyd Lindsey Young would be on to give us the good news! And there it was! We had the purple color over us, 6 to 12 inches of snow. I jumped up and down and hugged my sisters. There was no way we were going to have school the next day!
As any normal seven year old would, I woke up extra early the next morning to feast my eyes on all of the white stuff. I ran to the large bay window in the front of our house that faced east out to the ocean. There was the light blue hue of a clear sky over my house as I watched the pink and orange hues highlight a mass of clouds over the ocean. I didn’t know much about weather at the time, but one thing I did know was that when clouds were out over the ocean, it meant they were going away.
My stomach sank. That was the storm, wasn’t it? We weren’t getting snow, were we? And worst yet, I had to go to school. I was devastated. I stood there and started to cry. My mom came down the stairs and said to me, “it looks like it missed us.” But how did it miss us, I asked myself. Lloyd Lindsey Young would never lie to me.
As I walked to the bus stop, I pondered how and why something so horrible could have happened. I was sad and intrigued at the same time. That was legit the day that I fell in love with weather. Fifteen years later I graduated from college and went on to start my career as a meteorologist.
Over the last decade or so, job choices I made led me to stray from my meteorology roots. It didn’t take long for a feeling of sadness, reminiscent of that fateful February morning, to begin creeping back into my life. And just as it had it 30 years earlier, it sparked something inside of me. It was a curiosity of the unknown and of what my future could potentially hold for me. I wanted to somehow find a way to still use my meteorology skills but toward something more long-term and that had a positive impact. I mean, I love helping people plan for outdoor picnics and beach days, but there had to be more.
My sadness quickly evolved into an invigorating quest to make something happen. Two months later, I submitted my application to the MA in Climate and Society program at Columbia University. I wanted a chance to use my skills are forecasting to help society plan for the future of a changing planet. And given the current circumstances, there is no better time than now to reiterate that something good almost always comes out of times of sadness and despair.