Meteorology is neato

Last night's meteorology final exam was not too bad. I know I didn't ace it, but I certainly didn't flunk it either. I'm going to predict an A- for my overall grade in the course. I'm very glad I took the class, as it did give me much more knowledge about meterology in general. I would like to take another class, but the local community college only offers this one basic class. I'm not about to jump into a local college's meterology grad program for another class because most of them require a background in math that I do not have.

In related news today, I love my job because I get to talk to interesting people and do interesting things. Two weeks ago I got to climb around on one of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Hurricane Hunter aircraft. You know, the big planes they fly into the hurricanes to get more data. Very cool.

And then I also get to speak to folks at various weather stations from time to time, and I always love one particular person: the head public affairs guy at the National Hurricane Center.

I enjoy calling him because he is a wealth of information and he is incredibly friendly. I once called him out of the blue to settle a discussion in the office over what was the farthest down in the Hurricane Names list a season has ever gone (1995 - Tanya, in case you wondered). He was quick with the information and joked with us.

Just today I made my first call of the season to him, about this unusual new tropical storm that's just popped up in the extreme eastern Pacific and has the potential to slide over into the Atlantic (unusual). He jokingly chided me for not being interested in more important disaster-related news (ie, "Why aren't you more concerned about North Korea having nukes -- or our country's ports being like sieves when it comes to security?"....so true, so very true). But the best quote of the conversation was related to hurricanes:

"The most important thing here is to remember to keep your eye on the donut, not the hole."

Awesome.