The Human METAR

From all of us here at The Human METAR (just me), we (I) want to wish you a happy thanksgiving!

I have been getting a lot of work done here. I do have to do some work at home, but it won’t be brutal, it will be brutal next week when I come back however. Two weeks of crazy and then finals, then it will be DONE!

As a special treat (being bored at work) I have decided to go a little throwback today. On previous blogs I had this segment up, but got rid of it because of it’s lack of “professionalism”. However since this is somewhat related to weather, it’s time to whip out the segment I like to call:

So you know who’s been grinding my gears recently? Jillian Barberie. Don’t know who I am talking about? Take a look at this video:

She is the weather “forecaster” for the NFL pregame show on FOX. Now she does not have a degree in Meteorology, but rather Broadcasting. And that’s another issue right there. A producer doesn’t care what degree you have, they just care if you can smile and point towards pretty colors on a map.

But back to Jillian, what pisses me off is that she hardly does any work, yet she’ll get more money than probably the average worker with a masters in meteorology. She’s on for an average of less than a minute, and all those graphics are probably gathered by some intern (maybe a met major, or it could just be some Joe the Plumber who steals the graphics from weather.com)

This is her weekly bit (researched very thoroughly )

1) Stand in a stupid pose with her hands behind her back to show as much cleavage as possible
2) Point at whatever is at the map and call it a basic name (cause we all know upper level troughs are close enough to be called surface cold fronts)
3) Read the forecast for the game that the intern puts up
4) Let Terry Bradshaw flirt until the James Brown look-a-like moves on to another topic

And that ladies and gentlemen, is what grinds my gears (Have a good Thanksgiving!)

I for once have free time to sit down and write something (even though it’s 11:15pm).

An update on my life. Grad school is chugging along. It has been a lot of work, but nothing I can’t handle (even though I have pulled some hair here and there). I have been trying to balance my work with my social life. It’s been hard, but manageable. Got through the midterms a few weeks ago (99 on the straight forward one and 80 on the not-so-straight-forward), and now I’m focusing on a few projects here and there (when they are done I’ll update them on my website) .

There also has been a lot of drama going on, and thoughts have been running through my head recently. But usually writing them down in a notebook has been helping me keep it together. I am not going to go into gory details (of course if you would like the three hour lecture let me know), but what I would like to say this: Everything works out…somehow

As for some other grad school news, I am officially announcing on this blog that I will be joining the Plymouth State Convective Wind Research Project. For all the details, please go here. I’m not 100% sure what I’ll be working on, but it may have something to do with the new Dual-Polar Doppler they recently installed. I do not plan to focus more on this until winter break, as I will have a ton of time to start thinking about my thesis then. Nonetheless, being able to say I worked in Oklahoma and Florida sounds pretty good on a resume.

So to sum up, I am going to be crazy busy until pretty much Dec 23rd, then home to relax over the holidays, then it’s back to Plymouth to start doing thesis work over the break. And to prevent this blog to being all text I give you this:

THE TORNADOCANE!!!!
(Source: Storm Prediction Center)