Meteorologist

Joe Moore

Senior Internship

Spring 2007

Roles and Responsibilities of the Profession

• Interrupt surface (ground) weather charts to analyze the current situation

• Do the same with upper-air charts (taken from weather balloons)

• Make forecasts for different ranges (nowcasting, a week, month, 3 months, a year, and 18 months)

• Analyze sales of a certain product to determine if/how it is affected by the weather

Activities and Projects I saw my mentor involved in

• Writing a report and doing a webinar on La Niña and the upcoming hurricane season

• Sending out weather alerts to clients (eg. Possible power outages, etc.)

• Writing scripts to accomplish tasks like manipulating data from the web in Excel

• Running updates on internal databases used for programs

Activities and Projectsmy mentor allowed me to participate in

as a high school intern

• Drawing isobars (lines of equal pressure), isotherms (lines of equal temperature) and isodrosotherms (lines of equal dew point) and analyzing the current situation

• Making a May 2007 forecast by comparing Jan/Feb/Mar/Apr 2007 and matching them to past years

• Working with GrADS, a program that draws gridded (4 dimensional) data (and doing a presentation on it to learn how it worked)

Activities and Projects (continued) my mentor allowed me to participate in

as a high school intern

• Analyze sales of certain items and comparing it to the weather to model how the two correlate using their proprietary weather solutions

• Analyzing Sea Surface charts (ocean temp)

• Interrupting some of their proprietary maps

This profession matched my expectations in the following ways…

• Communication was essential (sharing forecast results to get the best possible solution)

• Mainly use government weather data (eg. All their data is free)

• Many products correlated with the weather

This profession was not what I expected in the following ways…

• Use Excel macros in ways unimaginable

• Despite having all of the technology, hand-analyzing data is still key to looking at the weather, especially when looking at weather plots

Using a program in Excel written by the company to analyze sales data and the weather

The Environment in which I worked…

• Very relaxed atmosphere to work in• Worked with 3-5 people each day• In the first half, I would sit down and spend an

hour with Jim, with whom I worked on weather charts, and then I would go around and sit down with people from all over the company to learn what they do (from Marketing, to Account Managers to long-range weather forecasting); in the second half I worked on projects with Heather and Steve

The Environment in which I worked…(continued)

• Company was on a chunk of a building where they had the second and third floors which included a small deck for outdoor seating

• While I was their, they restructured the cubicles to create a new ‘weather center’ where all the weather people met every morning for their daily discussion

The People I worked with…

• Heather – my official mentor – scheduled my day worked with me on small projects

• Jim – Severe weather/Tropical expert – worked with most days learning by reading info from the web then putting it to use by analyzing maps

• Steve – GrADS guy – worked with on major projects

• Other people:– Account Managers– Marketing people– Long-Range weather forecaster– Salespeople

My advice for students interested in this field/profession…

• Planalytics was a great place to intern because I was truly taught, not just given jobs to do

• Other places to work could include the air base, other local airports, The NWS office in Mt. Holly, Dorney (yes, they have a weather station), and look here: AMS

I chose to intern in this professional area because…

• I have had a love of weather since pre-school

• I wanted to get real experience in this profession before pursuing a degree in it

During Senior Internship I learned…

• There is a lot more behind business weather than is on the surface

• Correlations between weather and product sales aren’t always obvious

• Macros are your friend

My Internship

• Planalytics• 1325 Morris Drive

Suite 201 Wayne, PA 19087-5521

• http://www.planalytics.com/ • Heather B. P. DiBella• Meteorologist