Thirty Years at the U

This month marks my 30th anniversary as a professor at the University of Utah.  We left Seattle in early November, stopping in Snoqualmie Pass to say goodbye to the maritime climate of the Pacific Northwest and wondering what life would be like in the western interior.  I started work, officially, on November 15, 1995.  What a wonderful ride it has been.  I thought I would share a few career highlights.  

Nagano Olympic Winter Games 1998

In 1998, the Salt Lake Olympic Organizing Committee sent me to the Winter Olympics to learn about weather support for the games.  I spent four days in the Hakuba Valley and Nagano learning about weather impacts on sports and Olympic logistics.  

With Dave Hanscom at the Snow Harp Cross Country Venue

Given that I was there for only four days, I slept little and learned and explored as much as I could. I met with Japanese Meteorological Agency meteorologists at the venues and main operations center (I was provided with a translator).  I learned a great deal about how weather affects ski jumping, cross-country and Alpine skiing, spectator safety, etc.  I even got in a couple of hours of sampling "JaPow" when the Super-G I was supposed to attend was cancelled.  Instead of watching the race, I rented some ski gear and got free refills on the upper lifts of Happo-One ski resort.  There was just me, a couple of security guards (on the lift in front of me in the photo below), and a couple of other people lapping the deep.  

Storm skiing at Happo-One during the 1998 Winter Olympics

When I needed to return the the base, I couldn't figure out how to get down. I ended up skiing pow down the downhill course.  Herman Maier never had turns so good.  

Alpine World Championships 2001

In 2001, the Olympic Committee sent me (along with two other meteorologists) to the Alpine World Championships in St. Anton, Austria.  I actually tried to beg out of the trip because I did not think I would learn much after my trip to Nagano.  They insisted I go.  I decided to look into St. Anton.  I remember going to some web site and reading that it was one of the best expert ski areas in the Alps and had a hedonistic night life.  I said sign me up.

I did do some work on that trip, including a visit to MeteoSuisse, and I did give a talk at the University of Innsbruck which sparked my desire to return to Austria, but what sticks out most in my mind is Daron Rahlves' victory in the Super-G.  

One of the other meteorologists (who shall remain unnamed to protect the innocent) and I opted the morning of the SuperG to ski in Lech rather than go to the race.  Lech though was mired in fog.  Conditions were terrible.  We only took a couple of runs, but on one lift ride, we were joined by an Austrian ski instructor.  He asked us who the big American skier was.  We said "Daron Rahlves."  He responded, "never heard of him."

The skiing was so bad that we returned to St. Anton to watch the race.  Austrian greats Stephan Eberharter and Herman Maier were in first and second place as Rahlves skied down the course.  It was a great run and he crossed the finish line .08 seconds in front.  The crowd went silent while the two of us were screaming "never heard of him." 

Salt Lake City Olympic Winter Games 2002

The experiences above and a whole lot of work over a multi year period led to a successful weather support and forecasting effort for the 2002 Games that involved a partnership between public, private, and academic groups to collect observations, develop forecast systems, and provide weather forecasts.  Although stressful, it was an honor and a privilege to participate and work with so many great people. I'll be retired for 2034, but encourage those following me to get involved if they can.  

Holding an Olympic torch with my daughter Maria before the start of the Games

Department Chair 2005–2011

From 2005–2011 I was chair of the Department, which transitioned from Meteorology to Atmospheric Sciences during my "reign."  I'm grateful to have served in that capacity before the insanity happening to higher ed today.  Being Department Chair is a difficult job as you sit at the pinch point between faculty and administration.  I think it is a job that is much harder today.  

While I was chair, my wife Andrea was diagnosed with breast cancer.  Others on the faculty stepped right up to take workload off of my plate while we were going through the most difficult aspects of the diagnosis and treatment.  Having such great colleagues is something for which I will forever be grateful. Andrea is happy and healthy today.

While Department Chair I was in my late 30s and early 40s and probably at peak fitness.  I did a good deal of ski touring with students.  Sometimes this was by design.  Sometimes we met serendipitously on the skin track.  On one of the more memorable tours during this period, my touring partners and I ran into three Atmos students at the top of the Hogum 200.  We decided to join forces and ultimately did a tour de force that led us to Upper Hogum and eventually Thunder Bowl.   

Hogum Fork

Ultimately they descended Bells Canyon while my old fart friends and I decided to keep skiing and ascended to take another run down the west side of Thunder Mountain and eventually down Coalpit #4.  

Descending Coalpit #4

It ended up being about a 10 hour day and a good example of how graduate students can take you to places you can't go by yourself.

Wasatch Weather Weenies 2010–present 

In late September 2010 I started Wasatch Weather Weenies as an invite-only blog.  Prior to this, I had been sending out occasional e-mails to friends and colleagues about evolving weather and forecast problems.   I found e-mail to be too restrictive and thought a blog format would be better.  Eventually I started getting to many requests for access and I just opened it up to everyone.  

If you are wondering, I've now down 3,830 posts and the blog has had 6.7 million page views.  That number is inflated by spambots and the like, but still it's much more popular than I could have ever dreamed, especially since I sometimes write some techy posts. 

OWLeS 2013-14

Circa 2010 a group of colleagues from other Universities contacted me about the proposed Ontario Winter Lake-effect Systems (OWLeS) field campaign.  They were wondering if I might want to look into the processes that cause intense snowfall on the Tug Hill Plateau.  Of course my answer was YES!

The field campaign took place in December 2013 and December 2014.  We operated profiling radars at four locations on and west of the plateau, launched weather balloons, etc.  We had great support from the local community and even were able to rent a house with a heated garage from which we could do balloon launches.  This was a huge coup as it gets really cold in upstate NY.  Additionally the family groomed 5K of cross country trails, so we essentially had our own ski resort! I got to reconnect with my love of cross-country skiing, which I did a lot as a kid (including in this area of Upstate NY) but had abandoned during my early adulthood.  

During OWLeS We got over 100" of lake-effect snow in December and collected incredible data that led to many publications that I think transformed our understanding of snowfall processes over the Tug and downstream of bodies of water in general.

Secrets of the Greatest Snow on Earth 2014

In Fall 2014 the first edition of Secrets of the Greatest Snow on Earth.  It was a labor of love that was an outgrowth of my experience writing for this blog.  

Japan 2017

After OWLeS I got really interested in what happens in Japan.  Tug Hill is a remarkable place for snow, but it rises only 500 m above lake level.  Western Japan has big topography downstream of the Sea of Japan, which is 12 times bigger than Lake Superior, the largest Great Lake.  Not surprisingly nearly all of the work done on sea effect in Japan was done by Japanese scientists.  I began to read the publications that were in english and stare at the graphics in those that were in Japanese (online translators were still non-existent at that time).  

It struck me as I did this that Japanese and American scientists had been working on similar problems but with little collaboration.  I thought we could do better.  One of my students received a fellowship to work at the University of Hokkaido for a few months and then I decided to write a proposal to the National Science Foundation to forge stronger collaborations.  It was funded and in 2017 one of my graduate students and I went to Japan to visit the Nagaoka Snow and Ice Center.  As I am wont to do, we skied for a few days in the Hakuba Valley before the meeting, including a couple of days of bluebird ski touring.  I started calling him the luckiest graduate student on the face of the Earth. 

Me on the right with the "luckiest graduate student on the face of the Earth" 

The collaboration with the Nagaoka Snow and Ice Center proved to be quite fruitful, leading to a number of papers exploring the mechanisms affecting the inland penetration and orographic enhancement of sea-effect snowfall.  Sento Nakai and I also penned an article for the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society to better introduce North American scientists to the climate of Japan's Gosetsu Chitai (heavy snow region).

University of Innsbruck 2019

In 2019 I served as a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Innsbruck.  What a dream that was being able to teach and research in a beautiful place with great mountain culture.  I skied a lot of bad or tracked out snow even when touring, but didn't care.

Atmos 1000: Secrets of the Greatest Snow on Earth 2021-present

During the pandemic, I was looking for something to do and came up with the totally insane idea to develop a completely asynchronous online class about snow, weather, and climate change for skiers.  I worked on it for several months and eventually offered it in Spring 2021.  It proved to be very popular and I ended up updating my book with expanded material to make it a better "textbook" for the class.  In spring 2025 enrollment was more than 500 students, but would have been higher with more TA support. 

An unfortunate aspect of the online format is I rarely meet the students who are taking the class.  It's always great when someone on campus or in town comes up to me and says the took it.  It's even better if they say they enjoyed it!

Special Thanks

Looking back, it is the many undergraduate and graduate students that I have had the privilege to work with who have made this job so much fun.  I avoided naming names in the post above simply because I don't want to single anyone out.  I just want all of my former students to know how much I have appreciated having them as students and in many cases friends.  I also thank all of the faculty and staff I have worked with at the U and other institutions, especially those in the Department of Atmospheric Sciences.  

And thanks to you for reading this blog.  It has been inspirational to write and in many cases has led to new ideas for research or teaching.  

See you on the lift or skin track.