Just over 2 years ago, I left my career as a broadcast meteorologist behind with an MBA in hand and a new career path in business intelligence beginning. I’ve found success in my second career, but – as you might expect – I still love the weather. Indeed, myself and everyone I know said I did the right thing by leaving where I was to go where I am now…but there’s still that love for meteorology that lingers within you…and you still wish things had worked out in weather.<\/p>\n

When I finished up my MBA at Xavier in the summer of 2017, I suddenly found myself with a lot of free time. I was likely to leave broadcast meteorology by the end of the year, so starting projects at my current employer wasn’t the right choice. What should I do with all of this free time? How can I stay involved in weather? And then a path opened up.<\/p>\n

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Insert Kirstie Zontini – pictured above at the right. She’s a meteorologist at WHIO-TV in Dayton, Ohio. I’ve respected WHIO for a few years, especially given their history of hiring degreed meteorologists and having their meteorologists be certified by the American Meteorological Society. McCall Vrydaghs, pictured above at the left, is the chief meteorologist at WHIO. I had the chance to meet both of them just over a week ago after several months of virtual partnership.
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In very late 2017, Kirstie reached out to me on Twitter with great praise for both my time in meteorology – including my graphics and the data within – and my success with getting an MBA. I was quite flattered and appreciated her comments…but the conversation about my career transitions eventually turned to a conversation about how I was creating social media graphics and finding the data often used within them, including these pavement conditions and power outage maps:<\/p>\n

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Now the dots start connecting: perhaps there’s a path to working with Kirstie that brings some of our ideas to a platform where hundreds of thousands of people can see it. After all and keeping myself humble, my social media pages have a small fraction of the reach that a station like WHIO-TV has.<\/p>\n

At first, I tried a “simple” programming route with Kirstie; maybe we can pull some data already on the Internet and let the on-air weather graphics machine do the heavy lifting. Well, that didn’t work…so it was time to move onto the advanced topics. Kirstie’s a great broadcast meteorologist, but – and even she will admit this – she’s not a computer programmer. The next step was to get resources, and Kirstie did just that after connecting with engineers and the IT department; this was no easy feat, and from my side of the fence this was a clear indication that she was passionate and dedicated to tackling some these weather projects.<\/p>\n

Once we had resources, it was time for me to use computer programming to pull, clean, and process weather data that WHIO wanted. My first project was to pull Ohio Department of Transportation and Indiana Department of Transportation pavement temperature and wetness data. I found a way to pull the data, and Kirstie got the data into her weather graphics machine and built the graphic (formatting, colors, and all). Here’s the latest version of Kirstie’s graphic:<\/p>\n

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Be careful this morning. Most roads are looking dry but pavement temperatures are in the 20s and a few north of I-70 are showing some ice. https:\/\/t.co\/uzrVmwmQ2F<\/a> pic.twitter.com\/EKIt5q8coX<\/a><\/p>\n

— Kirstie Zontini (@KirstieZontini) December 18, 2019<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n