Girls Who Chase: Stories of Women in Weather & Storm Chasing

Episode Notes Katy O'Brian is an actress and martial artist from Indianapolis, IN. She attended Indiana University Bloomington, majoring in psychology, and there joined their Cadet Officer Program. After graduation, she was a police officer for seven years at the Carmel Police Department in Carmel, Indiana. Katy’s love for acting began with local theater productions at a young age, but her true pa...

Episode Notes For our Season 3 opener, we begin with a very special extended episode in an interview with three women in the United States Air Force 53rd Weather Reconnaissance Squadron at Keesler Air Force Base, MS - known to most as the Hurricane Hunters. Lt Col Kait McLaughlin was the first female chief aerial reconnaissance weather officer for the 53rd Weather Reconnaissance Squadron. She’s cu...

Episode Notes GWC closes Season 2 with a very special episode. We had the opportunity to speak with three leaders who are all making significant contributions to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) in the weather space - and they’re tackling it from very different directions. Dr. Stella Kafka is the Chief Executive of the American Meteorological Society. Dr. Melissa Burt is an Associate Professo...

Episode Notes Karen Kosiba has always been fascinated by the world around her.  As a child she collected caterpillars, built model bridges, took lots of photos, and stayed up late watching lightning.  When she started college, she considered careers in architecture, patent law, and veterinary medicine, but ultimately decided that observational studies of severe weather (somehow) combined all of he...

Episode Notes Jessica Moore (joined on this episode by her daughter, Lily) is a meteorologist, photographer, and storm chaser of over 10 years based out of Colorado Springs, CO. She has a degree in Broadcast & Operational Meteorology from Mississippi State University. Jessica grew up enamored by the wild weather extremes she experienced in Colorado, which sparked her passion for storm photogra...

Episode Notes Kathryn is an Emmy Award-winning Senior Meteorologist and Producer for NBC News in New York where she is responsible for all weather content that airs nationally across all platforms, including The Today Show and Nightly News. Before NBC, Kathryn spent five years as a meteorologist and weather producer at The Weather Channel. In addition to working at NBC News, Kathryn is co-founder...

Episode Notes Shannon Bileski is a landscape photographer from Manitoba, Canada. She’s been fascinated with storms since she was very young, and started trying to get decent shots of lighting at age 8. She saw her first tornado in 2007 and purchased a DSLR camera right after that to start taking storm photography more seriously. In 2009, she finally got her first real shot of lightning - and now h...

Episode Notes Storm chaser and extreme meteorologist Dr. Reed Timmer probably needs no introduction to this audience. Reed has been storm chasing since the mid 1990s, when he destroyed the family video camera in hail filming a severe thunderstorm in his family’s front yard. He went on to obtain his Bachelor’s and then PhD in meteorology from the University of Oklahoma. Since then, he has been livi...

Episode Notes Liz Leitman is a meteorologist at the National Weather Service Storm Prediction Center in Norman, OK. Until very recently, she was the ONLY female forecaster at the Storm Prediction Center, which was a pretty standout statistic. In her role as a Mesoscale/Outlook forecaster, she diagnoses and forecasts severe thunderstorm and tornado potential across the United States.  She has also...

Episode Notes Welcome to Season 2 of the Girls Who Chase podcast! The Girls Who Chase Podcast is recorded and edited by Jen Walton. “Badlands” - our music - is by Lori Bailey and Inês Lobo.  Find out all about us and more at www.girlswhochase.com . Follow us on Instagram and Twitter at @girlswhochase. See our videos & podcast media on YouTube under Girls Who Chase Storms - https://www.youtube....

Episode Notes Sarah Alsayegh refers to herself as “the first Kuwaiti-Arab storm chaser.” She is from Kuwait, and first started taking pictures when she was young, when her journalist father gave her her first camera. After finishing college, she started to take photography seriously and would take her camera out and capture anything she saw in the cityscape. Then she discovered landscape photograp...

Episode Notes Raychel Sanner is an Emmy Award-winning storm chaser based in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and is the co-founder of the chase group Tornado Titans. She first started chasing in 2003 and has documented hundreds of tornadoes across the Great Plains. She is a self-taught chaser, which has contributed to her uncanny ability to break down complex topics around weather forecasting. She is also...

Episode Notes Ginger Zee is the chief meteorologist at ABC News, reporting on the nation’s weather for “Good Morning America” and across ABC News broadcasts and digital platforms. She is also the managing editor of the climate unit at ABC News. Since joining ABC, Ginger – an Emmy award-winner – has covered almost every major weather event and dozens of historic storms. She broadcasted from the dev...

Episode Notes Raychel Sanner is an Emmy Award-winning storm chaser based in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and is the co-founder of the chase group Tornado Titans. She first started chasing in 2003 and has documented hundreds of tornadoes across the Great Plains. She is a self-taught chaser, which has contributed to her uncanny ability to break down complex topics around weather forecasting. She is also...

Episode Notes Names mentioned during the conversation: Tornado Titans: tornadotitans.com Mike Hollingshead: https://stormandsky.com/ Andy Gabrielson: Find the tornado on YouTube - RIP Cameron Nixon: Twitter - @CameronJNixon  Nicholas Isabella:  Twitter: @NYCStormChaser IG: @NYCStormChaser Mike Scantlin: Twitter: @StormChaseTV & @thescantman  IG: @stormchasetv & @thescantman  Skip Talbot: Y...

Episode Notes Raychel Sanner is an Emmy Award-winning storm chaser based in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and is the co-founder of the chase group Tornado Titans. She first started chasing in 2003 and has documented hundreds of tornadoes across the Great Plains. She is a self-taught chaser, which has contributed to her uncanny ability to break down complex topics around weather forecasting. She is also...

Episode Notes Jennifer Brindley Ubl is a storm chaser and professional photographer based out of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. She saw her first tornado in 2007, and has been chasing – and photographing - full seasons with her chase partner Skip Talbot since 2011. They spend the spring months focused on storm chasing and tornado research in the United States. When she’s not chasing storms, Jennifer owns a...

Episode Notes Raychel Sanner is an Emmy Award-winning storm chaser based in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and is the co-founder of the chase group Tornado Titans. She first started chasing in 2003 and has documented hundreds of tornadoes across the Great Plains. She is a self-taught chaser, which has contributed to her uncanny ability to break down complex topics around weather forecasting. She is also...

Episode Notes Melanie Metz, by her words, was born to chase tornadoes. With 20 years of storm chasing now under her belt – and a track record that makes her one of the best storm chasers out there – we don’t disagree. Melanie has had a passion for storms since she was young, and used to dream about tornadoes – even though she grew up in Arizona, which is better known for its epic lightning display...

Episode Notes The Girls Who Chase Podcast is recorded and edited by Jen Walton. “Badlands” music is by Lori Bailey and Inês Lobo. Find out all about us and more at www.girlswhochase.com . Follow us on Instagram and Twitter at @girlswhochase. See our videos & podcast media on YouTube under Girls Who Chase Storms - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8dosZVkS3PXHIO8XpjVt1g . Please support our imp...