I just graduated from Central Michigan University with a major in meteorology (as well as geography and English). I started graduate studies at The Pennsylvania State University this fall, with the goal of obtaining my doctorate in meteorology. I am conducting research under Dr. Jenni Evans, as of the summer of 2000, on the extratropical transition of tropical storms. My interests lie in numerical weather prediction (a.k.a. modeling), tropical meteorology, and lake effect precipitation and clouds (particularly the Great Lakes). Knowing that I have not seen very much of my field, though, I am keeping an open mind.

I attended the Research Experience for Undergraduates at the Oklahoma Weather Center last summer, an experience that I would highly recommend to anyone thinking about going to grad school in meteorology. My mentor was David Stensrud at the National Severe Storms Laboratory (NSSL). My research project, "The Relationship between Spread and Skill in Ensemble Forecasts" (in a mostly-online form), involves numerical weather prediction; I applied ensemble forecasting to Ed Lorenz's convective equations (ever heard of chaos theory?). In other words, I wrote a lot of Fortran this summer :) (and if you're going into research, get used to it). This project suited me extremely well; I don't yet know what I'll be focusing on for a career, but I can apply what I learned there in any field of meteorology. The people (other students, mentors, and coordinators) were AWESOME, the storm chasing was fun, and I learned more in a couple weeks there than I would expect in a semester!

Speaking of storm chasing, watch for a photo album/scrapbook of my 1999 and 2000 chases!

Career ideas

After I become Dr. Barbara E. Prater, I want to remain in academia.  I want to keep teaching in my life; after all, I almost went into teaching high schoolers.  I also want to continue to have the opportunity to research.

This part of my website will be continually developing!