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Originally from Oklahoma, my interest in weather dates back as far as I can remember. I've always been interested in the weather. I definitely knew I wanted to be a meteorlogist after the Southern Plains Outbreak of April 26, 1991. I watched live footage of the F4 near Red Rock, OK, and the big F5 tornado that hit Andover, KS. I sat on the floor all night tracking the storms (even when they were still 80 miles away) with a pencil and a road atlas trying to figure out if the storms were going to hit my house. Ironically, I had a very acute fear of storms when I was little. Now I chase them, go figure. My "first weather job" was a school project in 5th grade where I recorded weather observations, made forecasts, and compared them to the TV forecasts and the actual weather for two weeks.
 In May of 2005, I graduated from the University of Oklahoma with a Bachelor's of Science degree in Meteorology with minors in Mathematics and Hydrologic Science. My primary research interests include synoptic, mesoscale, and radar meteorology. My senior CAPSTONE project involved testing for and determining the most efficient scanning strategies for multi-Doppler analysis of three-dimensional wind fields using a new network of low-power Doppler radars in southwestern Oklahoma.
I first began chasing severe weather in the spring of 2001 as a freshman at the University of Oklahoma.
Now for my disclaimer:
Storm chasing is not a requirement to study meteorology. Storm chasing is a very expensive and LIFE-THREATENING activity. You could die if you make the wrong decision, like picking the wrong road to take. Storm chasing require high level of understanding of the physics of meteorology and how the atmosphere works, as well as a major level of understanding of how to read and interpret all forms of weather data. So, if you want to go chasing, I don't recommend it. If you're bound and determinted to do it, you should find someone like a tour company or another chaser/spotter to take you. Do a google search on it.
So, you might be asking yourself, "Why is this site called 'Stormkiller.com?'" Well, the answer is pretty simple. If you read my chase logs, you'll noticed that I had a tough time finding tornadoes for the first couple of years I chased. I think the unofficial streak in the chasing community without seeing a tornado is 60+ chases. On my 56th chase, I broke this streak in Kansas. Read all about it in the log from May 29, 2004. Anyway, many of these were late night chases in eastern Oklahoma for KOTV. Since it was late at night, and the dryline would never make it all the way into NE OK, the storms usually fell apart rapidly just as I was arriving. So, my coworkers gave me many nicknames: "The Storm Smasher," "The Storm Crusher," and "Storm Killer." The last one stuck. Pretty much all of my friends picked up this name, and it has sort of stuck on my like glue. So, there you go. That's way I'm sometimes called "Stormkiller." Thus, the name of this website. I told you it had a back story.
My Research:
Gao, J., C. Nuttall, C. Gilreath, M. Xue, K. Brewster, and K. K. Droegemeier, 2005: Multiple Doppler Wind Analysis and Assimilation via 3DVAR Using Simulated Observations of the Planned CASA Network and WSR-88D Radars. Preprints, The 11th Conference on Mesoscale Processes and 32nd Conference on Radar Meteorology. American Meteorological Society, Alburquerque, NM, CDROM.
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