#nexlab

Oh hell nah you aren’t too old!

I was 25 when I started going back to school for meteorology. At the time, I had just started my own business the year prior and had gone storm chasing in the summer with the community college I ended up at, College of DuPage.

If you’re serious about getting into meteorology, I’d start there because the program is ranked #1 in the nation for community colleges. The amount of courses offered is far beyond what you’d find anywhere else. I was literally taking what amounts to junior level classes as a freshman/sophomore.

In all honesty, though, for me it was all about how passionate my professor, Paul Sirvatka, was. (Google him. He’s fucking awesome.) He made you wanna go to class everyday. That’s how good he is. I’ve known him 11 years now, and literally call him Weather Dad.

So, here’s the thing about my journey through meteorology. I started in 2009 and didn’t graduate with my AS until 2016. At first, having my own business allowed me to take the morning classes important to the program. I was lucky in that aspect because I was able to take all my meteorology courses about 2 at a time until I had to make the decision to shut down my business and start looking for a job in order to continue making money. By that time, all I had left were the gen ed classes I could take at night.

I’m sure you’re wondering what classes I was taking. Here’s the list:

Intro to Meteorology

Climate & Global Change

Severe & Unusual Weather

Weather Analysis and Forecasting I & II

Advanced Weather Analysis and Forecasting III & IV

Weather Impacts & Preparedness (you can get a certificate in Weather Hazards & Preparedness in conjunction with the Criminal Justice and Geography programs with this class and all the others on this list)

Severe Weather Analysis

Mesoscale Meteorology

Intermediate Meteorology

Introduction to Thunderstorm Lab (aka Storm Chasing I)

Thunderstorm Lab (aka Advanced Storm Chasing II)

If you’d like the course descriptions, check out the NexLab website. It’ll be under Academics.

And yes, that’s a LOT of courses for a community college to offer, which tells you just how much passion the department has for its program.

The NexLab website in general is one of the top resources used in the weather/meteorology community. (And I’m just gonna brag a little that my background in graphic design has allowed me to help come up with color schemes for certain products and create the graphics for the now unfortunately defunct iOS app.)

It’s a solid program, one that’s going to teach you more than you’d expect and help you breeze through your junior and senior level classes at any university with a meteorology program. While that’s an experience I haven’t yet had, all my friends who have gone on to 4 year universities have all said the same thing: they knew more about meteorology than their peers because of this program.

So, what have I been doing with this? Storm chasing, mostly. I decided not to get my BS because I absolutely suuuuuuck at math. (I barely scraped by in Calc I with a passing D in order to get my AS.) But here’s the thing: I’m a damn good forecaster. I might suck at math, but give me a weather model, current data maps, colored pencils, and an hour, and I’ll give you a chase target for the day. With a string a great forecasts under my belt this season alone, that’s the one thing I’m confident about.