Professor and state climatologist Charles Wax, who has worked at Mississippi State for 31 years, remembers the meteorology department’s early beginnings.Wax said until the department was developed in 1987, MSU only offered students the opportunity to take weather classes with limited equipment.
“We only had three computers and were just learning how to use the Internet,” he said. “To get weather information, [we] had to gather it from the faxes from the National Weather Service.”
Since that time, the department has undergone tremendous growth and updated technology.
“Today there are about 60 graduate students, 31 faculty members and staff,” he said. “Now we have a fully state-of-the-art climate lab with state-of-the-art equipment.”
From the outset of this semester, the meteorology department has remained busy chasing and tracking weather systems.
Dixon said the most recent systems have been a result of the El Niño and La Niña cycles in the Pacific Ocean.
“This has been a really active year,” he said. “When Oxford, Memphis and Caledonia were hit, people were in the office monitoring the situation.”
Wax said students have always been interested in storm chasing.
“Mike [Brown, associate professor of geosciences] sends the students with a group of four, [but they] must be in contact and do what he tells them to,” he said.
Dixon said the main reason for sending students to chase storms is for their own education.
“It’s easier to understand something after watching it live,” he said. “Radar cannot detect tornados; that’s why it’s necessary to confirm a visual on the ground.”
Geosciences graduate student Matt McNeilly said spending time in the climatology lab as an opportunity to learn from his professors’ experiences.
“They [professors] want to have some people up here to help keep an eye on the radar to make sure that the team going out is in a safe position and not driving into a system,” he said.
Wax said the meteorology department also plays a role in MSU’s Crisis Action Team.
“They rely on us to help make decisions about how to respond when severe weather happens,” he said.
Student affairs risk manager Mike Goolsby said he considers having a meteorology department on campus a luxury.
“We are probably in better shape due to having the technology on campus,” he said.
Goolsby said since the department provides the team with its own source of information, it can monitor the weather through local media and compare the data.
Dixon said people should become weather-savvy and seek information out for themselves.
“If you are not looking for a warning, it will be easy to miss,” he said.