I promise not to bore you too much. I am currently 22 years old and a meteorology student at the University of Kansas. I was born September 17, 1984 in Topeka, KS. l lived outside of Rossville, KS for the first 18

years of my life before moving to Lawrence to go to school. A few years later when I was only six is when my interest in severe weather began. On April 26, 1991 a day that most people remember for the Andover, KS and Red Rock, OK F5 tornadoes. I got to view nature at its finest. My family and I stood outside and watched this F2 tornado pass within concerning distance of our home. One word to describe this event would be curiosity. The curiosity of seeing that tornado still is within me today and I see it in myself every time I storm chase. I have been asked before if there is anything that would make me not want to chase storms. The only thing that I can think of is if I lost the curiosity in me that has caused my passion for severe weather to grow so deep that I can not even begin to describe it.

What do I like the most about chasing? The tornadoes of course! Next comes lightning I would have to say.

Throughout the rest of my childhood I remember watching countless hours of the Weather Channel and watching supercells pass through the Kansas River Valley. But the most memorable events for me were the night time mesoscale convective systems that passed through Northeast Kansas. The most memorable of these was a derecho on July 1, 1994 that had recorded wind gusts of 120mph and did tremendous damage in the local area. Towards the end of high school I finally realized that I was tired of waiting on storms to come to me and that's when my storm chasing life began.

When I am not storm chasing I love to hunt, fish, golf, camp, and canoe and other activities like those. I have always loved the outdoors and chasing ties into that very well. I would say that if I was not going to be a meteorologist I would be a wildlife biologist because that ties into many of my interests outside of weather. I also play football, tennis, basketball, and other sports.