You all know me on here as cajungal. I live in a very tiny town called, Schriever. It is located 60 miles southwest of New Orleans. Now, I know most people that are not familiar with Louisiana are always surprised when I tell them I live a whole 60 miles south of New Orleans. They say, what? You live in the Gulf Of Mexico? Well, for those of you who are more familiar with southeast Louisiana, Schriever is smack in the middle between Houma and Thibodeaux.

I just recently turned 29 years old and I have always loved weather. Thunderstorms used to give me goosebumps, but I loved them. But, nothing interests me more than the tropics. Every hurricane season, I am just glued to what is going on in the tropics. The turning point was late August 1992. I had just turned 16, almost exactly 2 months prior. I just started my first week of my junior year of high school. I was glued to my television watching Hurricane Andrew maul south Florida. The minute Andrew crossed over into the Gulf of Mexico, I knew we were his next victims. I did not have a clue how hurricanes are steered. I was dumb about weather then. I did not know nothing about high pressure, troughs, or any weather knowledge really. Just had a gut feeling that Andrew was going to make a second landfall on the Louisiana coast. We were sent home early from school that day. My Dad boarded up all of our windows. My mom had bought lots of flashlights, water, and canned goods. My brother, who was 13, and I were going to ride out our first "real" hurricane.

Close to sunset, I remember sitting on our front porch waiting for Andrew. The trees were swaying back and forth. Then, we went inside because it was getting dark and it was getting too dangerous to stay outside. Our portable radio was on, and it was saying Andrew was going to go straight through Terrebonne Bay, meaning the northeastern eye wall was going to go straight over my house! I started to get scared, but it was also something to experience. It was way too late to evacuate by that point anyway. We lost power almost right away. I remember that my Yorkie, Lacey, was getting very nervous. She was just a 7-month old puppy then and did not know what to think. My mom had to hold her and calm her down all night. The winds gusted to over 100 mph that night and I thought the night would never end. Andrew skirted the coast near Terrebonne Parish before turning inland. He actually made landfall near Morgan City. Morgan City is 25 miles due west of Schriever. We were on the most dangerous part of the storm. We were very surprised when we awoke the next morning. We only got minor damage. Just lost some roof shingles, street signs down everywhere, a couple of telephone poles were cracked in half. We were without power for 8 long days. We also lost our fishing camp near the gulf. Only 2 walls were left standing. My mom said Betsy was even worse. My Mom and Dad were both in the eye wall of Betsy. They were without power, water and a phone for 3 weeks after Betsy. The damage was way worse for Betsy than for Andrew they said.

So, you see, Andrew was the turning point. I have been hooked ever since. I live in a very vulnerable part of southeast Louisiana. Thankfully, we have been very lucky over the years. Terrebonne and Lafourche parish have not had a direct hit from a hurricane since Andrew. We are long over due. Where I live has the worst coastal erosion problem in the country. We are sinking, the gulf is now 20 miles closer to us than it was for Andrew. Almost all of our wetlands that used to protect us are almost gone. We are more vulnerable to storms than ever before. I am glad I found Storm2K. I have learned a lot and met a lot of new friends. I even got to meet one in person. I am surprised about the number of people from the Houma area are on here. I love Storm2K and they do a very good job.

~cajungal~

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August 14th, 2004 – a date that will live in infamy. That’s the day that dhweather joined the storm2k community. Why did I pick dhweather for my name? Well, I decided that dh was much easier to type than Diamondhead, and I am a bona fide weather nut. So the mystery is solved!

I’ve been nearly infatuated with the weather since I was a toddler. Growing up in Jackson, Mississippi, we often were awakened by civil defense sirens as tornado warnings were issued. A childhood fascination of severe weather drove me to study the weather for a hobby.

I’m a self-confessed weather geek. Well, not just a weather geek, but an electronics geek as well. Computers caught my attention early on, and I was the first kid in my neighborhood to have one. I started out with a Texas Instruments TI99-4A home computer. Scrimping and saving, I eventually saved enough money up to buy the voice synthesizer for the computer, which was incredibly cool. Ah, the memories, a 3 megahertz processor with 16K of RAM, the BASIC programming language, and a cassette deck for I/O. Sweet!

After going through a Atari 400 and an Atari 800, a Commodore Vic 20 and a Commodore 64, I graduated to a Kaypro II. Ah yes, the lovely Kaypro II. That machine had an external 300 baud Hayes modem and this new thing called Compuserve was available. Through Compuserve, I was able to download text products from the National Severe Storms Forecast Center (now the Storm Prediction Center). Talk about cool - it was love at first sight – computers and the weather!! I didn’t have to watch TV or listen to NOAA weather radio to get tornado and severe thunderstorm watch information, that was so cool! Other computers over the years would include a Tandy 1000, an Everex 286/12, then I started building my own systems. 386/16sx, 386/33, 386/40, 486/66, Pentium 90, Pentium 133, Pentium 150, Pentium II 300, Pentium III 500, Pentium III 800, Pentium 4 1.5GHz, Pentium 4 2.26GHz, Pentium 4 2.5 GHz, and now the 3GHz beast. I’ve also got a couple of Sun workstations at home. Yes, I’m a lifelong computer geek.

Upon arrival at Mississippi State University, needless to say, I was way ahead of most other students in the area of personal computers. The love of computers won out over Meteorology, so I ended up with BS and MS degrees in computer Science with minors in statistics. Can you imagine the internet without any web services? I lived it, and while it was still cool for its time, the advent of web services opened the door for everyone to gather and share information.

Today, I look back and see how much information technology has grown in the last 25 years, and it’s mind boggling. 300 baud dial up to 3megabit broadband at home, 3 Mhz processors to 3Ghz processors, 16K of ram to 1GB of ram, my the times have changed for the best!

Gather and share information about the weather – that sounds like a great idea, huh? Well, the folks at Storm2K thought so too, and built the mecca for weather geeks!!

As I approach my first anniversary as a storm2k member, I’ve started my own mission to help collect donations to keep storm2k going. If you’ve ever been online at 300 baud through Compuserve trying to get plain text NWS documents, you would have a TREMENDOUS appreciation for what storm2k brings to you today. Trust me on this!

As for my weather geek syndrome, I spent several years manually recording rainfall, Temperature, Barometric Pressure as a kid to learn trends. I spent countless hours in the library and bookstores reading all there was to read on the weather. I earned my Ham Radio License at the age of 11, but couldn’t chase storms until I was able to get my drivers license. I was Skywarn certified at 15, and took off after severe weather.

I’ve witnessed and reported numerous severe weather events, including Wall Clouds, Funnel Clouds, one Tornado, all sizes of hail up to walnuts, and rain rates in excess of three inches per hour. I’ve been in straight line winds up to 80MPH, and had lightning strike within 50 feet of me in my storm chasing days. My wife ended my field work chasing storms, but I continued working the Skywarn station at the Jackson, MS NWS office during severe weather outbreaks. That was truly a great experience, as the Mets would take time to talk to me about weather, show me the WSR-88D and how to work it, and I did get to work it a few times for a few minutes in non-severe weather.

I’ve been a Unix Systems Engineer for 13 years, with a focus on supercomputing. The work computers started with a Cray YMP-8, a Cray C916, a Cray J916, a Cray T3E, and IBM Power 3, and IBM P Series 690, and an IBM P Series 690+. I was the primary architect for a petascale hierarchical storage management system, and managed over 30 Terflops of computational power. I’ve had the pleasure of working with some of the finest researchers in the computational technology areas of Climate Weather Ocean (CWO) and Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD). Modelers that run extremely fine resolution shallow-water forecasts to 1/32 degree global ocean models. One of them has been a finalist for a Smithsonian Award for his research in ocean modeling. Working daily with experts in Meteorology and Oceanography continues to feed my passion for the weather.

I’ve been happily married for 11 years, And on Christmas Day, 2003, our daughter Lauren was born. She is, by far, the greatest present that I’ve ever gotten! We’ve lived in Diamondhead, Mississippi since 1999.

So know you know what there is to know. See you in the forums!

David Magee (dhweather)