So my name's Taylor Grace. I'm about 24 and I'm working on the EPSCOR project currently as a PHD student first year. And so what I kind of focus on more is the sub seasonal, the seasonal forecasting within that project. And more specifically, I work on heat waves, kind of how to define heat waves, doing trend analysis on frequency of heat waves on an annual basis.

Duration of heat wave events and intensity kind of for the southern Great Plains region. I will expand it out into kind of the entire United States. And then on a global scale, as well. So, I mean, as a researcher, you always kind of have these goals that you set out or dreams that you set out. And so obviously from for kind of my project, we want to really hone in on how to create a definition that a lot of researchers will use or even kind of more into the public eye, how to kind of expand that into how broadcasters can use that and such.

And so that's kind of our first goal is to really create like a concrete definition. From there, we kind of just want to find out kind of what happens with heat waves, kind of how frequently do they occur? Is it changing with a changing climate? What can we expect? Is there anything that we can predict better with heat waves to kind of give more warning to kind of the public and so on and so forth?

So those are kind of the initial first steps. And of course, all these things kind of change as you kind of dove into these topics and these ideas. So that's kind of our initial goals with this project. Yeah, I feel for a lot of people who kind of come in to the meteorology programs they have this one event that they find as kind of their highlight as to all this got me really interested in being a meteorologist For me, it was kind of just being interested in watching The Weather Channel.

So it kind of started probably about seventh grade. I don't know how came along the channel somehow but just saw the Weather Channel got really, really interested and that was just what I watched like all the time when I had the TV on. That's what it was on. When I wake up in the morning and watch The Weather Channel, not the news or cartoons or anything like that.

When I would come home after school, I'd watch the Weather Channel. And so you can say, Mom, literally any time a TV was on and I was in front of it, the Weather Channel was probably on. And so just watching that I just got interested was learning a lot of the terminology, learning a lot about kind of the atmosphere and how it works.

And so as I progressed kind of through the rest of my schooling, through high school and everything, it was kind of just time to decide what I wanted to do for a living and what I wanted to do in college and study in college. And so I've always been interested in math and science. That's kind of always been my strong suit.

It was really apparent grade wise. That was my strong suit. And I just enjoyed it a lot more. And so I was like, Okay, well, I could be, you know, a chemist or I could go into physics or something like that. And so I was just kind of talking with my mom, my family, and they all knew I love the Weather Channel.

And they were like, Well, why don't you do meteorology? And at that time, I had no idea that that was even an option for me, because I never took a meteorology class in high school that wasn't really offered to us. And so I was kind of like, yeah, like I do watch The Weather Channel like I really do like the weather.

That's kind of my thing, my interest. And so I just decided to kind of take the leap of faith, and that's what I majored in. And rest is history. The nice thing about kind of being in graduate school and kind of even a researcher a lot of the times is kind of set your own schedule. So a lot of times I try to like to be in or around 9:00 or walk in and kind of the first thing is answer emails, which isn't always fun, but it's part of the job.

So kind of, you know, collaborating with a lot of researchers at the answer back to a lot of emails on ideas or kind of ways that you're going to progress the research that you're working on together in a group. And so that's kind of what I start my day off with. From there, I just kind of dove in to research.

And what that kind of looks like is a lot of coding. Honestly, we sit behind a computer a lot most of the day, if not all of the day, and so you can code in different things. So different programing languages. I personally use Python and that's what I code in a lot of researchers code in that now a days, but that's a lot of it and a lot of it is struggling.

You know, you code out something, it doesn't work and then you have to go back and figure out where the problem is and then you try it again. And this is just like on repeat all day long. And so obviously you want to make progress and what you're trying to do. So hopefully by the end of the day you have something to account for what you were trying to get done.

A lot of times that doesn't happen, which is okay. That's how research goes. Or a lot of times you have an idea and it doesn't pan out the way that you thought it was. Going to, and that's research as well. That's okay. And so that's kind of my day. I kind of like to wrap it up around 5:00.

So more on the academic side I would say I just completed my master's, and so how my advisor kind of works is he's more hands off independent thinking, which is great because that makes you expand as a scientist. And so I still did heat waves. Back then I was trying to come up with the definition. And so obviously when you're given, okay, how would you define heat waves I mean, that could be endless to people.

So I kind of had to look into literature and everything was so different within the literature, what variables they used, what thresholds they use, everything like that, how the duration of how long it needed to last for before it was considered a heat wave. And so it was really just like trial and run to see what differences I would find using different thresholds and in situations like that.

And so I came across a point where I was like, okay, well here's two definitions that there's barely any difference here. What do I do? How do I prove a point for one, as being better than the other? It's really difficult. And so I kind of had to create think creatively in a more statistical analysis of more of the variables rather than the definition as a whole.

And so that was kind of something that I came up with on my own, and it's something that I battled with. I'm trying to figure out how to do for like weeks, which is okay. Like that's just how it is as a scientist. Like, it takes a lot of time to create a lot of these results. And so that was kind of a struggle.

More on the academic research side. Personally, I grew up playing sports that was, you know, literally my life 24, seven other than when I was in school. And so obviously playing sports, you come across a lot of personal challenges you set out goals of in soccer, you're going to score three goals, a game type of thing, and that doesn't happen.

Or in basketball, I want to score ten points a game that doesn't happen. You come across challenges like that. And I think the most important thing to remember is just not to be so hard on yourself. Everybody has good and bad days and anything that they do and you're going to come across struggles and life on a personal and academic basis.

But the most important thing is that you gave it everything that you had and you thought through everything that you did. And if you can say that at the end of the day, then that's all that you could have done. And so that's kind of the big thing that I think is the big take away, and that's something that you just kind of grow to accept as you get older.

It's hard to kind of accept that when you're younger, which I totally get when I was in that situation, you just get frustrated and you just get so down on yourself and it just doesn't make anything better. Honestly, as a meteorologist, yes, primarily it is male dominated and more specifically white male dominated and so a lot of it is just kind of it is challenging as a female in certain aspects, more so to kind of make yourself known as, you know, you're just an individual, you're a scientist, you're not a female scientist.

And to kind of make that come across in that way can be a little difficult especially in the sense of, let's say you're collaborating with a male scientist and you're a female scientists and you come up with an idea that you think is really great and that you think will really work. Sometimes you have to push that idea a little bit harder or say it multiple times.

Whereas if, let's say I was a male scientist, I might not have to push that hard for them to try that idea. And I don't think they intentionally do that obviously. I think it's just something that just kind of happened naturally. But that is kind of a challenging thing to overcome. But the bright side is there is a rise in female scientists in the meteorology program.

So it's something to kind of look out for. And diversity is a huge thing that's being talked about within the department and even within the National Weather Center. It's fantastic kind of discussions to kind of bring awareness to a lot of the challenges that are faced, not only just, you know, with race, but also with gender as well.

Not so. My advice is not so much of a work life balance. It's a work life harmony type of situation because it's not always balancing the two. It's sometimes you have to give a little bit more to your work during certain points in your life than to your personal life. And sometimes you have to give more to your personal life to kind of balance out what you overcame in your work life.

And so that's kind of how I like to think. It's really important to kind of have hobbies and to keep up with those hobbies and to do things that keep you mentally stimulated other than through your academics. And so kind of just certain things that I like to do. I have a puppy, so she keeps me busy like her, take her to the dog park and just walk around and just play with her, which is a lot of fun.

Take my mind off of all the stress of school and research and all of that. I play basketball, kind of just go out with some friends, shoot some hoops, just kind of chit chat and stuff. And just kind of hang out outside. I'm a very outdoorsy person, so I wish I could do more hiking here, but that's kind of what I would do in undergrad is find kind of a mountain to hike or trail to hike and go out and do that.

Just kind of separate from everything. Phone turned off everything and just kind of hone in on me personally in a mental state, physical state all of it. Yeah. So I feel like a lot of meteorologists are like, Oh, I like the severe weather, I like tornadoes or something like that. I obviously like that. I like all weather, but I think I like kind of the quote unquote boring weather.

I like when it's just kind of a rain shower or a more calming setting is kind of the weather that I prefer. I in high school never had a meteorology course, so I wouldn't focus on trying to really understand weather in particular. Yeah, that's maybe an interest if you have the opportunity to take that course. Sure, take it because you'll probably enjoy it.

But I think the main thing is really just kind of focus on math and science. More on the math side, I think a lot of people are kind of shocked when they get to the meteorology programs and it's really, really math, this very much calculus space. And so that's where a lot of it stems from. Same with physics, a lot of it stems from physics as well, which are not easy courses and they're very challenging and that kind of weeds out a lot of people when they first come into meteorology to like programs initially just because they're not prepared for the workload in particular, you have to really study hard to kind of make it through

But if you really want that to be your dream, there's no reason why it can't be ultimately. So I definitely say kind of math based kind of focus on calculus courses understanding that and the rest kind of comes along with it. Yeah. So in an undergrad, usually they have you take like one coding course as like a required course.

So you kind of dabble a little bit into that. Mine kind of expanded into doing internships kind of outside of the more academic setting. And so I kind of learned how to program more efficiently and kind of how to apply that to a meteorology background through internships which are held by other scientists have been through the field. So that kind of is really beneficial if you want to kind of progress into the more research side.

Coding is really important. If you want to do broadcasting, it's not important. You don't really need to know how to code. I think that's why an undergrad program to try to keep it pretty broad and don't force you into kind of that coding mindset that gives you the opportunities if you want it, but want require you to take a lot of coding classes.

The biggest difference between like a computer science course and kind of a meteorology coding course is we use a little bit different languages, but they're all beneficial in the end. Kind of getting that experience is really important though. I think the biggest thing for me is even if you feel like that you're going to fail, it's okay to go through with it.

You need to follow kind of your interest of whether or if anything science related is your interest, but you're scared of the math courses still do it still do it because you never know kind of how you'll thrive in that until you kind of go through that experience. Don't don't be afraid to ask for help either. Don't be afraid to talk to scientists that you kind of meet on the streets or, or if you're out and about and you see kind of broadcast meteorologists, don't be afraid to talk to them like they would love to talk to you about whether they would love to talk to you about their experiences.

They would love to talk to you about how they got to where they are. That's like a huge thing for us is we want to reach out to people who are interested when, you know, when you're younger. So just, you know, reach out. It's always great. I mean, I think in that moment, it's hard not to view it as a failure.

But then when you look back on it, you learn from those experiences personally from me you know, I grew up my parents were together super happy. And then once I got into middle school, my parents separated. And so that was kind of a big milestone kind of in my life as to quote unquote, what a failure is. And so kind of just watching my family adapt to those experiences has really made me learn that it's okay to go through those that actually shaped who you are as a person.

And you learn from that. You learn not to do certain things you learn not to think about things in that manner or or what kind of happened in that moment. And that's kind of the most important thing. And really what builds a person is the failures that you go through. I feel like a lot of times in high school or even in the beginning parts of my undergrad, I had it a little bit easier than a lot of people like academically.

But it really only takes one moment of you to like go into a test and not know many of the answers to really kind of shaping like, okay, like it's okay not to know everything. That's how you learn. If you know everything, then what are you truly learning? Nothing. And so it's okay to go into a test and fail.

You know, it happens to literally everybody. So just kind of to remember that too. It's not the end of the world if you fail the test, you're actually learning more than those who did really well on the test.

So I want to show you all a really cool cloud experiment. But before I do I want to talk a little bit more about clouds and how they form. So you need a few ingredients in order to form a cloud, which are a lot of moisture. So a lot of water vapor you need a lot of ascending air and you also need particulate matter.

So this is dust, smoke. Things are lofted into the air from the ground you can be literally anything in the atmosphere. And so what kind of happens is once you have enough of this water vapor, it'll condense on to this particulate matter, which is also known as cloud condensation nuclei. Once enough of this water vapor is condense onto these cloud condensation nuclei.

It'll form kind of your cloud that you see in in the sky. And so once enough of these of this water vapor condenses on, they get heavy and they actually fall back down to the ground, which is then how precipitation is formed. So that's kind of the initial stages of forming cloud and then progressing into precipitation. All right.

So in order to start this awesome cloud experiment, you need an empty Two-liter bottle and some warm water. What we're going to do is pour the warm water into this bottle. At first put the lid on it's shake it up as if you're going to put it in the atmosphere.

And like I said, you need a lot of pressure, rising motion. So we're going to squeeze this bottle as tight as we can to kind of form this pressure which is actually going to rise your temperature. And I see that nothing happens. So what do you think we're missing in order for this cloud to form so what we need is we need the particulate matter, which was that kind of that last ingredient.

And so we're going to use is our handy match to kind of create some smoke to up and form that pressure. Again, you kind of see that cloud forming even more so in this bottle than before So what would happen if you were to add another match to this bottle, more smoke, for example? What would happen? What would happen if you had a smaller bottle than this Two-liter bottle?

What would also happen if you added more water to kind of this experiment? I think you should find out what you'll see