Hi and welcome

Welcome to the blog! If this is your first visit (and I hope there will be more), this post will be a quick introduction and backgrounder.

I've always had a fascination with weather, particularly the "why" portion, though I had a roundabout way of arriving at my current position as a college instructor of meteorology (and Astronomy, World Regional Geography, Human Geography, Television Production, Landforms and Climate), and working as an on-camera-meteorologist for KOAA in Colorado Springs/Pueblo, Colorado.

I was originally trained as a musician, with years of study, competition and a few years of teaching the accordion. If only I'd grown up in the Dakotas, Minnesota or Wisconsin, I'd have been intensely popular, but no, I grew up in the west, so a change was in order.

I switched to more conventional keyboards (piano, organ, synthesizer), and spent my teenage years playing with a variety of rock bands (finding much more acceptance than with those killer versions of "Lady of Spain").

After an odyssey that took me from high school dances to a few years touring professionally, I decided that life on the road wasn't for me, so I made the transition to radio.

After a brief stint at the Ron Bailie School of Broadcasting, I landed a "Disk Jockey" position at a local station in Ogden, Utah, and moved (it's a mobile business) through a series of stations ranging from Idaho to Salt Lake City.

While I was in Idaho, I remember watching the local TV weathercaster, who was TERRIBLE, and thinking "if I had the background, I could tell people about the weather in a way they'd understand".

I enrolled at the University of Utah, started a job with the (at that time) NBC affiliate in Salt Lake City, and step-by-step, advanced towards where I am now, with a Bachelor's degree in meteorology (Magna Cum Laude), a Masters Degree in Geosciences and now almost 30 years of broadcasting under my belt.

What brings the me greatest joy is being able to explain the "why" behind the weather. Benjamin Franklin once said "some are weatherwise, some are otherwise", and since the title of the blog is "Ask Mike", feel free to post your weather questions here, and I'll do my best to help you become more "weatherwise".

Enjoy!!