My name is Alex Lamers and I am a freshman at the University of Oklahoma. My permanent residence is in Southeast Wisconsin where variety is the name of the game as far as weather is concerned. Now I'm located in Norman, Oklahoma. When I tell people this, they usually say, "Oh yeah. They get a lot of tornadoes down there!" While this is somewhat true, Oklahoma does receive a wide variety of weather as well. I've been interested in meteorology since I was about 8 years old, living in California's valley region near Modesto in a tiny town - Turlock. But moving to Wisconsin in 1995 gave me an increased interest with thunderstorms and muggy summer weather and snowstorms in the winter.

In 2001, I managed to get into the Wisconsin Center for Academically Talented Youth "Young Scholars Program" and completed a summer project with a mentor from the local National Weather Service office in Sullivan, Wisconsin. The project was on thunderstorms and their various aspects and that summer on June 11th, Wisconsin experienced a serious windstorm, or derecho, which gave me plenty to talk about in an otherwise uneventful summer.

The next year my interest in operational meteorology grew as I began to forecast on WiscWx.com with a friend from middle school, Jordan Gerth. And then, in 2003, I landed a volunteer position at the local National Weather Service office in Sullivan, a position that I still fill to this date. From this time through the present, I have continued to produce amateur forecasts and am becoming increasingly involved in the meteorological community.

So now I am at the University of Oklahoma to study meteorology. It has been my ambition for awhile to break into the severe storms forecasting or researching field so this seemed like the perfect fit as far as colleges go. The new National Weather Center is also a huge draw as it will house many NOAA agencies as well as the School of Meteorology. I toured it recently and it is very nice. Sometime while I am pursuing my undergraduate degree I'd like to find a co-op or internship somewhere around the area, of which I am told, there are boundless numbers of opportunities.

And that's a brief summary of my life so far. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I have.