Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Karen Kosiba. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Hi Karen, thanks for joining us today. Everyone has crazy stuff happen to them, but often small business owners and creatives, artists and others who are doing something off the beaten path are hit with things (positive or negative) that are so out there, so unpredictable and unexpected. Can you share a crazy story from your journey?

I am a meteorologist that studies severe weather, particularly hurricanes and tornadoes. My research depends on collecting data in tornadoes and hurricanes, which means getting
very close to tornadoes and INSIDE of hurricanes. There are a lot of crazy stories about
getting the data in the mercurial storms!

I will share a hurricane and a tornado story, as an example.

Hurricane: Everyone always asks about tornadoes being dangerous (and they are), but I always think
hurricanes are worse! In order to get the data we need, since hurricanes are so big, we have to
take our radar trucks, the Doppler on Wheels (DOWs) into the worst part of the hurricane.
And, once you are there you can’t leave…you stay in the truck and ride out the hurricane in
the truck. Things that are scary include rising water, winds, and debris in the wind. Normally,
I mostly am thinking about the wind/debris. But, for a hurricane back in 2012, Hurricane Isaac,
water became a concern. Isaac was forecast to be weak (wind-wise), so we deployed
at a very forward location on a levee south of New Orleans. Isaac was weak, but it was very
slow and wide, which it was not forecast to be. The result was that the rise in the water level
was much much higher than forecast! We leave a lot of room for error in the water height
forecast, but during the night we became concerned that the water would top the levee that
we were on. It had already broke the levee to the north, so were effectively cut-off. The sheriff
kept calling us because the remote monitoring of the water height was quite high and he
wanted to know if it really was that high. There was a hurricane shelter farther in, that would
be safe from the water and we debated abandoning the mission and going to the shelter. But,
ultimately we stayed and the water never topped the levee. We had a radar truck at another
location, and they left to go inland. Getting out was quite a challenge, since the basin to our
north was flooded. We spent the night at the hurricane shelter and then drove on the levee to
get out,

Tornado:
In 2013, we chased a tornado near El Reno, OK. We had two DOW radars and a vehicle that was
suppose to drop instruments in front of a tornado. A lot of what we do is get close to a tornado to
get the data we need. Since we have our own radars, we can see what is going on…what other people
don’t get to see. In our radar, this tornado was complicated and big…and we weren’t sure how to
deploy our instruments on it. So, we gave up and decided to move east and try again on the storm
later. Getting away from this storm was not easy…people were panicking and going the wrong way
on the highway to get away from the storm. So, we also had to. I was still scanning with the radar as we
were driving away, but could no longer see a tornado in the radar although it was very windy!
Also, a week ago a very bad tornado had occurred in roughly the same area and there was debris piles that the strong wind occurring now was lifting. So, it was dark, windy, debris was in the air, but I didn’t see any tornado.
The team had a hard time believing that because the visual clues told them different. Eventually we
got far enough east we felt is was safe to stop, regroup, and scan the storm while stationary. There was no
tornado, but it was still very windy. This is the first storm I really remember us giving up on. A day later, we found out that
storm chasers were killed and a media vehicle was overturned.

On another note, of unexpected positivity, I was asked to give a TedYouth talk several
years back. Until this point, all I had ever given was scientific talks and conferences and
talks at museums to promote a IMAX films called Tornado Alley, which .
So, when I got an email from TedYouth to talk about my research, but at a general level
(which is always the hardest because you have to be accurate, but not use jargon you
commonly use when talking to other scientists!), to high school students, I was totally
blown away. It wasn’t associated with anyone else but me. And that was the first time in my life that
I was “promoting” me. I was so nervous not to have anyone else to fall back on. Not sure it
was the greatest talk…but it certainly was the most memorable and character-building talk I
had (and have) ever given.

Here is a link to the talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhbX_BPrJwU

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

This is where I always wish I had a super hero backstory :)

As a kid and young adult, I was pretty aimless about what I wanted to do.

I liked being outside, nature, animals, building things, and photography…none of these items really seemed to combine into a career choice :). I went to college and first majored in psychology…but then switched to physics, thinking I would go on to graduate school in engineering or architecture. I did neither :). I went to graduate school in physics…and started doing atmospheric physics. My masters degree in physics was on laboratory modeling of tornadoes. Also, by this time, I had a healthy fear of tornadoes, so wanted to learn more. I didn’t really see myself getting a PhD, so I went and got certified to teach high school physics and earth science. My physics professors thought I would enjoy getting my PhD is atmospheric sciences, so I applied to graduate schools. The one thing I didn’t want to do, though was numerical modeling! I wanted to be out in the field collecting data. I ended up doing both :). I worked with a team using mobile radars to study tornadoes…and I never left once I got my PhD :). Now I am managing director of the radar facility and I write my own grants (with colleagues) to help fund my (our) research.

I always think of the data we collected as our art, in particular the radar data. With the growing popularity of social media (since 2004 :)) we are able to share videos and images of the data we collect in tornadoes, hurricanes and other types of weather. I maintain a twitter account for our radar trucks hoping to share some of our adventures and data!

Do you have any insights you can share related to maintaining high team morale?

I probably should have answered these questions in the opposite order :)

I think when you work in a team, everyone brings something unique and valuable to the table.
Really recognizing peoples’ strengths and utilizing them is critical. Sometimes people don’t
even realize some of assets they bring to the table and it is important to challenge people to
succeed at something they think is out of their wheelhouse. I think its important that people know
that they are an integral part of the team. Ultimately, people should feel (and be) purposeful and
impactful, so its critical to create an environment that people feel they are meaningfully
contributing to.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

I always thought the people who talked a lot and through out all the ideas were the smartest…and sometimes they are :) But, not always. Also, sometimes people a good idea or insight amongst a lot of bad ideas.

I have had to learn to other peoples’ ideas, opinions, advice, etc. and parse what I think is correct and useful for me or the situation…not just accept what people say as face value or dismiss someone’s insight because most of what they say is irrelevant at the time.

There is not much of a backstory to this…it has just been a progression in decision making, especially when the decision is solely mine. The ability to gather critical information and ideas other than your own and use that information to come to a decision is usually impactful than staying in your own head.

Contact Info:

• Website: http://www.karenkosiba.com/; https://farm.atmos.illinois.edu/
• Twitter: @karen_kosiba; @DOWFacility

Image Credits
Gino De Grandis