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00:00:01
Brandon - Meteorologist/KY3 Weather
65 Plays1 year ago
Brandon has been in the weather game for almost 3 decades and in this interview, his wealth of knowledge and depth of experience is evident. We do an awesome deep dive into weather radar, the use of satellites, the education options and soft skills it takes to have a career both in TV and meteorology, pay, and what a "Day In The Life" of a TV meteorologist is like. We also have some good laughs along the way. Pull up a chair and settle in, this one is GOOD!
If you found this interview helpful and/or entertaining and would like to support the show, you can do so HERE. Thanks!
Music by: SnoozyBeats - Song Title - "Keep It Calm". Please check out SnoozyBeats on PixaBay for a ton of awesome content! -LINK
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Transcript
Intro
Introduction and Guest Welcome
00:00:21
The Jobs Podcast
Good day, folks. Thank you for joining me on the jobs podcast. This is Tim Hendricks. We've got a great guest with us today. If you've spent any time in and around Southwest Missouri, the weatherman that is meteorologist known as Brandon Beck is someone you are familiar with. And we have him as our guest today. So welcome, Brandon.
Podcast Listening and Nostalgia
00:00:39
Brandon
Good morning. Or I guess afternoon or whenever this is.
00:00:44
The Jobs Podcast
Yeah, whenever they're listening to it.
00:00:45
The Jobs Podcast
Yeah.
00:00:45
Brandon
Yeah, exactly right.
00:00:46
Brandon
I forget that it's, I sound, I'm just dating myself, aren't I? Like, that's exactly how I'm old.
00:00:51
The Jobs Podcast
I think we're about the same age, I'm 50.
00:00:55
Brandon
Yeah.
00:00:55
The Jobs Podcast
Yeah, okay.
00:00:55
Brandon
So yeah, I know what a podcast is. It just, yeah yeah it's in my head that most of my waking hours are in the morning.
00:01:00
The Jobs Podcast
Right.
00:01:03
Brandon
So that's what I tell people.
Daily Routine Insights
00:01:05
The Jobs Podcast
You probably have to get up pretty early in the morning to get to the studio, is that correct?
00:01:10
Brandon
Yeah, my alarm goes off at 2.30.
00:01:12
The Jobs Podcast
Ooh, my goodness.
00:01:14
Brandon
Yeah, a lot of times when I tell somebody that, they sort of give me the deer and the headlights look like, you mean AM?
00:01:14
The Jobs Podcast
So cough.
00:01:20
The Jobs Podcast
Yes, am.
00:01:20
Brandon
Indeed, yes.
Brandon's Background and Influences
00:01:23
The Jobs Podcast
Well, let's start with the origins of Brandon tell us where you were born your your early upbringing your family members and we'll just kind of go from there.
00:01:32
Brandon
OK, was born in Searcy, Arkansas. So for you Arkansas listeners, you're probably thinking, hey, he's one of us. For some of you, maybe thinking, well, that explains a lot.
00:01:45
Brandon
Searcy is just about an hour northeast of Little Rock, not far off the interstate. And my parents both went to Harding University down there and
00:01:57
The Jobs Podcast
Okay.
00:01:59
Brandon
they married oh gosh I think they were 21 and 20 something like that so I was born there my grandparents lived there as well and believe I went the family moved to a suburb of St. Louis called Baldwin when I was gosh I don't know how old four five something like that and lived there Just a few years, parents divorced.
00:02:26
Brandon
My dad kind of took off when I was seven and he moved to Colorado, which actually is where my mother's family was from, different town.
00:02:31
The Jobs Podcast
Hmm.
00:02:37
Brandon
He moved to Denver. And then not too shortly after that, we moved back to Northeast Colorado in a little farming community. So that was age seven.
00:02:48
Brandon
And then I was in Colorado until I came back to Springfield for college.
00:02:54
The Jobs Podcast
Oh.
00:02:54
Brandon
So most of my growing up years were in Colorado, which tells you why I'm a Denver Broncos fan. Some people ask, well, why in the world?
00:03:02
The Jobs Podcast
Yeah.
00:03:04
Brandon
You've been in Missouri for 20 some years, almost 30 years.
00:03:08
The Jobs Podcast
Mm hmm.
00:03:08
Brandon
Like, well, that's true, but it helps keep the rivalry going, although certainly Chiefs fans have a whole lot more to be excited about than Broncos fans that have had for years.
00:03:18
The Jobs Podcast
They are on a run, and but we all can agree that we hate the Raiders, is that right?
00:03:22
Brandon
Yes, yes, we have some common ground there. Yeah, have for years.
00:03:25
The Jobs Podcast
There we go.
Childhood Fascination with Weather
00:03:26
The Jobs Podcast
Yeah.
00:03:27
Brandon
Anyway, I was at a young age, ah ah you know, I don't remember specifically, my mom tells me, you know, from seven, eight years old, I was fascinated with weather.
00:03:38
Brandon
I don't remember it being that early. But I can remember, at least in the third, maybe fourth grade, where I woke up from a nap because there was golf ball hail hitting my bedroom window and I was fascinated by that.
00:03:52
The Jobs Podcast
Mm.
00:03:54
Brandon
And I thought, well, how are these big ice balls coming out of the sky? And so I, I began to read and do some of the, you know, research. And of course this was long before the internet, I've been fascinated with it ever since.
00:04:04
The Jobs Podcast
Mm
00:04:07
Brandon
So that's, that's kind of the very beginning of it anyway.
00:04:11
The Jobs Podcast
Yeah. What did you, when you got to college, you've graduated, you've moved back to Missouri, you're starting college. Did you know from the get-go that you wanted to do something in weather or was it more you wanted to be in entertainment and they just kind of melded or how did, how did the whole career kind of play out?
00:04:32
Brandon
Well, my high school, believe it or not, in so so Northeast Colorado, it's a little town called Holyoke.
00:04:38
The Jobs Podcast
Mm-hmm.
00:04:38
Brandon
When
Education and Career Path
00:04:39
Brandon
my mom remarried, I was 13, and she married the only doctor in a town of about 2,000 people. So you that matches the size of several communities in Southern Missouri and Northern Arkansas.
00:04:52
The Jobs Podcast
Yeah.
00:04:52
Brandon
But where I grew up, he was the only doctor. We had one stoplight, no fast food joints, a little bit different out there. So it's basically cows and corn and wheat, but it was an agricultural community.
00:05:03
The Jobs Podcast
Right.
00:05:07
Brandon
And so I grew up in that area where if somebody had trouble paying their medical bill, well, there would be bags of produce that show up on our doorstep.
00:05:18
Brandon
And my stepdad just kind of barbered with people. And we had sweet corn for dinner.
00:05:21
The Jobs Podcast
Hmm.
00:05:23
Brandon
You know, big old gunny sacks of sweet corn. That stuff's just so good.
00:05:27
The Jobs Podcast
Yes.
00:05:27
Brandon
I mean, I turned into a swine with the butter and sweet corn. It was just crazy. But point is, small town high school, 46 in my graduating class, but they had a TV production class.
00:05:41
The Jobs Podcast
Oh.
00:05:42
Brandon
and they had what for that day and age was pretty decent equipment and so I kind of got involved in the broadcasting end of it and they did a short little newscast once a week and of course with my fascination with weather that's the angle I took and they had a green screen and everything and my my teacher pulled me aside one day and he said hey
00:06:02
The Jobs Podcast
Hmm.
00:06:08
Brandon
You're pretty bleeping good at this, and maybe you ought to look into this when you go to school. I was like, oh, okay. I wanted to go to Christian University. I looked at Oral Roberts University down in Tulsa, I believe it is.
00:06:23
Brandon
And then Evangel here in Springfield, and to me it was night and day. The broadcasting part here at Evangel has always had a good reputation, and they had a high placement rate with their graduates, and I thought, okay, well, here I am. And the rest is kind of, you know, I got the degree in broadcasting because they didn't offer meteorology.
00:06:46
Brandon
but I continued to pursue that, you know, when I had a chance to do weather on their news program at evangel, the, uh, assistant news director at KY three at the time.
00:06:52
The Jobs Podcast
Hey.
00:06:59
Brandon
His name was Hyler Cooper. And the newscast that we did and some other programming, and I think it's still the same today, was on the cable access channel through MediaCom. And so people could flip through and, oh, look, there's Evangel. And I'm not joking with this. The story goes that he came across our newscast and thought we were so bad that he should come help us.
00:07:26
Brandon
And his wife said, so why don't you go help? So he did. We were on Tuesday nights and he volunteered his time. He came over and, you know, kind of walked us through things and helped us, you know, with scripting and, you know, just different things from a professional point of view that somebody in the industry. And so he had, you know, he watched me do weather and he said, hey, I think Marcy should see this. And Marcy was the news director at KY3 at the time.
00:07:55
The Jobs Podcast
Hmm.
00:07:56
Brandon
And I said, well, I got another year before I graduate. He said, oh, so I had a full beard at that time.
00:08:00
The Jobs Podcast
Hmm.
00:08:01
Brandon
I kind of looked older, I guess. So long story short, you know, God worked out those specifics. And when I was about to graduate, Melinda, no, let's see, Melissa Ward.
00:08:14
Brandon
was on the air doing weekends and Fred Miller was about to retire. For those that have lived here a really long time, Fred Miller was on, I don't remember the year he left or he retired, but I had interned at KY3 and then the opening came in and I got hired to do weekends. I never had to send out a single resume a single-resume tape, started at KY3, and I've been there ever since.
00:08:43
Brandon
So my next anniversary here in a couple of months will be 29 years.
00:08:47
The Jobs Podcast
Wow.
00:08:49
Brandon
Yeah, I'm old. ah Well, relatively speaking, I guess you and I are the same age, as you said, so.
00:08:50
The Jobs Podcast
Well, no.
00:08:54
The Jobs Podcast
Well, we're not old. We're just smack dabble smack dab in the middle of not a kid anymore. I think is how they say it.
00:08:58
Brandon
Yes, although I can act like one still, so.
00:08:59
The Jobs Podcast
So yeah. Yeah, right. I'm right there with you. The so I can see your your education and your training and the advice and the nurturing that you received on the broadcasting side of things. The weather side of things is that are you essentially just self taught from your passion for it and your constant soaking of information about meteorology?
00:09:24
Brandon
ah ah Some of it is, yes, but when I got hired KY3, so I did weather on the weekends, and somewhere I still have that tape.
00:09:30
The Jobs Podcast
Okay.
00:09:34
Brandon
And I look back at it and think, they hired me?
00:09:40
Brandon
I mean, you know, it's anybody who's green at what they're doing. And, you know, I just thought, man, I don't know that I would have hired me, but OK.
00:09:44
The Jobs Podcast
Yeah.
00:09:49
Brandon
Part of the deal was they were going to send me to I say send me back in my day. There was a correspondence program through Mississippi State University.
00:10:00
Brandon
They actually still have it. And it was built specifically for. people in the broadcasting field and so it was the broadcast meteorology program and so it took out some of the you know the gen ed stuff and you know the heavy-duty math that type of thing and really focused on the hands on everyday weather stuff, forecasting, that type of thing.
00:10:31
Brandon
And so while it's not a full four year degree, they call it the certificate in broadcast meteorology. I was short of a degree by a handful of classes. but but And part of the reason I didn't do it is they wanted two years of foreign language.
00:10:46
The Jobs Podcast
Hmm.
00:10:47
Brandon
And I thought, man, I'm never going to work at Telemundo. You know, didn't want to go to South Texas.
00:10:51
The Jobs Podcast
Right.
00:10:52
Brandon
I thought, man, that's just a waste of time and money to me.
00:10:54
The Jobs Podcast
Yeah.
00:10:55
Brandon
So I didn't pursue that. But, you know, got the certificate and certified through the American Meteorological Society.
00:11:06
Brandon
And so, you know, I do the the the continued education with weather service and different things. And I mean, in any field, I think you can always keep learning. But that's especially true with certain fields and weather is one of them as technology advances and we learn more about the atmosphere and
00:11:15
The Jobs Podcast
Yeah.
00:11:23
Brandon
and better ways to monitor it, there's always something new to learn.
00:11:28
The Jobs Podcast
What has changed? I mean, a lot's changed in your career. You've been doing this for so
Technological Advances in Meteorology
00:11:34
The Jobs Podcast
long now. You've seen waves and substantial improvements in weather prediction, storm prediction, things of that nature.
00:11:41
Brandon
Sure.
00:11:41
The Jobs Podcast
But what are the big things like the big two or three that have changed in your career that has made your job easier, better, more exciting, more precise?
00:11:51
Brandon
Well, because a lot of it is either using computers or computer driven, I mean, anybody who's anywhere close to our age can think back maybe to the first computer they had at home.
00:11:57
The Jobs Podcast
Hmm.
00:12:03
Brandon
Yeah, I had an Apple IIe at school.
00:12:03
The Jobs Podcast
Yeah, Commodore 64.
00:12:06
The Jobs Podcast
No.
00:12:09
Brandon
I'm trying to remember the name of the game I played. I mean, we had those five and a quarter inch floppies. And that's how you booted the machine, let alone ran into software.
00:12:15
The Jobs Podcast
Yep. Mm hmm.
00:12:19
Brandon
Not missile command, that was an Atari game. I can't think of it, but it was a monochrome green monitor and these little helicopters would fly over and drop bombs or no paratroopers.
00:12:32
Brandon
And you had to shoot them with your turret gun. with with i I honestly spent hours playing that game. And so, you know, compared to what they have now, it was just night and day.
00:12:40
The Jobs Podcast
Yeah, right.
00:12:41
Brandon
But anyway, as technology advanced, when I started, we had, you know, what at that point in time were, Powerful computers i mean by today's standards are smartphones and smart watches are bigger and better but they had a limited capability for animating graphics and things like that and. ah ah It was a bit of a process to to get those things to air.
00:13:07
Brandon
It took a lot more time and they weren't nearly as pretty. You know, we didn't have the ability to plot as much data on them and that type of thing.
00:13:17
The Jobs Podcast
Mm hmm.
00:13:18
Brandon
Computer modeling was in its relative infancy stage. And, you know, if you can think of I'm trying to get a ah ah way to visualize this, but it went from pretty archaic and going out 48 hours to what is now modeling that goes out 16 days.
00:13:42
Brandon
Now that doesn't mean you can trust it.
00:13:42
The Jobs Podcast
Wow. right.
00:13:45
Brandon
But it has the capability. So think of a map like a graph paper. And so you have a series of grids or a grid. And let's say that you lay that down on a map. And between every grid point or intersection is, let's say, three kilometers.
00:14:08
The Jobs Podcast
Okay.
00:14:09
Brandon
Now cover the whole globe with that and then above every point do 65 or so vertical layers. Multiply that times, you know, let's just say 40 different atmospheric variables and then forecast that out every six hours.
00:14:33
Brandon
That's what a global computer model does and it runs every six hours.
00:14:36
The Jobs Podcast
Wow.
00:14:37
Brandon
So it's computing a global forecast for 65 or so layers, and I'm just throwing that number out, for a point every three kilometers across the globe.
00:14:49
Brandon
That's pretty amazing and it takes a lot of computer power to do it. the latest itineration that I know of from the National Weather Service and it's always growing so I probably should look up whether they've upgraded but it's something like two trillion calculations a second and that's not the fastest on the planet by any means I think it was at the time the 12th fastest or something like that but you know as we get more computing power then you can run
00:15:05
The Jobs Podcast
Man.
00:15:19
Brandon
more high-res simulations with finer detail over longer periods of time and do it in a shorter amount of time computer-wise. When we do something on TV and we show you the latest term that the consultants love is hour by hour,
00:15:40
The Jobs Podcast
Yeah.
00:15:41
Brandon
Those are all high resolution and they go, you know, they may go through 72 hours and those run several times a day. Or we have some that run every hour, but they only go out say 15 hours. So they're designed to keep up with more, you know, like thunderstorms as they develop or something like that. The bottom line is we have so much data now.
00:16:04
Brandon
you can really get lost in it. When you're making a forecast, you can say, well, I'm going to look at this model, this model, this model, this model. And then every one of those models has different variations called ensembles. You really can start drowning in the data.
00:16:20
Brandon
And at the end of it, go, OK, now what do I think is going to happen? So you have to kind of filter it, narrow it down, and over time learn which ones have better performance in certain situations and use those as guidance to develop a forecast.
00:16:40
The Jobs Podcast
the accuracy that you get from a system like that is really that that makes your job better as far as predicting where you know hooks and things when we have severe weather and whatnot you're talking and I've watched you on the news as well as others talk about if you're in this particular area you might want to seek shelter now you can really kind of dial that in to I mean are you talking a few miles a mile how accurate can you typically get on stuff like that
00:16:49
Brandon
Sure.
00:16:53
Brandon
Right.
00:17:08
Brandon
Well, so think of it, um and and I'll back up a little bit, computer modeling is just one part of the whole puzzle.
00:17:14
The Jobs Podcast
Okay.
00:17:14
Brandon
So think of it a forecast funnel. So take a funnel that you put on your car or you the kitchen or whatever.
00:17:23
Brandon
The top of that funnel that is the widest point, that's days out. Let's say it's, you know, somewhere in the six to eight day range. And you may have an idea that says, you know what? Most of the computer models agree we're going to have some cold air arrive during that time frame. Some of them spin up this massive snowstorm, but we don't really know yet. It's too far out.
00:17:45
Brandon
that's an example of something in the long range. And then as you get closer, the funnel narrows because you have a better feel for what's really going on ah on ah in the atmosphere.
00:17:59
Brandon
For instance, the storm that we had earlier in the month that we got about six inches of snow in Springfield, biggest snow in what, three years or something like that.
00:18:05
The Jobs Podcast
Mm-hmm. Yeah, been a while
00:18:10
Brandon
You know, four days out, I am not going to put out snow forecast yet as far as amounts go because I know it is probably going to change between zero days and four days. So once you get down to a day or two, then you typically have a pretty good feel, you know, like today we're forecasting the potential of heavy heavy rain in spots of Southern Missouri for Thursday. Pretty high confidence on that.
00:18:36
Brandon
it really gets tricky when you're talking about a degree or two swing that can make the difference between freezing rain or rain or sleet and freezing rain.
00:18:43
The Jobs Podcast
Mm.
00:18:45
Brandon
I mean that that gets real dicey but it gives us a better feel for what's going to happen. Now when you're talking about severe weather like thunderstorms and tornadoes we can have a general idea several days out on the kind of pattern that is favorable to produce those And that's why the Storm Prediction Center will put an outlook out that says on day three, there's a level two risk over this area. And then as we get closer, they may say, OK, wait, this is now a level four. That's a little more rare. But that comes down to short term
00:19:26
Brandon
very specific details that have to be in place. And so it's the whole funnel idea again. When you're detecting this kind of stuff, as of 2012,
00:19:38
Brandon
we went from a Doppler radar to a dual polarity or dual pole Doppler radar. And among the very many benefits that that gives us is the ability to see debris in the air.
00:19:53
Brandon
So we know when a tornado has developed and touched down versus just being able to say, well, we think there could be.
00:19:54
The Jobs Podcast
Hmm.
00:20:04
Brandon
there still is a tornado warning issued based on rotation, but then we will be able to say, Hey, this is actually occurring and it's causing damage whether or not anybody's there to actually see it happening because we can see it on radar.
00:20:19
The Jobs Podcast
So is that a radar that I would be able to see if I'm watching you on TV or is that more of a special?
00:20:25
Brandon
Yes.
00:20:26
The Jobs Podcast
Okay. All right.
00:20:27
Brandon
Yeah, so if you've ever watched, and by the way, that was an upgrade the National Weather Service did. Oh, gosh, I want to say starting in 2010 or 2011, Springfield, which covers most of Southern Missouri with its radar, that was upgraded in 2012.
00:20:48
Brandon
And it was just before the leap day tornadoes, one of which went down the Branson Strip.
00:20:55
The Jobs Podcast
Yeah.
00:20:56
Brandon
And that was the first real example in the United States of the dual polarity radar actually showing these tornadic signatures. And that happened in the middle of the night those that don't remember. And it developed on the west side of Table Rock Lake and came across Stone County into Branson. And the Weather Service was able to issue warnings because of the debris signature before it hit Branson.
00:21:27
Brandon
So it was kind of a test case in a sense, but were able to go back and look at the data and say, yep, the training that we got on this based on the test they did in the Oklahoma City area over years, it was legitimate.
00:21:43
Brandon
Like, hey, this is really cool. And that was before we had access to it at KY3 and most broadcast stations, but now,
00:21:47
The Jobs Podcast
Hmm.
00:21:51
Brandon
you know, during severe weather coverage, we can bring up this virtual control panel on the screen and start switching between this radar and that radar. And now we're gonna show you the wind and you can see this little rotation in the storm.
00:22:05
Brandon
Hey, now we have a debris signature. So those of you Northeast of this intersection, you know, that's just an example. So we can actually show it on TV.
00:22:13
The Jobs Podcast
Right.
00:22:16
The Jobs Podcast
What is the general, I guess, lead time that you would get with this new radar technology for severe weather? Can you tell, look, this is looking very problematic in about 15 minutes, 10 minutes.
00:22:31
The Jobs Podcast
I know it's not an exact science, but I can only assume it's gotten better over the years with more advanced warning.
00:22:39
Brandon
Well it depends, it depends on the kind of situation that you're dealing with.
00:22:39
The Jobs Podcast
Is there a certain timeframe?
00:22:46
Brandon
Meaning, if you have a setup where you have supercell tornadoes,
00:22:46
The Jobs Podcast
Okay.
00:22:53
Brandon
And these these are the ones that are typically the big ones that you may see on TV from Oklahoma or Kansas. you I mean, nowadays, everybody's got the smartphone and can shoot video.
00:23:05
The Jobs Podcast
Yeah.
00:23:06
Brandon
And if you look at a map during a level four or five risk day, these storm chasers that are out there plotting their location on the map, it looks like a swarm of bees.
00:23:17
Brandon
I mean, it's just crazy.
00:23:19
The Jobs Podcast
Yeah.
00:23:20
Brandon
But on those kinds of days when you're looking at supercell storms, meaning the individual ones that may move at 30 or 40 miles an hour, those are the ones that a lead time is usually much longer than say a line of storms that's moving quickly to the east and you get these small tornadic spin ups along the line.
00:23:45
Brandon
You may have five minutes in some of those cases.
00:23:48
The Jobs Podcast
Okay.
00:23:48
Brandon
It's not always that low.
00:23:50
The Jobs Podcast
Right.
00:23:51
Brandon
But the the the latest lead time, but based on the American Meteorological Society, I just looked at this conference paper, the average is about 18 minutes.
00:24:01
The Jobs Podcast
Oh, wow.
00:24:03
Brandon
And that's pretty stinking good compared to what it was, you know, say back in the nineties, where it may have been.
00:24:05
The Jobs Podcast
Yes, it is.
00:24:10
Brandon
I think the average at that point was five minutes.
00:24:13
The Jobs Podcast
Yeah.
00:24:14
Brandon
One thing that has not changed much is the false alarm ratio.
00:24:21
The Jobs Podcast
Hmm.
00:24:21
Brandon
And so, you know, at the, at the basic level, we are still looking at thunderstorms. for rotation, number one. And you like I said, usually a few days out, we can tell, hey, there's this big up or low coming in. There's gonna be plenty of moisture. It looks like we're gonna have enough instability. Here's where the wind fields line up. So we're gonna warn people in this general vicinity, say Southern Missouri to Western Illinois that there could be some big time severe weather that day. Then when we get to that day, we're waiting for storms to develop.
00:25:01
Brandon
we're still watching number one for rotation within the storms. It's not always as obvious as some big hook echo. It can be, um but it's not always that way.
00:25:12
Brandon
So the first thing we'll watch for is rotation, and most of the warnings are issued based on that rotation. But over the years, only about 25% of those cases actually result in a tornado.
00:25:28
The Jobs Podcast
Hmm. Hmm.
00:25:30
Brandon
And that number hasn't changed a whole lot, even as the technology has advanced because of what we use to trigger those warnings. Now, we can tell you for sure if one has occurred because of the debris signature. And i i you know as well as I do, if I get on TV and say, hey, there's a tornado warning for the potential of a tornado because we see rotation,
00:25:56
Brandon
if I get on and say, hey, there's a tornado occurring and it's chewing up real estate, that's going to get people more motivated than hey, there could be one.
00:26:04
The Jobs Podcast
Yeah.
00:26:06
Brandon
And we have the ability now to differentiate between the two, but the warning is going to be issued based on rotation and it may or may not occur.
00:26:07
The Jobs Podcast
Hmm.
00:26:17
The Jobs Podcast
The radars that you were talking about, the Doppler radar, and then what was the name of the new one?
00:26:21
Brandon
dual polarity Doppler. It's still Doppler.
00:26:24
The Jobs Podcast
OK.
00:26:25
Brandon
The difference is and we say a radar beam, it's a beam that's actually made up of pulses of energy. So we can control the frequency of it.
00:26:36
Brandon
But let's just say as a general rule, it's 300 pulses per second.
00:26:42
The Jobs Podcast
Okay.
00:26:43
Brandon
And when you think about this in your mind, it actually is pretty amazing that we're able to show what we show. But as the radar dish spins, it's emanating 300 pulses per second and then listening for each one of those to come back because it's at the speed of light. This is electromagnetic pulses and each one of those pulses goes out and then bounces off of whatever it hits and a certain portion of that energy comes back to the radar dish.
00:27:19
Brandon
And depending on what it's hitting, that frequency may shift based on the movement of what it's hitting. That's the Doppler effect. And then in the case of this new radar, it will send out alternating horizontal and vertical pulses and listen for each of those and then compare the two.
00:27:40
The Jobs Podcast
Wow.
00:27:41
Brandon
That's all clear as mud, right?
00:27:42
The Jobs Podcast
No, it's fascinating.
00:27:44
Brandon
So think of if you had a pencil in each hand, hold one horizontal and one vertical. That's the difference in the pulses that are being sent out.
00:27:55
Brandon
So in the dual polarity, that's what it means, is it's comparing not only how much of that energy is returned, but the frequency change that occurs and because it's comparing a horizontal and vertical pulse, we can actually know the size and shape of what we're hitting.
00:28:18
Brandon
So nowadays, if we tell you, hey, baseball size hail is likely in this storm in this location, there's going to be baseball size hail falling somewhere under that storm in the vicinity of where we say, almost slam dunk.
00:28:32
The Jobs Podcast
Wow.
00:28:36
Brandon
radar, the equations that they use, the algorithms now are incredibly accurate from what they used to be. And so that combined with the weather balloons that go up, we know based on the temperature profile, the moisture profile, okay, thunderstorms would have the potential to produce the maximum hail of this size. And if radar detects it in the cloud,
00:29:01
Brandon
somebody's going to get that size of hail underneath it most of the time. It's incredible to me that that has evolved to that point. And we're also able to say, hey, we're we're hitting really, if you look at the color table on the radar now and we don't go this deep into it on TV, is it wet snow or dry snow?
00:29:24
The Jobs Podcast
You can tell.
00:29:25
Brandon
ah ah Yeah, it really can.
00:29:25
The Jobs Podcast
I'll be dang.
00:29:26
Brandon
We can tell where the freezing layer is.
00:29:26
The Jobs Podcast
Wow.
00:29:28
Brandon
We can tell whether it's going to be golf ball hail or baseball hail. We can tell how big the raindrops are. Now, we're not going to get on TV and say, hey, you you live in Branson, you're going to get three millimeter sized raindrops.
00:29:43
The Jobs Podcast
Right.
00:29:44
Brandon
Nobody cares, but it can tell us, hey, there's torrential rain right here.
00:29:44
The Jobs Podcast
Yeah.
00:29:48
Brandon
There's more likely to be flooding in this area.
00:29:50
The Jobs Podcast
Hmm.
00:29:51
Brandon
The hail is going to be this big. The wind is going to be this strong. There's a lot that we can tell from radar data that we couldn't tell before at higher resolution, too.
00:30:00
Brandon
So it's more accurate.
00:30:02
The Jobs Podcast
What's the layout of these Doppler radars? And how far do they typically scan? is it laid out in a grid over the United States, or is it just ah up to the States, or how does that work?
00:30:13
Brandon
Well, it's interesting you mentioned that because there's a company trying to come in. are working with the National Weather Service and They've had, I believe it was $100 million investment from a startup hedge fund or something like that. And they are going through and trying to fill the gaps. So essentially, think of a map of the middle of the country, and I'll just name some radars here. Springfield's one of them.
00:30:42
Brandon
Little Rock, Arkansas, Fort Smith, Arkansas, Tulsa, Wichita, Kansas City, St. Louis, and Paducah, Kentucky. Those are the ones right around our vicinity.
00:30:52
The Jobs Podcast
Hmm. Okay.
00:30:56
Brandon
But they can scan roughly 300 miles, but the farther you go away from the radar, the higher the beam is in the air because of the curve of the earth.
00:31:09
Brandon
So in Springfield's case, from the radar, once you get out ah about 60 miles, you're a mile up.
00:31:09
The Jobs Podcast
Okay.
00:31:23
Brandon
It's actually, no, it's about 40 miles that you're a mile in the air now. So in research, the National Weather Service did ah ah about a decade ago now, they looked at five years worth of these tornadoes that we typically get, which are along these big lines of storms.
00:31:41
Brandon
Supercell tornadoes are not nearly as common here as they are to the west of us in Oklahoma and Kansas, in the traditional tornado alley.
00:31:50
The Jobs Podcast
Hmm. Mhm.
00:31:52
Brandon
we can get them here they're just not as common because most of them develop to the west and then they blossom into this ginormous line that blasts through here with high winds and sometimes tornadoes but they're usually weaker they're usually EF zeros to sometimes EF twos EF three and beyond is is more rare but They did some research over five years, and I forget how many tornado cases they looked at, and they went back and said, okay, based on the environment and the radar signature, the distance they were, the locations, all this kind of stuff, they determined that the majority of these tornadoes that develop in lines happen
00:32:37
Brandon
under 5,000 feet. That's where they originate.
00:32:42
The Jobs Podcast
Hmm.
00:32:42
Brandon
And so the basic payoff for that or what we learned from that is that there are some significant gaps in the radar coverage.
00:32:54
Brandon
So best coverage is going to be closer to the radar, but if you look at the distance between Wichita and Springfield or Springfield and Kansas City or Springfield and St. Louis, that beam is high enough that we may be missing some of the lower level stuff once you get out towards, say, Lebanon or Rolla or, you know, Houston, Missouri or West Plains.
00:33:20
The Jobs Podcast
Mm.
00:33:24
Brandon
And so this company is trying to come in and install radars in between the National Weather Service radars. and give the Weather Service access to that data to help detect some of those more dangerous storms that they may be shooting over the top of with the current infrastructure. Those big radars that the Weather Service has, those dishes are 25 feet wide.
00:33:51
Brandon
and they are called S-band. There's different frequencies that they can use, but they have the biggest penetration through multiple lines of storms. Once you get down towards smaller radars that are shorter wavelengths, they're C-band and then X-band, and I know I'm getting into the weeds here,
00:34:13
The Jobs Podcast
It's okay.
00:34:14
Brandon
But the X-band radars are about 10 times the resolution on a screen that you would see from the National Weather Service.
00:34:21
The Jobs Podcast
Hmm.
00:34:24
Brandon
The problem with them is that when you have big lines of storms, then they don't penetrate them as well. So they're basically meant to have shorter ranges, but higher resolution.
00:34:38
Brandon
And they're filling these low level gaps between the National Weather Service radars. So it's going to be a fascinating thing. They've installed, I believe, oh gosh, about 15 of them are in the country so far in, I want to say, eight different states.
00:34:54
The Jobs Podcast
Okay.
00:34:57
Brandon
their next stop, hopefully, will be a couple over northern Arkansas, southern Missouri area later this year.
00:35:07
Brandon
But it would eventually, they're hoping to install 200 across the country, which is an incredible thing.
00:35:11
The Jobs Podcast
Wow.
00:35:15
Brandon
And hopefully that will help. know, we've come a long way, but hopefully that will help in those more iffy situations when, you know, when the National Weather Service issues a tornado warning for, ah you know, way out toward West Plains, they're hitting those storms, you know, two or three miles high. Now, in the grand scheme of things, a big thunderstorm can be, you know, 60,000 feet tall. I mean, we're talking
00:35:44
Brandon
in the biggest cases, somewhere between 10 and 13 miles high. Those are massive. So when you think about hitting those at two or three miles up, okay, you're still getting a good part of the storm. But in terms of tornado potential, most tornadoes happen under that layer.
00:36:06
Brandon
So we're trying to get as close to the ground as we can in order to determine that.
00:36:06
The Jobs Podcast
Okay.
00:36:12
Brandon
Hail is a little bit different because it gets lofted so stinking high in the storm that we can see it a lot higher up than we would be able to see a tornado. If we're seeing a tornado circulation three or four miles into a storm,
00:36:28
Brandon
then it's a pretty deep circulation. That still does not mean that it's going to absolutely produce a tornado. And that's the mystery of the whole thing. Sometimes storms that we could say, oh my gosh, there's got to be something there based on the rotation.
00:36:43
The Jobs Podcast
Yeah.
00:36:45
Brandon
Nope. And then other times, Yeah, we don't think it's doing anything. And then we get a report, you know, oh oh, it is okay.
00:36:55
Brandon
And that's the mystery of it. And that, you know, that what research is still trying to learn, why does some do it and some don't, when based on what we know, we would, we would bet against a tornado versus other times where we would say there's got to be one and there isn't.
00:37:11
Brandon
So
00:37:13
The Jobs Podcast
Before we get back to your career aspect of things, I do have one question that parlays from what we were just talking about satellite imagery, how are satellites factored into you talked about the
00:37:21
Brandon
Okay.
00:37:29
The Jobs Podcast
the height of a storm desert does become a point where I need to go to the space guys and see what they got going on up there.
00:37:29
Brandon
Yeah.
00:37:36
The Jobs Podcast
I mean, you can see obviously hurricanes, we've all seen the huge images where you can see the eye and things.
00:37:41
The Jobs Podcast
But do you utilize satellite imagery very much for your day to day forecasts? Or is it more just? It's good information to have or it's on a much larger scale.
00:37:51
Brandon
Absolutely, every day. The imagery that we typically show on TV and that we use the most are from the GOES satellite.
00:37:53
The Jobs Podcast
Okay.
00:38:02
Brandon
That's an acronym for geostationary, let's see if I can remember this. It's Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite.
00:38:15
Brandon
um They always have to come up with some clever little name for it. Back when I first started, so we have one that's over the Pacific and one that's over the Western Atlantic, and the two combined goes West and goes East, give us a comprehensive view of the United States.
00:38:20
The Jobs Podcast
yeah
00:38:42
Brandon
goes east once we get to, I believe it's May, is moved slightly eastward so that it can catch the western side of Africa during hurricane season. And so these things are about 22,500 miles above the earth, way higher than most other satellites that are in low Earth orbit, such as Starlink or satellites used for DirecTV or Dish TV. Most of those things are just for communication. They're much, much lower toward the Earth. But the GOES satellites, we used to get an image every 30 minutes
00:38:57
The Jobs Podcast
Okay.
00:39:30
Brandon
And that's how we provided the satellite loops, so to speak, of the clouds over the United States. Now, we get images every five minutes.
00:39:40
The Jobs Podcast
Wow.
00:39:40
Brandon
And not only that, but they're down to a kilometer resolution versus 15 kilometers. So literally, ah ah and this is the coolest thing, and I geek out over this stuff.
00:39:54
Brandon
but they can provide rapid scan technology. For instance, during an expected severe weather outbreak, they will set a sector up or in a hurricane where it will take images every 30 seconds. And so you can literally watch thunderstorms develop in real time from space.
00:40:21
The Jobs Podcast
ma'
00:40:21
Brandon
or the eye in a hurricane spin. I mean, it's just fascinating to watch. So, you know, in the broad scheme of things, for instance, this morning when I went in to do a forecast, I know that there's an upper low that was sitting off the California coast and it's kind of oozing eastward. So one of the first things I do is I plot a surface map and I draw my lines and my fronts and things. And then I look at satellite and upper air charts. And I say, OK, based on the weather balloon soundings, this is where the lowest pressure is at a certain level of the atmosphere. Now let's match that up with satellite. Yep, there it is spinning along. There's a water vapor channel that we can look at and says, OK, this is where the jet stream is flowing. We match that with computer models to see if they have the right initialization.
00:41:14
Brandon
If they think the jet stream should be in this area and that matches satellite, OK, that's a good thing. So it's a piece of the puzzle that we multiple tools that we use to create the forecast that you see every day. It's not just one thing or the other. When it comes to radar, it's not predicting necessarily as much as it is detecting.
00:41:36
Brandon
And certainly, we can use that data to say, OK, well, the line of storms has moved this far in this much time. So we can estimate when it will be down the road in a half hour, whatever it is. But radar is much more for you for you know right now and over the next hour or two.
00:41:58
The Jobs Podcast
Okay.
00:41:59
Brandon
where a satellite might be a little longer than that, and then computer modeling can be from later today to a week down the road.
00:42:10
The Jobs Podcast
So in your line of work, I mean, everybody has an app on their phone and they can see, OK, well, it may rain today or something.
00:42:14
Brandon
Oh, yeah.
00:42:16
The Jobs Podcast
But there's so much data out there to be more precise and accurate and also following the trends and the ebb and flow of weather. That's where your experience, your education, your expertise kind of plays in to present the big picture to the viewers.
00:42:32
Brandon
Yeah.
00:42:32
The Jobs Podcast
OK.
00:42:33
Brandon
I think most smartphones now, and I don't know who sits at the table across from Apple or Samsung, but most of those phones come with a pre-installed weather app.
00:42:46
The Jobs Podcast
Yes.
00:42:47
Brandon
I think a lot of it is the Weather Channel, some of it's AccuWeather. I'm not sure what all the ones are out there. Most of those apps, and even the KY3 weather app to an extent,
00:43:01
Brandon
is the data is populated, the forecast is populated by that grid that I mentioned and the forecast from different models. We will go in and edit that forecast to match our forecast on the air.
00:43:23
Brandon
So for those around the Springfield area, which, you know, we draw a zone that kind of includes down in Ozark and down to Highlandville. There's a separate zone for Branson and the, you know, the Table Rock Lake area.
00:43:40
Brandon
There's another zone that includes Harrison. you We can kind of determine that. And then if need be, then we'll go in and edit that forecast to match what we think is going to happen versus what the model thinks.
00:43:52
Brandon
Now, when you're down to the hourly forecast, like at 1 o'clock, it's going to be this many degrees, golly, you could chase that all day.
00:43:52
The Jobs Podcast
Oh.
00:44:01
The Jobs Podcast
Sure.
00:44:01
Brandon
So we don't really a change that much.
00:44:02
The Jobs Podcast
Sure.
00:44:04
Brandon
when it comes to, hey, by, let's say what, today's Tuesday. Let's say there's a winter storm coming in. The app will automatically fill in based on the weather models. Hey, you're going to get this many inches of snow on Friday. Hold Let's not exert panic. I can tell you, Windows now If you've ever watched in Windows 10 and up down in your system tray, you'll see sometimes some little blurb about the weather, you know, crashing temps or snow expected Tuesday or whatever it is.
00:44:38
The Jobs Podcast
Right.
00:44:40
Brandon
I remember going back before this last storm. Windows popped up one morning while I was doing my forecast that said six inches of snow expected Sunday. I was like, according to who?
00:44:54
Brandon
And I remember telling the weather service, I like, well, Microsoft Windows is really helping with this whole panic thing about the snow on Sunday.
00:45:02
The Jobs Podcast
Right.
00:45:02
Brandon
So all that data is out there and various programs and weather apps can go grab that to give people at least a general idea. But, you know, as far as our app, we try to make it match what we think is going to happen.
00:45:16
Brandon
So it's a mixture of our forecast and a computer's forecast, depending on what timeframe we're talking about.
00:45:25
The Jobs Podcast
You told me at the beginning of the show that you get up about 2.30 in the morning I think was when your alarm goes off and you walk me through
00:45:31
Brandon
Yep.
Role of Social Media in Weather Broadcasting
00:45:35
The Jobs Podcast
Because I'm sure people are curious what your morning is like. We all get up, we have our coffee or whatever, and we we drive to work. I get up at four and go to work. What's the morning like for a meteorologist on television? When you walk into the office, you say hi to the security guy, or how's that kind of play out?
00:45:53
Brandon
Uh, well, I, I typically, you know, when I get up at two 30, I shower the night before. So I, you know, do the whole brush your teeth shape thing. Don't have to worry about hair in my case.
00:46:05
Brandon
so it's a pretty quick prep.
00:46:08
Brandon
yeah, I usually leave the house right about three, uh, get to work about three 15. And so the show on air starts at five o'clock.
00:46:19
Brandon
So in the time between when I get there and the show starts, obviously I got to make the forecast. So I go through all of the analysis and looking at models and satellite and all that sort of stuff.
00:46:32
The Jobs Podcast
I'm right there with you.
00:46:34
Brandon
And I have a sheet that's, you know, I go through and I label the days and go through and basically fill it out as I go. And then I usually wrap up with that about four o'clock.
00:46:48
Brandon
And listen, Ron Hurst, when he comes in, he spends in his process a couple of hours looking at it.
00:46:55
The Jobs Podcast
Hmm.
00:46:57
Brandon
The difference is, you meteorologist will have kind of a different what's the word I'm looking for, not rigmarole, routine that they go through and things that they've learned over the years that they want to look at and whatnot.
00:47:07
The Jobs Podcast
Yeah, sure.
00:47:13
Brandon
And his is pretty extensive, but at the same time, when I go, there's not another soul in that studio. So I've got the quiet and I can concentrate on it.
00:47:24
Brandon
Whereas when Ron comes in, the whole building's full of people and you got people coming in asking him questions and the phones ring in it. So it's a little more
00:47:31
The Jobs Podcast
Yeah.
00:47:34
Brandon
I finished the forecast at about four. Then I go into the newsroom and I talk to the producers for the morning. Now our morning show is four hours now.
00:47:44
Brandon
When I started, by the way, on the morning, which was in 2000, it was 30 minutes.
00:47:51
The Jobs Podcast
Wow.
00:47:51
Brandon
I sort of long for those days sometimes.
00:47:53
The Jobs Podcast
Sure.
00:47:56
Brandon
what I could roll in at 5.30 in the morning and then be done with the show at 7 a.m.
00:48:01
The Jobs Podcast
Sure.
00:48:03
Brandon
But what I tend to do is I go in and I brief the producers, there's usually three of them, and I tell them, hey, here's what I'm looking at.
00:48:14
Brandon
Because sometimes the show will at some level revolve around what the weather's doing.
00:48:19
Brandon
And so, you know, several days out, I don't want them to write something in the script for the anchors that says, well, Brandon, we're really looking at a good warm up when in reality, I'm saying to know, guys, that there's an Arctic front coming.
00:48:33
The Jobs Podcast
Yeah.
00:48:39
Brandon
i I do that enough on my own. But that way, yeah yeah everybody, because I'm on the same page, they know what the weather is going to do.
00:48:41
The Jobs Podcast
Yeah.
00:48:46
Brandon
And so they'll say, OK, here's what I've got written.
00:48:47
The Jobs Podcast
Sure.
00:48:51
Brandon
That's great. And certainly, there's some ad lib for the anchors in there, too. My part is all ad lib. So I briefed them. I come back in.
00:49:02
Brandon
I open the software and start typing in numbers. There's a ah kind of a centralized hub essentially where I type in my numbers, I choose the icons, I type in the wording for the weather app.
00:49:17
Brandon
And then our weather graphics go and grab that information, and it auto updates. That way, I don't have to go in and type a number six different times.
00:49:28
The Jobs Podcast
Hmm.
00:49:28
Brandon
It's kind of helpful. So anyway, I get done with that around 4.30.
00:49:30
The Jobs Podcast
Yeah.
00:49:33
Brandon
I go put my face on, which for me is just some powder to take the shine off. I mean, this is reason number 237.
00:49:42
Brandon
I'm glad I'm not a woman.
00:49:43
The Jobs Podcast
Right.
00:49:44
Brandon
cause it's so much easier.
00:49:45
The Jobs Podcast
Hmm.
00:49:46
Brandon
Uh, but then I go in and you know, during the today show when you see Al Roker give his little weather and say, here's what's happening in your neck of the woods. And then I pop on that's recorded because we're still in the middle of our show.
00:49:58
The Jobs Podcast
Okay.
00:50:02
Brandon
We're still on hours two and three.
00:50:02
The Jobs Podcast
Yeah.
00:50:04
Brandon
uh, or three and four rather while the Today Show is playing. So those little 30 second, uh, weathers are recorded prior to us beginning our show. So between four 30 and about four 40, I record, uh, golly, I forget the number.
00:50:26
Brandon
a lot of different one minute and 30 second forecast that will air on Good Morning America and The Today Show, KY-324-7, Weather Nation, which is, that's the combo there, b Branson Visitor TV.
00:50:42
Brandon
When I get all that done, come back to the desk and I record radio weather forecasts.
00:50:49
Brandon
And I've got four different station groups that I record those for. And I believe there is a total of about 20 different cuts that I will do. And I wrap that up at about 455.
00:51:08
Brandon
And then it's go time. So the show is four hours. I do that. And in the middle of my hits during that, I'm recording a forecast that goes out to the weather app. I'm recording a short little video that I upload to the website, snapping graphics for social media, all that sort of stuff. I mean, back in the day, it was TV and that's it. And now we've got the internet, the social media,
00:51:10
The Jobs Podcast
Wow.
00:51:36
Brandon
And believe it or not, we call it the whale. But as a as a person who has a Facebook page, so to speak, I can go in there and look at the analytics or the the, you know, I can see what time most people log on and starting at about six a.m.
00:51:57
Brandon
when people get up, one of the first things they do is they look at their phone and they open Facebook.
00:52:01
The Jobs Podcast
Yeah, right.
00:52:03
Brandon
I mean, to me, I'm like, how sad is that?
00:52:05
The Jobs Podcast
Yeah.
00:52:06
Brandon
So we want there to be something there that pulls them back to either our weather app or TV. And so, you know, some little blurb about, hey, it's going to be really nice today.
00:52:18
Brandon
That doesn't get many people to tune in. But hey, there could be snow. Well, that that gets their attention ah or severe weather.
00:52:24
The Jobs Podcast
Sure.
00:52:25
Brandon
And that, you know, that's just the nature of it. When the weather is looking bad, more people are interested in it. And I'm having my most fun.
00:52:35
The Jobs Podcast
Well, we've seen the bloopers on TV of usually a weather person using the green screen where they're kind of standing off to the side. And do I have it right that you're pointing at a screen, but you're looking at a monitor that's out of view and you can kind of see is that how that typically goes?
00:52:50
Brandon
Yes.
00:52:52
The Jobs Podcast
Is that hard to get to to use? I mean, is that to get your groove on that? Is that pretty difficult?
00:52:59
Brandon
You know, it's been so long. I don't remember.
00:53:01
The Jobs Podcast
Yeah, you've been doing it for a while.
00:53:03
Brandon
Now it's so second nature.
00:53:05
The Jobs Podcast
Yeah.
00:53:06
Brandon
You know, I step up there and and so you're right there's monitors on both sides of the screen that are off view of the camera and So that and when I look at the camera, there's a monitor there.
00:53:08
The Jobs Podcast
Okay.
00:53:18
Brandon
So As long as those are on I'm good. I can pretty easily point at something or draw lines or whatever it is without really thinking too much about it.
00:53:31
Brandon
You can always tell when somebody is a little bit green, no pun intended, um it's not natural.
00:53:39
The Jobs Podcast
Yeah.
00:53:39
Brandon
The goal is to make it look like I'm actually looking at something behind me. It doesn't always work that well. That's kind of how we do it and there are ways now that we can sort of interact with the imaginary screen behind us based on the camera signal going into the computer so that our finger becomes a mouse pointer and the clicker that we hold is like the mouse.
00:54:06
Brandon
And so that's how we can, during severe weather coverage, hit little buttons that appear on the screen. They're not really there, but it allows us to control certain functions of the computer without ever walking off the wall.
00:54:19
The Jobs Podcast
Okay. What type of person, you mentioned a minute ago that you ad lib, you know, your broadcast
Skills and Success in Broadcasting
00:54:27
The Jobs Podcast
essentially. So someone that does your line of work is obviously, I would assume that they're mostly an extroverted person or they can really fake it well to be upbeat and bubbly and, you know, because nobody wants to just sit there and listen to a monitor weather report.
00:54:42
Brandon
Sure.
00:54:43
The Jobs Podcast
So yeah yeah are most of the folks that do your line of work or that are in broadcasting like that, are they naturally extroverts?
00:54:52
Brandon
To an extent, I think there's a certain number of people that want to do it, but it's not real natural for them.
00:54:53
The Jobs Podcast
Yeah.
00:55:00
Brandon
The ones that are best at it, number one experience teaches you a lot, and that's in any business or any career.
00:55:05
The Jobs Podcast
Sure, sure.
00:55:08
Brandon
But the more you do it, the better you get at it, hopefully.
00:55:11
The Jobs Podcast
Yeah.
00:55:11
Brandon
But, you know, here's the thing about me. I can get up there in front of a camera and just yak my head off. I tell people all the time, you know, my wife works in health care as an executive and she deals with a lot of stuff.
00:55:26
Brandon
You know, her brain hurts and she she's got a lot of people under her that report to her. She works hard versus me. I point and talk for a living. ah So, you know, I really enjoy what I do, but it's not nearly as hard as what she does.
00:55:41
Brandon
But, you know, I can talk, I can blab about the weather, but it's something I love.
00:55:41
The Jobs Podcast
Yeah.
00:55:46
Brandon
And so when I go to work and I do the forecast, I essentially have the background for telling a story.
00:55:47
The Jobs Podcast
Right.
00:55:55
Brandon
And that's all I'm doing. So I get on front of the camera and I I i can say, hey, you here's how cold it is right now. It's going to warm up later today. I'm just telling people a story about what the weather is expected to do.
00:56:07
Brandon
And to me, it's relatively easy. It's a little harder when you're talking about severe weather because it's all fly by the seat of your pants as it unfolds.
00:56:17
The Jobs Podcast
Yeah.
00:56:19
Brandon
But that too is essentially using the data at your fingertips to tell a story and hopefully keep people in in or out of danger. But if I were given the choice between going to, for instance, a social event with a bunch of people I don't know, or sitting on the couch and watching a movie, I'll pick the couch every time.
00:56:44
Brandon
So, it's not that I can't interact with people and, you know, shake hands. And as the old saying goes, shake hands and kiss babies or whatever that is.
00:56:53
The Jobs Podcast
Right. Yeah. Mingling. Yeah.
00:56:56
Brandon
Yeah. I mean, I can do it, but it's not, you know, some people are much more comfortable with that end of it than others. And I'm probably one that's less comfortable.
00:57:07
Brandon
put me in a studio with a camera, great. Put me in a big crowd of people I don't know, I'm not nearly as comfortable. I can get up and do public speaking, but it's probably not something that I would pick most of the time.
00:57:23
The Jobs Podcast
If someone came to you, let's say you have a high school student, and I'm thinking about my oldest son that I mentioned earlier, it's just been a weather fanatic since he was, you know, barely able to walk.
00:57:34
The Jobs Podcast
If someone came to you and said, I want to follow in your footsteps, I want to get into weather. What Two or three key pieces of advice would you give to them that maybe is something that you look back and go, if I could do that over, I would do that differently because of X, Y, and Z.
00:57:53
Brandon
Well, I think, you know, the business of broadcasting in general has changed a lot just in the last 10 years, in the sense that, number one, there is so much competition just to get people's attention.
00:58:11
The Jobs Podcast
Yeah.
00:58:12
Brandon
The days of people sitting in front of the TV, watching the newscast, they're not gone.
00:58:18
Brandon
There are just fewer people that do it. They'll still watch. And in our little corner of the country here, or not really corner, but you know what I mean,
00:58:27
The Jobs Podcast
Yeah.
00:58:28
Brandon
We have not had as much of a change as some of the major cities and things are, but but the truth is we compete for people's attention and we try to hit them at every avenue we can with information, whether that's social media or the apps on their phone and certainly broadcast and the web and so on to get them the information that they want.
00:58:56
Brandon
The business now, if you watch KY3, there are a lot of our reporters who are in their 20s. It may be their first job, it may be their second. But, you know, whereas for instance, a reporter may have started at a station like Joplin or Columbia and then stepped up to KY3, there are some places like in St. Louis and Kansas City that are hiring straight out of college now.
00:59:25
The Jobs Podcast
Wow.
00:59:26
Brandon
it's very, very different than it used to be, which makes it that much more difficult for a smaller station to recruit because why would somebody want to start in Springfield if they could start in St.
00:59:36
Brandon
Louis? So that's that element to it.
00:59:37
The Jobs Podcast
Sure.
00:59:40
Brandon
But as far as weather's concerned, there was a timeframe where you had to have a degree in meteorology if you wanted a job because there were a lot of them. And if an employer could pick from someone who had a degree or not, they're probably gonna lean toward the degree unless the person without it was better on camera. So for the very basic level,
01:00:07
Brandon
better off to have a meteorology degree or atmospheric sciences or something like that, because when it comes down to it, you gotta know what you're doing or what you're talking about when it comes to weather, because that's kind of your job.
01:00:18
Brandon
On the other hand, television is entertainment at some level. I mean, news is a little bit different, but nine times out of 10, the information I'm giving people is a matter of convenience.
01:00:25
The Jobs Podcast
Mhm. Yeah.
01:00:35
Brandon
How cold is it going to be? How warm is it going to be? Do I need my big coat? Is it going to rain on my weekend versus, hey, a tornado's headed towards you? That becomes an issue of safety and people tune in and they have a level of trust. But the comment I get more often than not when I'm out in public is, hey, I really like watching you in the morning. You and Chad are funny.
01:00:59
The Jobs Podcast
Yeah.
01:01:00
Brandon
So people watch people because they can relate to them or they find them humorous or they like the the jokes I throw in when I'm talking to my co-anchors or they like the way I explain the weather or whatever it is. So there is a very good balance that I think has to be achieved to be successful in it between being relatable to people and being comfortable on camera and knowing the science of weather so that you can create at least a good level of accuracy on the day-to-day forecast. Because if people can't trust what I tell them as far as the forecast is concerned, if I'm consistently missing it big, they're going to turn to a different place pretty quick.
01:01:51
The Jobs Podcast
Right.
01:01:52
Brandon
But if I'm really accurate and have the personality of a bump on a log, they're not gonna watch that either. So you gotta to have have a balance between the two so that your forecast is at least accurate enough on a day-to-day basis that we do pretty good, that they'll keep watching.
01:02:09
Brandon
And most people know that it's not exact science. And you I say 58 today and it gets to 56, I'll be upset about it. But most people won't really know the difference.
01:02:16
The Jobs Podcast
Yeah. Sure.
01:02:19
Brandon
if I say it's going to be sunny and end ends up raining on them, which has happened. they're not going to like that too much, but they understand, Hey, things change. was a pop-up storm, there was a low chance, but I got under it, that type of thing. So I think there is an avenue certainly there for study. Math and science is the big thing you're going to go get a degree, but there's also got to be a way that whether it be through public speaking or speech and debate and that type of thing, where you're comfortable in front of people,
01:02:51
Brandon
to do public speaking and you be in front of the camera in front of people, because if you don't have that, you're not going to succeed in television.
01:02:58
The Jobs Podcast
Yeah. What type of math do you typically use when you're doing the meteorology side of your job?
01:03:05
Brandon
You know what? In the day-to-day operation, none.
01:03:09
The Jobs Podcast
Hmm.
01:03:09
Brandon
It's all computer driven because there's so much of it.
01:03:13
The Jobs Podcast
Yeah.
01:03:14
Brandon
I mean, the the the atmosphere is a fluid, and the laws of physics apply. So think about if the example I use is if you're in a canoe and you push off into a stream and you put your paddle in the water, a computer is trying to figure out how fast the stream is flowing and where your canoe is going to go and where every little eddy in the water is going to go based on how you move your paddle. That's a very loose analogy.
01:03:48
Brandon
but think of that over the entire globe. And that's essentially what we're trying to figure out. So, you know, in terms of whether it is so complicated and we're trying to tell the future.
01:04:03
Brandon
So,
01:04:04
The Jobs Podcast
Well, the math, you may not be using the math day to day, but it would help you understand what is going on with this.
01:04:07
Brandon
mm-hmm.
01:04:10
Brandon
Yes.
01:04:11
The Jobs Podcast
Okay.
01:04:12
Brandon
you get a degree in in in meteorology or atmospheric science, the coursework is going to involve trigonometry, algebra, certainly differential equations.
01:04:27
Brandon
I mean, it makes your head hurt.
01:04:28
The Jobs Podcast
Yeah.
01:04:30
Brandon
It helps you understand, what are models looking at? What do I know about how the atmosphere behaves? And that's what the computers are using to forecast what the atmosphere may look at or look like in one day, two days, whatever it is.
01:04:48
Brandon
And it helps to know the background of that, but there's no way that you could possibly keep up with it doing it by hand. So it's it's a background thing, but you do it to get the degree.
01:05:00
The Jobs Podcast
Yeah The Yeah
01:05:01
Brandon
And then once you get into forecasting itself, that it's just not something you do on a day-to-day thing. It's kind of like you have to trudge through the mud to get to the end of it, but it's just part of the deal.
01:05:15
The Jobs Podcast
The education that you talked about, there was the correspondence course, which I'm assuming is online now through, was it Mississippi University or University of Mississippi State?
01:05:23
Brandon
Mississippi State.
01:05:25
The Jobs Podcast
Are there colleges or universities, aside from the one in Mississippi you just mentioned, that if you're wanting to get a meteorological or what did you call atmospheric science, I think was the other one that you mentioned, are there certain schools, like I'm thinking of OU or somebody over in Tornado Alley, is is that where folks typically go for that?
01:05:37
Brandon
Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yep.
01:05:45
Brandon
A lot of them do. And, oh, you. They have, so Oklahoma City slash Norman is where the National Weather Service headquarters, well, not headquarters, but the National Weather Center is what they call it.
01:06:02
Brandon
The Storm Prediction Center, so tornado watches, severe thunderstorm watches, they monitor severe weather potential around the clock. They're located in that building.
01:06:12
The Jobs Podcast
Hmm. Hmm.
01:06:14
Brandon
The Weather Prediction Center, when they're talking about heavy rain, heavy snow, icing, that type of thing, that's in that building. National Center for Atmospheric Research, I believe, has part of their operation there. National Severe Storms Lab, so we're talking research into severe weather, tornadoes, there in that building.
01:06:34
The Jobs Podcast
Good grief.
01:06:35
Brandon
And I think OU itself is in that building now. And it's a really nice facility. I've never been to it. But all that stuff's headquartered down there. The National Radar Testbed, where they're and have been testing for 20 years, something called Phased Array Radar.
01:06:51
Brandon
All that stuff is down there and they do chasing. So it's a good school, a good program, but it's not the only program.
01:06:57
The Jobs Podcast
Right.
01:06:57
Brandon
Mizzou has a program.
01:06:59
The Jobs Podcast
Oh.
01:07:00
Brandon
up in Columbia and a very good one.
01:07:01
The Jobs Podcast
OK.
01:07:02
Brandon
In fact, they have their own TV station. They have their own radar and it's a nice studio. Abby Dyer, you may remember her, she went there.
01:07:14
The Jobs Podcast
Yeah.
01:07:17
Brandon
Oh, golly, I'm trying to think of who else went there that we had working here. I think it was Leah Hill. She's now in St. Louis. But a lot of of good graduates have come from there. So there are a lot of schools around, but those are the two closest ones I can think of.
01:07:33
The Jobs Podcast
What types of soft skills do you see the people that are successful in your line of work? I know we talked about the extrovert and the introvert kind of a thing, but are there any soft skills, those intangibles that some people have where you just look at them and think they're going to go far, they've got something, they've got it.
01:07:53
Brandon
You know, there's a lot to be said for just the way you handle yourself with other people, interpersonal skills.
01:08:00
The Jobs Podcast
Okay.
01:08:01
Brandon
Because best situation you can be in is when you have a good relationship with your coworkers. Because really in any, well, I won't say in any field, but especially in television,
01:08:16
Brandon
if you're on the front of the camera, there's a whole lot of people you're working with to make that happen. So those relationships are important.
01:08:23
The Jobs Podcast
Yeah.
01:08:26
Brandon
And I think in almost any field nowadays, but the more understanding you have of technology, especially when it comes to computers and smartphones and all that kind of stuff, the better off you're gonna be.
01:08:35
The Jobs Podcast
Yeah.
01:08:41
Brandon
I know enough to be dangerous. mean, that's ah cliche saying, but it really is true. Years ago, before we had switched to Windows-based computer systems, we had a a ah Linux or Linux, or however you pronounce it, based system, which is all command code. I fished around in the software trying to create some code that would do certain things. and don't remember the specifics of it,
01:09:11
Brandon
But I bricked the machine. It wouldn't boot.
01:09:14
The Jobs Podcast
Shut down the weather.
01:09:16
Brandon
Yeah, it wouldn't boot. And so I had to call customer support. And we had this guy named Glenn Villard. He was up in Boston. And so he had that, you know, he parked his car and they went into his office and he was so fun and he retired years ago.
01:09:24
The Jobs Podcast
Mm hmm.
01:09:29
Brandon
But here's the kind of guy he was. We would have to call when there was an upgrade available for the software. Hey Glenn, I'm ready for the upgrade. Eh, you sure you want to do that? So I had to call him and say, Glenn, the, the computer won't boot. There's this long silence and he was really good, but he couldn't figure it out. He had to get somebody higher than him and they, they worked at it for awhile and finally got it fixed. And he said, Brandon, back away from the Dell.
01:10:06
Brandon
So there's enough that you everything's IT now.
01:10:11
Brandon
you know One computer's got to talk the next. And if you can help troubleshoot that kind of stuff, it can really be helpful. But that type of thing, you I mean, typing. One of the things that I feel like has kind of gone by the wayside is that so many young people especially are so tied to their phones. I got a request from a student a few years ago that wanted to do a job shadow. He emailed me from his phone and I knew it was from his phone because his entire request
01:10:17
The Jobs Podcast
yeah
01:10:47
Brandon
was one giant run-on sentence with no punctuation.
01:10:53
The Jobs Podcast
Oh, I've gotten those.
01:10:54
Brandon
And I'm like, dude, and I was just blunt with him and I said, look, you're making a request to a business professional and you're doing it with zero grammar and punctuation, that's not gonna fly.
01:10:55
The Jobs Podcast
It's brutal.
01:11:09
The Jobs Podcast
Right.
01:11:10
Brandon
You're gonna have to know how to communicate properly and this isn't it.
01:11:15
The Jobs Podcast
Yeah.
01:11:16
Brandon
you know, and, and that's not the teacher's fault that by any means. but you know, that's changed. And so, you know, knowing how to communicate, how to write a letter still, and you may do it over email, but it's the same general idea.
01:11:27
The Jobs Podcast
Yeah.
01:11:31
Brandon
you know, those kinds of things can get lost. And I think that's important for any field really.
01:11:37
The Jobs Podcast
Sure.
Broadcasting Career and Salary Discussion
01:11:39
The Jobs Podcast
the The question of pay, people always like to wonder, what does the job pay?
01:11:43
Brandon
Oh yeah.
01:11:44
The Jobs Podcast
And I know that you're dealing with a couple of different careers that are merged into one as far as being on television, but also doing meteorology. So what types of pay if someone is just graduating from MSU and Columbia or from OU and they want to get a job, let's say at a television station or they want to get a job or the National Weather Service or whatever,
01:12:06
The Jobs Podcast
All right. Do you have any idea what those jobs typically start out at ballpark?
01:12:12
Brandon
Well I can tell you what our company so Grey Television owns KY3 and television stations all over the country from Alaska to Hawaii.
01:12:17
The Jobs Podcast
Okay.
01:12:24
The Jobs Podcast
Wow.
01:12:24
Brandon
I think they are the number three group now and they have acquired, you know, it's becoming a lot of big fish in a pond now versus the smaller companies now.
01:12:37
Brandon
But they, I believe two years ago, made their starting wage 18 bucks an hour.
01:12:38
The Jobs Podcast
Mm hmm.
01:12:48
The Jobs Podcast
Okay.
01:12:48
Brandon
So when you multiply that out, that comes out to a little over 37,000.
01:12:52
The Jobs Podcast
Okay.
01:12:53
Brandon
Now in today's world, If you're single, that's fantastic.
01:12:57
The Jobs Podcast
Sure.
01:12:57
Brandon
You're not going to raise a family on that.
01:12:59
The Jobs Podcast
No.
01:13:01
Brandon
So that said, it's a highly... How do I say? It's a different field than it used to be.
01:13:10
Brandon
It is possible to move up, but you have to be good at what you do.
01:13:14
The Jobs Podcast
Hmm.
01:13:15
Brandon
You can't just be average. And that's very subjective, of course. But you have to find a way to stand out. And probably, in my opinion, excellence is the best way to do that. You have to be diverse in your skill set. The more you know how to do. So you can't just come in as a reporter and say, hey, that's great. I'm going to get a job and go far and make a lot of money. Well, probably not.
01:13:49
Brandon
Can you edit? Can you shoot? can Because that's almost a ah no-brainer now. It's a one-man band type of thing because technology is so good now that we used to have a satellite truck to do a live shot. Now we've got to have a backpack with a cell signal.
01:14:04
The Jobs Podcast
Yeah.
01:14:05
Brandon
cell phone shoot 4K video. It's just not as difficult as it used to be to do that sort of stuff, but the trade-off is you gotta set up your story, you gotta shoot it, you gotta edit it, you gotta write it. And then you creativity, coming up with story ideas. When it comes to weather, again, you've gotta have a very strong on-camera presence And it helps if you're sexy.
01:14:33
Brandon
I don't know how I got into the business. yeah I make that joke.
01:14:37
Brandon
But I think I'm grandfathered in.
01:14:39
The Jobs Podcast
Yeah. Yeah. I got a face for radio. That's why I'm doing a podcast. So, you know.
01:14:42
Brandon
Yeah, I've actually sat on the air. I said, one of these days, they're going to take me out to pasture and shoot me. I don't think I said shoot me, but you the old joke.
01:14:49
The Jobs Podcast
Right. Yeah.
01:14:51
Brandon
But the better you are at your craft, the farther you're going to be able to go.
01:14:55
The Jobs Podcast
Sure.
01:14:55
Brandon
And in my case, when I first started, people in general don't like change. And I remember getting, of course it wasn't email yet, but I remember a letter that came in that said, I was the worst excuse for a weatherman KY3 had ever had.
01:15:15
The Jobs Podcast
My goodness.
01:15:16
Brandon
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And of course that hurt my feelings.
01:15:20
The Jobs Podcast
Right.
01:15:20
Brandon
But people that have been in the business for a while said, ah, don't worry about it. You're going to get that kind of stuff for a while.
01:15:28
The Jobs Podcast
Yeah.
01:15:28
Brandon
And now I'm the one telling people that are starting in the business when they get nasty emails or whatever. And it's worse for women. But I say, hey, look, don't worry about it.
01:15:40
Brandon
They're sitting behind a computer. They have an opinion. But so does everybody. And, you know, the people that are most vocal about it, like I would have never thought about emailing somebody on TV and saying, hey, I don't like your suit.
01:15:46
The Jobs Podcast
Yeah.
01:15:55
The Jobs Podcast
Yeah.
01:15:56
Brandon
Well, so what if you don't like my suit? You know, go do something on your own.
01:15:58
The Jobs Podcast
Yeah.
01:16:02
Brandon
But I think that there's there's probably something There's probably something to be said for having a bit of thick skin when it comes to television because one way or another, you're going to tick people off.
01:16:16
The Jobs Podcast
Yeah.
01:16:16
Brandon
They're not going to like something you say or something you wear or whatever it may be. My thing now for weather people is the conspiracy about chemtrails and geoengineering.
01:16:29
The Jobs Podcast
Oh, oh my goodness.
01:16:30
Brandon
That could be a whole separate podcast.
01:16:33
The Jobs Podcast
Yeah, I could.
01:16:34
Brandon
But that's become more of a thing lately. and Several weeks ago, I had somebody that their email said they had a question when really it wasn't that. It was several paragraphs of accusatory language that basically said I had a non-disclosure agreement with the government.
01:16:53
Brandon
and that I should come clean for the sake of my eternity and tell the truth.
01:16:58
The Jobs Podcast
Man.
01:17:00
The Jobs Podcast
Good grief.
01:17:01
Brandon
I replied firmly and kindly, I think, but know the the bottom line is people will read something online and you can't convince them otherwise.
01:17:14
The Jobs Podcast
Yeah.
01:17:14
Brandon
So I got off a little tangent there, but that's,
01:17:17
The Jobs Podcast
Oh.
01:17:18
Brandon
The business as a whole, the more experience you have, the better it's going to be for you. I gave you the starting salary.
01:17:28
Brandon
Once you get up to network level, if you ever get that far, very few people do. When it comes to network anchors, they're in the millions.
01:17:37
The Jobs Podcast
Right.
01:17:37
Brandon
I have no idea about correspondence and reporters. I just don't know. Um, back when I started the average for somebody in my field in my general city size was about 45,000. But that did not take into account, you know, years of experience. the company you work for makes a difference. I can tell you that as a general rule, most of the folks,
01:18:11
Brandon
In my peer group, you know, we have a Facebook page for the meteorologist just in my company. And the general sentiment is we are being asked to do more with less. And I think that may be just across the board nowadays.
01:18:28
The Jobs Podcast
Yeah, it is.
01:18:30
Brandon
And we want to pay you less because you know, everything's more expensive. And that's the case for every business, every person.
01:18:36
The Jobs Podcast
Yeah.
01:18:40
Brandon
And we all want to save as much as we can. And and so the bottom line comes down to how can you make yourself more marketable and more valuable to your company?
01:18:52
Brandon
and however you can do that, the more likely you are to command a good salary. in television land, you know, people tend to like you, ah the more feedback that you get. And in our, you know, television stations will do research. They'll have consultants come in and or research firms that will ask viewers what they like, what they don't like, You know, that can go a long way too, but I that that goes off.
01:19:21
Brandon
I've been here 28 years now, almost 29. And so now it will be rare to come across somebody that hasn't at least heard of me.
01:19:30
The Jobs Podcast
Mm-hmm.
01:19:30
Brandon
That can be good and bad.
01:19:31
The Jobs Podcast
Right?
01:19:32
The Jobs Podcast
Yeah.
01:19:34
Brandon
But I'm very thankful to do what I do. I'll tell you when I started in 1996, weekend weather and doing promotions within the building three days a week, my salary was $19,500.
01:19:46
The Jobs Podcast
Yeah.
01:19:48
Brandon
When I got that offer, I was like, well, I don't know if that's good or not, but it's a job in the field.
01:19:54
Brandon
Okay, sure. I could have gone down the street and worked at a convenience store and made more than that.
01:20:01
The Jobs Podcast
Yeah, but you love what you do.
01:20:01
Brandon
But exactly, and the earning potential was much higher in my business.
01:20:02
The Jobs Podcast
How much is that worth? Yeah. Yes. Right.
01:20:09
Brandon
And now, you being in here 29 years, there's no way I could duplicate the living I make now and in in another field and enjoy what I do.
01:20:19
Brandon
I mean, like I said, I get paid to point and talk, and I have a ah ah great time doing it. Most mornings when that alarm goes off at 2.30, I can't say I jump out of bed, but I'm excited to go to work.
01:20:32
The Jobs Podcast
Yeah.
01:20:34
Brandon
I like who I work with. And there's a lot to be said for that. You can make a lot of money in some jobs, but if you hate going to it every you're not going to be happy.
01:20:43
The Jobs Podcast
When you, I just thought of a question. When you go on vacation, do you go to a place that I want to go to the most boring weather place?
Love for National Parks
01:20:52
The Jobs Podcast
I don't want, I go to Arizona where it's just hot all the time and I don't, you know, or do you go somewhere like you go over to Texas or somewhere in tornado Ali and just, you know, live it up.
01:21:03
Brandon
I've never made a vacation out of weather.
01:21:06
The Jobs Podcast
Okay.
01:21:08
Brandon
I have chased a little bit around here, but I've never made a drive specifically to do it.
01:21:14
The Jobs Podcast
Hmm.
01:21:15
Brandon
Most times is around here, if it's bad enough to chase, it's bad enough for me to be at work.
01:21:20
The Jobs Podcast
Right.
01:21:21
The Jobs Podcast
Yeah.
01:21:21
Brandon
I just don't get that opportunity very
01:21:24
Brandon
If I happen to be somewhere and there's a potential for that kind of weather, I'd probably go out and look for it.
01:21:31
Brandon
But I'm not the kind that'll drive across the country. I just don't have that kind of patience. It's fun to look at.
01:21:37
Brandon
I'll probably see a video of it at some point anyway. And I know that's not the same as being in front of it. But my vacation plans are typically just, where can I go to enjoy nature?
01:21:42
The Jobs Podcast
It's a lot easier.
01:21:51
The Jobs Podcast
Yeah.
01:21:52
Brandon
My wife and I have only been married for a little over three years. I had a prior marriage that was little over 20, but we won't go into that whole story.
01:22:02
Brandon
My wife has a goal, and so now it's my goal, yeah yeah to go to all the national parks.
01:22:07
The Jobs Podcast
funny how that works. cool. That's a good one.
01:22:10
Brandon
Yeah. But that's a lofty goal. There's a lot of them. we've only been to a handful so far. But last year we went to Glacier National Park and did kind of a loop through Yellowstone.
01:22:18
The Jobs Podcast
Oh, yeah. Yes.
01:22:21
Brandon
And we've been to Rocky Mountain National Park. That's actually where I proposed to her.
01:22:26
The Jobs Podcast
Hmm.
01:22:26
Brandon
And so, you know, that's a fun thing we can do together. We both love nature. We both love being out in it. We love to kayak.
01:22:36
Brandon
We love to fish, that type of stuff. So it'll be a fun thing to try to do that. So I think this year we're gonna try to do four, not four trips, but four parks.
01:22:45
The Jobs Podcast
Hmm.
01:22:47
Brandon
And you can usually, if you pack them in there, you can do that in a week, 10 days, so.
01:22:47
The Jobs Podcast
Right.
01:22:52
The Jobs Podcast
I think I could do a whole other podcast just on the national parks. I my family and I went to Yellowstone and Glacier a couple of times three or four years ago.
01:22:56
Brandon
Oh, sure. Yeah.
01:23:01
The Jobs Podcast
I've never been to a place in nature that was so impressive like Yellowstone. It just it blew my mind.
01:23:08
Brandon
Yeah, yeah.
01:23:08
The Jobs Podcast
I love I love national parks. So anyways,
01:23:11
Brandon
Yeah, it's very, very pretty. And I'm excited to go to some of them. I've only been to a handful, like I said. But all of them are somewhat unique.
01:23:18
The Jobs Podcast
Yeah, right.
01:23:20
Brandon
And you can fill up a film with pictures pretty quick.
01:23:24
The Jobs Podcast
Yeah, you can.
Handling Failure and Learning from Mistakes
01:23:26
The Jobs Podcast
If someone came to you that they were new in your line of work, and maybe you were kind of mentoring them, and they came in and said, I made a mistake, I failed in some way or another. What type of advice would you give someone new to your business about how to deal with failure?
01:23:44
Brandon
The only kind of failure, in my opinion, speaking specifically to television that would end a career, would be you would have to do it on purpose.
01:24:00
The Jobs Podcast
Yeah.
01:24:01
Brandon
You know, whether that be.
01:24:06
Brandon
Swearing on the air, which I mean, hopefully it's not so natural to you that it comes out without thinking about it.
01:24:07
The Jobs Podcast
Yeah.
01:24:15
Brandon
When it comes down to, you know, making a mistake with a forecast or, you know, getting tongue tied on the air or something like that, know, those kinds of things.
01:24:29
Brandon
That's just going to happen. It's part of it.
01:24:30
The Jobs Podcast
Sure, we're human.
01:24:31
Brandon
Yeah, and it used to, it still bothers me if I really miss a forecast bad, but I also know that, you know, that's just part of the business I'm in and I'll get up the next day and do it.
01:24:46
Brandon
But when I'm trying to think of an example of failure as far as as television goes that would be, you know, more specific to that field. You know, the bottom line is my employers have told me, if you make a mistake that gets us in trouble, we're going to back you up unless it was something you did knowingly.
01:25:15
Brandon
And that even includes, you know, if it has to be legal. And I can't think of a specific example that would qualify for that.
01:25:20
The Jobs Podcast
Right.
01:25:25
Brandon
But I think that the basic gist of it is that you're going to fail at some point.
01:25:32
The Jobs Podcast
Yeah.
01:25:32
Brandon
And more than once, honestly. It's not like, hey, your earlier in your career, oh, you failed. Okay, good, that's over.
01:25:40
The Jobs Podcast
yeah Right.
01:25:40
Brandon
You to worry about that again.
01:25:42
The Jobs Podcast
Yeah.
01:25:43
Brandon
Chances are you're going to become good at what you do through failing.
01:25:46
The Jobs Podcast
Hmm.
01:25:48
Brandon
You know, what are you going to learn from each of those mistakes that will help make you better? You know, part of weather forecasting in terms of success is learning from the times you miss it.
01:26:02
The Jobs Podcast
Yeah.
01:26:03
Brandon
Okay, what happened there? And and you're not always going to figure it out, but Failure, I think, is inevitable. And having a good a a group of people around you, a group of peers, to help pick you up and encourage you, I think that's a lot of it.
01:26:25
The Jobs Podcast
I had a captain very early in my fire career that gave me some advice about failure because I made some mistakes being new. It's part of it. And some of those things I let, they would percolate in my mind.
01:26:38
The Jobs Podcast
And I thought, man, I just can't seem to get past this mistake. And he told me, he pulled me aside and he said, you need to learn how to fail fast. You are gonna make mistakes as part of being a human being. Okay, let's rectify it, learn from it, and then you've got to develop the ability to move on.
01:26:54
Brandon
Yeah Yeah, sure
01:26:55
The Jobs Podcast
If you don't ever get past that mistake, it's just gonna keep owning you for however long you dwell on it. And I've taken that to heart, so.
Exploring Past Interests and Career Choices
01:27:04
The Jobs Podcast
If you were not in your current career, was there another career that early on you, I heard a rumor that you're really into fireworks.
01:27:12
The Jobs Podcast
I don't know that's that's something that you would want to do for a living, but was there another career that you kind of had your eye on on the side?
01:27:19
Brandon
You know, when a kid, I thought I wanted to study volcanoes.
01:27:23
The Jobs Podcast
Oh, cool.
01:27:25
Brandon
I guess geologists would be where that is. In the third grade, I wrote a report on Mount St. Helens.
01:27:34
The Jobs Podcast
Hmm.
01:27:34
Brandon
Uh, cause it, it blew up in 1980. And, I remember researching that and it still fascinates me. know, that was long before we had real good video.
01:27:45
The Jobs Podcast
Yeah.
01:27:46
Brandon
but that kind of thing, still fascinates me.
01:27:50
Brandon
I remember there was a time I wanted to be a chef.
01:27:54
The Jobs Podcast
Okay.
01:27:55
Brandon
So, you know, that went away pretty quick. Now I don't, I still like to cook every now and then, but just to give you an example, I remember as a kid, I wanted some French toast. I thought, well, I'll make it. So I put some bread, the toaster, and then poured hot syrup on it. You can kill somebody with that. Like you can't get a knife through that stuff. It's amazing.
01:28:18
Brandon
But anyway, I still like to bake every now and then, but that you went away in favor of the fascination with weather.
01:28:25
The Jobs Podcast
Yeah.
01:28:25
Brandon
I used to think, you know what? I would be a teacher. I loved it for a time. I was able to go out and visit schools pretty frequently.
01:28:35
Brandon
And you anywhere between about second and sixth grade, they weren't yet to the point where they already knew everything, but they, the younger ones, they weren't so young that they couldn't get it.
01:28:48
The Jobs Podcast
Right.
01:28:50
Brandon
and I would have a blast with those kids and I'd make them laugh and, and yet teach them some things about weather. Now that's, you know, it's kinda like, I'm not a grandparent yet, but it's kinda like being a grandparent where you can sugar up the grandkids and send them home.
01:29:05
The Jobs Podcast
Yeah, all the perks and none of the responsibilities.
01:29:06
Brandon
I. Yeah, I mean, I could go in there and and take a group of kids and make them laugh and have fun and then leave.
01:29:09
The Jobs Podcast
Yeah.
01:29:14
Brandon
I don't know if I would have been successful as a day in, day out teacher. But that fascinated me for a while. And I honestly, I don't know what else it would be.
Engaging the Youth in Meteorology
01:29:24
The Jobs Podcast
Do you get a lot of younger people that are showing interest in weather? that happen very often? Or kids come up to you, teenagers come up to you and start talking about cumulus clouds and whatever else?
01:29:34
The Jobs Podcast
My sons always rattle and stuff like that off. Yeah.
01:29:36
Brandon
Yeah, on occasion, I wouldn't say it's a lot. But on occasion, I do. Yeah, that that are either fascinated with it or on occasion, there's somebody, you know, I'll get an email from a parent that says their son or daughter is terrified of storms and debilitatingly so. And I've extended an invitation said, hey, bring him in.
01:30:01
Brandon
And I'll show them how we do what we do, and that'll be kind of cool for them, but I'll also explain how those things work and how we track them and how we monitor them and why they don't need to be afraid of them. And more times than not, that has really helped them.
01:30:18
The Jobs Podcast
Yeah.
Podcast Conclusion and Gratitude
01:30:20
The Jobs Podcast
I got to tell you, I was looking forward to this conversation because my, like I said, my oldest son has been into weather since a young age. And so I'll say hi to Cooper.
01:30:29
The Jobs Podcast
I know he's going to love listening to this interview, but I really thank you for taking the time.
01:30:31
Brandon
Oh, yeah.
01:30:34
The Jobs Podcast
I know you've had an early morning and and and broadcasting and everything, but I really enjoyed our conversation. Brandon, you expressed a lot of great information, shared a lot of good stuff.
01:30:43
The Jobs Podcast
So thank you very much.
01:30:44
Brandon
Oh, sure. My pleasure.
01:30:46
The Jobs Podcast
All right.
01:30:46
Brandon
I appreciate the invitation. And it's I think this is only the second, second or third time I've done a podcast.
01:30:56
Brandon
So you've been kind of fun.
01:30:56
The Jobs Podcast
Really?
01:30:58
Brandon
Yeah.
01:30:58
The Jobs Podcast
Yeah. Well, we watch you all the time at the firehouse. So, you know, give a shout out to the folks at fire station eight. So you bet.
01:31:04
Brandon
All right, I'll do it. Thank you so much. Appreciate it.
01:31:08
The Jobs Podcast
Have a good day.
01:31:09
Brandon
You too.