How I got into meteorology: Alex Sosnowski

AccuWeather

AccuWeather Flooding Expert Alex Sosnowksi shares how Hurricane Agnes sparked his interest in weather, in celebration of National Weatherperson's Day.

Transcript

00:00 It's National Weather Person's Day, so we need to know,

00:03 what got you interested in the weather and when?

00:06 Yeah, but Bob, we'll give you about 45 seconds.

00:09 - All right, well, that's an easy one.

00:11 It was Agnes 1972, Hurricane Agnes 1972.

00:15 I lived in Wyoming Valley in a town called Kingston,

00:19 which was down in the flats there,

00:20 which is the lower part as far as elevation goes.

00:24 So we had a lot of water on our street.

00:26 We had 30 feet of water on our street

00:28 and having a ranch home at the time,

00:30 it was pretty dramatic event.

00:32 I remember heading over the river,

00:34 the Marcus Street Bridge that morning during the evacuation

00:37 and seeing the water level already climbing

00:39 pretty far up on the levee system there.

00:42 But that's probably the linchpin.

00:44 There's been some other factors, of course.

00:46 I got interested with some of the big snow storms

00:48 in the 1960s occurring around the holidays and that.

00:52 And then an accident I had on icy conditions

00:54 when I was in college,

00:56 well, that just solidified the whole thing.

00:58 That was after snow squalls went through

00:59 and there was a flash freeze on Interstate 80

01:01 near Cunningham, which is that canyon through there,

01:04 which doesn't get a lot of sun.

01:05 It was in March.

01:06 So as soon as the sun went down,

01:08 that froze and it was pretty scary for me.

01:10 But that made my mind up right there.

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