Misadventures of a Meteorologist

It's two in the morning. There's a tornado on the ground. And only two meteorologists are on duty.

For thirty-two years, Dan Koch was one of the people behind the warnings: the bleary-eyed forecaster staring at a glowing radar screen while the rest of the community slept. Now retired from the National Weather Service, he pulls back the curtain on a career that was by turns terrifying, heartbreaking, and frequently ridiculous.

It all began with a tornado. The 1967 storm that devastated Belvidere, Illinois, struck months before Dan was born, but it shaped his hometown and set a young boy on a path that started with a weather station from the Sears Christmas catalog and ended at a radar console during one of the most consequential warnings in Arkansas history.

Inside, you'll find:

• The college storm chase that missed the historic Plainfield tornado because of a snapped ignition switch, and the night eight panicked meteorology students sheltered in a stranger's basement.
• Life as a "Yankee" intern on the Texas border, where the boss wanted him to fake a Texas drawl, someone on a Mexican bluff took shots at him, and two interns forged a training letter that nearly drove their supervisor mad.
• The day a young intern was told to "handle" a catastrophic flood, then found the White House on the line.
• The April morning in Oklahoma when a classroom full of storm-hungry meteorologists heard a distant rumble and hoped it was thunder.
• What he saw from an office rooftop on March 13, 1997, the night of the Phoenix Lights.
• A Hurricane Hunter flight into the eye of a storm, and a cruise ship that sailed straight into Hurricane Sandy.
• March 31, 2023, when Dan issued the Tornado Emergency as an EF3 tore through the Little Rock metro area. Not one person died from the wind.

And then there are the pranks. A fake ghost recording hidden beneath the floor. A doctored family photo nobody noticed for six weeks. A coworker who exploded out of a recycling bin. A cucumber, a condom, and a can of chili. Add a grumpy office cat named Tarmac who became a social media star, a cook known only as the Pickle Licker, and a "free" lunch that cost eighty dollars, and you'll understand why the weather office was never as quiet as it looked.

Beneath the laughter is an honest look at the hidden cost of the job: rotating shifts that wear down the body, survey crews quietly carrying what they've seen, government shutdowns, and the long nights when two exhausted people stand between a sleeping town and disaster. Dan closes with a candid warning about an agency facing budget cuts, a brain drain, and a rush toward automation, and a question every American should ask: who makes the call next time?

Funny, frank, and written by a man who has spent a lifetime looking up, Misadventures of a Meteorologist is for anyone who has ever checked the forecast, cursed a blown one, or wondered who's on the other side of the warning.