Forecasting a brighter future

Many residents of Southern Indiana and Kentucky remember March 2nd, 2012 for a widespread tornado outbreak that included an EF4 tornado that devastated the town of Henryville, Indiana. For UofL senior Dominic LaDuke, that tornado made a particularly lasting impact.

LaDuke was in second grade when the EF4 tornado touched down about 10 minutes away from his home in Charlestown and he was evacuated from school and sent home early. Throughout the chaos of the day, LaDuke remembers the way people relied on local meteorologists on TV to help prepare for the storms and remain calm.

“I remember really being interested in watching the TV meteorologists and seeing not the fear, but the concern in everybody’s faces,” LaDuke said. “It made me want to go into meteorology because I want to try to help as many people as I can and alleviate fear. That’s what I felt like the TV meteorologists were doing that day. And that really inspired me.”

Now a geography major with an applied track in meteorology, LaDuke participates in research and projects that help increase the understanding of how severe weather impacts and interacts with cities, leading to more accurate forecasts and helping people make more informed decisions about where to live.

When LaDuke first expressed interest in conducting research, professor Jason Naylor encouraged him to apply for the Summer Research Opportunity Program. LaDuke seized the opportunity to work on a grant-funded project researching aerosols from pollutants in cities and the impact they have on storms. Through the program, he was able to present his research and gain experience that prepared him for graduate school and his future career.

“This research isn’t just applicable to Louisville, but it’s applicable to almost any major city, so it can help people all over. And it gave me a taste of what it would be like to be a graduate student or an employee focused on research, which isn’t always an opportunity at other universities,” LaDuke said. “UofL allows for students to come up with their own idea and have a lot of ownership in the research, so I was able to learn from my mistakes before going into my master’s dissertation and being confused or feeling lost. Also, when you feel like a project is yours to own and get funding for, it makes you want to do the best you possibly can and motivates us to do the research in an innovative way.”

LaDuke’s peers at UofL also encouraged him to intern at the National Weather Service (NWS) in Louisville, which gave him behind the scenes experience of what goes into putting out forecasts, research, weather warnings and more.

“It’s a lot more than just forecasting the weather and then putting it out there,” LaDuke said. “There’s so much research they do, climatological data they look at and flooding they track in the county. I got to go out on storm surveys, issue forecasts, work severe weather events and tons of other projects there.”

One project LaDuke got to help with at NWS was researching radar beam blockage at the Fort Knox radar, which helps predict Louisville’s weather.

“I got to work with a team to see how much beam blockage had occurred and prevented the radar beams from going out and returning accurate data,” LaDuke said. “I got to present our findings to the whole office and the Radar Operation Center, which oversees all the different radars in the country that the National Weather Service uses. That internship gave me a lot of opportunities for exposure and working with different kinds of people. It was invaluable.”

LaDuke plans to attend graduate school and continue on his path to becoming a meteorologist after he graduates in May. He says it’s not just the research and work experiences that have helped lead him on his path to success, but also the friends, peers and mentors he’s met at UofL.

“Building relationships with the other meteorology students made me realize we have this collective interest. We were always there to help each other out with schoolwork and study groups, but we’ve become close outside of school as well,” LaDuke said. “I’ve made lifelong friends because we’ve really been able to connect with one another through our small classes, and we all work together to make sure we all succeed and help push each other.”

LaDuke’s time at UofL not only prepared him for a career in meteorology, but also for the twists and turns of life. He credits his professors with teaching him the value of making mistakes.

“The greatest lesson I’ve learned here is how to fail and it’s how you respond to that failure that really makes you grow. (Faculty members) Scott Gunter and Jason Naylor and my other professors really taught us how to deal with challenges and allowed me to understand that not everything is going to be smooth sailing,” LaDuke said. “Graduate school or navigating the job market or even at a job … life is going to have challenges, and I feel like I’m prepared to be able to approach different problems and be adaptable so I can succeed not just in meteorology, but in life.”