Dr. Jon Nese The weather February 8, 2001 Read and Listen Online Session

Benjamin Franklin once said, "Some are weatherwise, some are otherwise." It's as though he was talking about Dr. Jon Nese, Chief Meteorologist at the Franklin Institute. Asking about the weather may seem like small talk to you, but at the Franklin Institute they take the matter seriously. Dr. Nese is responsible for the day-to-day operation of the weather station at the Institute located in Center City Philadelphia. The center is both an operational forecast facility and an exhibit. Visitors to the Institute can learn about the atmosphere and the atmospheric conditions that create our weather.

Up-to-the-minute weather data in an easy-to-understand way is Nese's claim to fame. With the help of NBC-10, the Institute presents the NBC-10 Earthwatch Weather Workshop program. Dr. Nese and the NBC-10 Earthwatch meteorological team collaborate and co-present these workshops in Musser Theater. If you're in the area you can catch his presentations at the Franklin Institute or tune your radio to WHYY or NPR to hear Dr. Nese's daily forecast.

The topic of the workshop is tied to the season of the year; summer and fall is "Hurricanes," winter is "Winter Storms," and spring is "Tornadoes and Thunderstorms."

Inside the Weather Center you can check out the latest satellite and Doppler RADAR images, look at Philadelphia weather data back into the 1800s, and see "barometer number 1," the air-pressure measuring instrument used by The Franklin Institute's first meteorologist in the 1830s.

Dr. Nese received his B.S. in Meteorology in 1983 and Ph.D. in Meteorology from Penn State in 1989. He was a professor at many of the satellite campuses teaching Meteorology as well as Earth Sciences, Algebra, and Calculus. Pennsylvania climatology is one of his main interests.

An Updated Tornado Climatology of Pennsylvania is one of Nese's many contributions to the study of weather which appeared in the Journal of the Pennsylvania Academy of Science recently. Dr. Nese also co-authored A World of Weather: Fundamentals of Meteorology, a textbook and lab manual for introductory meteorology.

For more information on the Franklin Institute programs visit http://www.fi.edu/index.html. For fun weather facts and activities, go to http://www.fi.edu/weather/index.html.