How I got into meteorology: Alex Sosnowski
AccuWeather Flooding Expert Alex Sosnowksi shares how Hurricane Agnes sparked his interest in weather, in celebration of National Weatherperson's Day.
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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.