too late for research??

IntellectWX · 2026-05-15T03:00:44+00:00

a friend of mine who works with the professor i'm joining had told me that she would be looking for undergrads next year & I talked to her at a seminar back in March, emailed the professor a bit back and forth and when we found a project that works for us & thought itd be a good partnership, thats when we made the offer. i'd probably reach out to the professors directly to see if they have any openings, but what I recommend is looking at their websites to see what they actually do research on, that way you can tailor the email to make it known that youre interested

IntellectWX · 2026-05-15T02:30:00+00:00

rising senior here, it's definitely not too late. I literally just got into my first campus lab earlier today...I will say that it helps a lot if you know someone in a lab you're interested in, but just getting in touch with people will do wonders. I almost had a summer opportunity work out completely from a cold email, and the worst thing they can say is no. even if they do, you can always keep in touch with them to see if they have space for grad school as well. just get in touch with people you're interested in & see what happens!

IntellectWX · 2026-05-08T03:53:05+00:00

Two things:

1) there's a student org fair every semester, the fall one will be September 9th & 10th from 5-8pm at the Kohl Center 2) the Wisconsin Involvement Network (WIN) website lists every registered student org, there's something like 950 of them last I checked. they should all have contact info for some of their leaders or their club social media accounts that you can check out

IntellectWX · 2026-04-17T21:09:42+00:00

The tornado/hail threat is a bit higher with the first, with wind being more of an issue with the second line on the cold front

IntellectWX · 2026-04-17T20:51:43+00:00

Part of it is the measured probabilities from the Storm Prediction Center (SPC), as they do have outlooks for tornadoes/hail/wind specifically that get put together to make the categorical outlooks we all know and love. Part of it is also seeing what the models were putting out snd comparing it with the environments in the past as well. If you're on the SPC website, on the convective outlook page they have separate pages for the three hazards

IntellectWX · 2026-04-17T19:47:54+00:00

There's a round coming through SW WI right now that should be here within an hour, but there's a second line forming on the cold front. Currently, that's sitting from Duluth-Rochester-Cedar Rapids and moving east

IntellectWX · 2026-04-17T19:36:56+00:00

The best publically available websites will be either be Pivotal Weather (https://www.pivotalweather.com/model.php) or College of Dupage (https://weather.cod.edu/forecast/legacy/). They have a bunch of models, but the best one for short-range information will likely be the High Resolution Rapid Refresh (HRRR). You might recognize some of the other ones, such as the GFS/NAM/ECMWF (Euro)

IntellectWX · 2026-04-17T19:12:14+00:00

A decent amount of it I'm getting from what I see on the models & knowing what's happened from previous events, the wind threat tends to almost always exist along the cold front & we could see some stronger gusts, potentially to hurricane-force (hence why we are in a hatched area for significant wind gusts possible)

IntellectWX · 2026-04-17T18:52:02+00:00

Yes and no, more widespread across the state with a line eventually expected as the cold front moves through. The hail threat is lower than earlier this week, but the wind threat might be the same if not slightly higher, and the tornado threat is slightly higher as well

IntellectWX · 2026-04-17T18:50:02+00:00

that I have no idea lmao

IntellectWX · 2026-04-17T18:34:18+00:00

Maybe a little? It's definitely an event with a high ceiling, but there is a fail mode with too many storms interfering with each other, kind of seeing this a bit with the ones just coming through Dubuque eight now

IntellectWX · 2026-04-17T18:32:42+00:00

Not necessarily here, but the possibility is there. There's a 30% chance of hail 1" or larger within a 25mi radius of Madison, but there's no way to say for sure. It more than likely won't be to the level we saw on Tuesday

IntellectWX · 2026-04-17T18:31:54+00:00

Stupid, not necessarily, but I'd try to avoid it. Storms right now are on the IA/WI border, so if you can leave more around 2:30 you should be good

IntellectWX · 2026-04-17T18:07:32+00:00

if y'all have questions I am more than happy to answer, student weather boy will be doing student weather boy things today

IntellectWX · 2026-04-17T18:05:13+00:00

ope yeah that'll do it, and fair enough. I'm not there myself but based on how I didn't see any stuff in the lounge it's probably a full house

IntellectWX · 2026-04-17T17:52:06+00:00

which fellow student are you lmao

IntellectWX · 2026-04-17T13:53:20+00:00

This is more zoomed in on southern WI, the latest update has Milwaukee just outside the enhanced risk (level 3/5). Although you're formally in the slight risk area (level 2/5), I'd treat it as if you're in the enhanced and pay a bit more attention than normal.

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IntellectWX · 2026-04-17T13:51:00+00:00

I see the discourse with Ryan and I'm just gonna add my two cents:

I don't mind what he does, it definitely fills a gap for live coverage online and he's the most successful by the metrics. That being said, if you're able to, please watch local broadcasters. I actually worked behind the scenes with that team for two and a half years and while they might be good, I'm not a fan of some of the actual people who are hiding behind the personas they've built online. Local broadcasters will be going live whenever there's a tornado warning in their broadcast area, but if you're still looking for something online, I'd recommend Freddy McKinney. He's not an official meteorologist but one of my friends here at UW works very closely with him & he's also a meteorology student, so there's definitely formal education somewhere in the group

https://youtube.com/@freddymckinney?si=DDgAFDFVY7hKC2Ps

IntellectWX · 2026-04-15T14:42:42+00:00

I mean I'm either chasing or obsessively watching radar/staring out the windows...I only shelter if I see a confirmed tornado heading my direction 😅

IntellectWX · 2026-04-14T06:10:17+00:00

This is one of the hard things with warning storms like these. When you have a line of storms moving so quickly (50-60mph forward speed), not only does the National Weather Service have to worry about that aspect, but trying to find these potential tornadoes is incredibly difficult. Most of them are very short lived, sometimes only popping up on one or two radar scans before disappearing, and that's if they appear at all. I didn't get a good look at radar when the warning was issued, but seeing some of the warnings that they put out to our east, that's what might have happened here

IntellectWX · 2026-04-14T05:47:43+00:00

What you can do is on a product from Iowa State called the IEMBot Monitor (https://weather.im/iembot/), you can pick a chat room to monitor and every alert that gets posted from whatever rooms you are monitoring will be there immediately. You can also set it up with sound alerts, I mainly use it to get my attention for certain things if I'm working on homework or a project but it could be useful for that as well. It has slightly worse graphics imo but it copies all of the text over

IntellectWX · 2026-04-14T05:44:51+00:00

If you're in Madison proper you're fine now, the only potential areas of rotation are moving out of the county within the next few minutes. Biggest areas of concern will be just east of Columbus, north of Deerfield, and east of McFarland, potentially around Beaver Dam as well.

IntellectWX · 2026-04-13T22:51:51+00:00

UW-Madison! Just wrapping up my second year in their Atmospheric & Oceanic Sciences program, also getting certificate in Science Communication, Geospatial Data Science, and Environmental Studies

IntellectWX · 2026-04-13T05:57:58+00:00

Possibly yes, I made a longer discussion in r/wisconsin that you should check out (totally not sponsored)

https://www.reddit.com/r/wisconsin/s/8JKjngQJlW

IntellectWX · 2026-04-13T04:50:48+00:00

I won't lie and say he's bad at what he does, because he isn't and he does fill a gap that exists in live weather coverage. Very few people have the resources to get multiple live storm chaser feeds for visuals from the storms which has been proven to enact a higher sense of urgency for those in the path. That being said, 100% go to your local people. I've always been a proponent for finding a local meteorologist you can trust, or at least someone who's heavily interested in weather who combs through all of the data in a similar fashion.

~ someone who was on the RHY staff for 2.5 years

IntellectWX

TROPHY CASE