On July 20, 1960, was born in the Great Plains metropolis of Oklahoma City. Surrounded by wild weather, he grew up fascinated by it. He recieved his bachelor's degree at Rice University, featuring an interdisciplinary major in meteorology and psychology and then went to graduate school in both meteorology and journalism at the University of Oklahoma. For his M.A. thesis in journalism, he studied the broadcasting of severe weather warnings on local television.

He has been at UCAR since 1989, covering the wide range of research and related activities conducted by NCAR, UOP, and UCAR's members and affiliates. He enjoys freelance writing on a variety of topics and is a contributing editor of Weatherwise magazine and was a frequent correspondent for the The Weather Notebook radio show. He wrote Television Weathercasting: A History (McFarland, 1990), The Rough Guide to Weather (Rough Guides/Penguin, 2002), and The Rough Guide to Climate Change (Penguin, 2006).