For 25 years, Weather Camp offers home to high-school-aged enthusiasts

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Penn State’s Weather Camp has been a summer staple for self-professed “weather geeks” for 25 years.

But Paul Knight, longtime “Weather World” staple and retired senior lecturer in meteorology at Penn State, said he remembers a time when there was no way for high-school-aged students interested in weather to be among their peers.

“I and the other co-founders of weather camp started this program for the simple reason that growing up we would have given our right arm for such an opportunity,” said Knight, who retired from Penn State in 2015. “At the time, The Weather Channel began piquing nationwide interest. With Penn State’s prominence in meteorology, it was just a matter of putting the pieces together.”

Knight worked with William Syrett, associate teaching professor in meteorology and atmospheric science, colleagues in the Department of Meteorology and Atmospheric Science and Penn State Outreach to create the camp. Since then, roughly 1,400 students from 40 states and several countries have participated, with an astounding one-in-five later enrolling in Penn State’s highly-ranked program.

Syrett said the camp began with a couple dozen students, but in 2010 organizers began offering two camps: a basic camp for younger students and an advanced camp for students nearing or in the college hunt. That change pushed camps to their capacity of 74 students.

Syrett said students have always come with at least a mild interest in weather, but the percentage of passionate students has really grown. They’re most interested, he said, in what most would consider “bad," or extreme, weather.

In addition to having access to Penn State’s faculty and facilities, the surrounding area is a great place for weather enthusiasts, said Syrett, adding that the success of the program is in no small part thanks to nearby facilities such as AccuWeather and the National Weather Service.

Over the course of four days — or five for the advanced campers — participants get classroom lessons on weather forecasting and theory, visit the studio during a live airing of the award-winning weather program Weather World, tour facilities, and talk with experts in the field about research, forecasting, climate and more. They even have a chance to hop into the hot seat for their own weather broadcast in the newly redesigned studio.

Penn State Outreach, which manages the camp, handles much of the logistics while offering on-campus housing for students looking for that college-like experience.

For some weather campers, like Karl Schneider, they come and never want to leave.

Schneider visited the camp in 2014, stayed on as an undergraduate student, and now teaches weather forecasting and computer programming in the meteorology department.

“It was one of the greatest experiences at that time of my life because it was the first time I was able to meet other people my age who were also interested in weather,” Schneider said. “I had a great time, and I began to seriously consider attending Penn State.”

Syrett said he had a similar experience. He was fascinated from a young age at the sheer power of weather. As a kid, he attended a camp near his Connecticut home at the Talcott Mountain Science Center and knew as he participated in a weather map analysis activity that his passion was more than a hobby.

That's one of the goals of the camp: Helping students decide if it’s an appropriate career path, Syrett said. Many love the more "Hollywood" moments of the field, like storm chasing and on-air meteorology, but that’s just a sliver of what a meteorologist can do in their career.

At the least, campers will spend time surrounded by their weather enthusiast peers. They’ll walk in the shoes of the leaders in the industry. And, if they’re lucky, just like they were this year, they won’t let a baseball game ruin a chance to see a storm roll in.

They’ll walk in the path of people like Syrett, who remains just as transfixed as he was during his time at camp.

“I love witnessing the power of nature but also our ability as scientists to understand this power and help save lives,” Syrett said. “We’re collectively a group of people watching the sky and are fascinated at what could happen.”