Chelsea Picha

"I am extremely grateful to IW for everything it gave me and how it not only became a steppingstone into my career, but also helped me grow as a person. I am thoroughly convinced that without IW, I would not have gotten the experience or confidence needed to excel in the field or achieve my goal of getting into the NWS soon after grad school. The real-life applications and confidence-building that come with a program like this are not something you get from the classroom. I could go on, but it truly is one-of-a-kind. Thanks to the skills gained through IW, I am now able to use what I learned and fuel my passion toward helping core partners, like local emergency managers and media, with their own communication and decision-making regarding the weather, which in turn keeps the general public safe every day."

I grew up in Montgomery, MN, a small town in the south-central part of the state just outside of the Twin Cities metro and have been interested in weather from a pretty young age. My mom still remembers me coming home from school one day in first grade and going on and on about the types of clouds. I particularly remember being fascinated by lightning and watching it during car rides, which eventually led to always watching the severe weather warnings along the bottom of the TV screen and the updates that cut into TV shows. I frequently chose weather-related topics for school projects, and somewhere along the line I decided I wanted to be a meteorologist. I graduated from St. Cloud State University in May of 2016 with a B.S. in meteorology and moved to Milwaukee at the end of that summer to begin pursuing my master’s at UWM, which I earned in 2018. Innovative Weather was a big factor in choosing UWM, and I was a part of the program from January 2017 to May 2019 before getting hired at the National Weather Service office in Topeka, KS. Outside of weather I enjoy music, hanging out with friends and family, checking out local coffee shops and walking trails, and cheering on the Twins and Vikings (sorry, Wisconsinites).