Scientific Mentors
Dr. Charles "Chuck" Doswell, III
Senior Research Scientist
Cooperative Institute for Mesoscale Meteorological Studies, University of Oklahoma
Severe thunderstorms and tornadoes
Dr. Charles “Chuck” Doswell, III earned his Bachelor of Science (B.S.) degree in meteorology at the University of Wisconsin at Madison in the spring of 1967. During his last two summers in Madison, he worked as a student trainee at the Weather Bureau (what the National Weather Service was called way back then!) in Madison. After graduation, he spent the first of 2-1/2 summers working as a student trainee at the National Severe Storms Forecast Center (NSSFC), in Kansas City, Missouri. He began graduate school in the fall of 1967 at the University of Oklahoma (OU), finishing his Master of Science (M.S.) degree in meteorology in January of 1969.
During his third summer at NSSFC, Chuck’s name was called for military service and he entered the Army in August of 1969. After boot camp at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri and "training" at Fort Gordon, Georgia, he spent 11 months in Phu Bai, Vietnam as a communications clerk. However, after Vietnam, he was assigned to the Atmospheric Sciences Laboratory at White Sands Missile Range, in New Mexico, where he worked on fog modeling.
Chuck was allowed to leave the Army in February of 1972, whereupon he returned to graduate school at OU. That spring, he began storm chasing with a group of students and NSSL scientists, and has been doing it more or less ever since. With his Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) degree in meteorology in July of 1976, he began his first real job as a Research Forecaster, once again at NSSFC, this time with the newly-created Techniques Development Unit (TDU), which was assigned to do applications research for the Severe Local Storms Unit (SELS) of NSSFC (SELS has become the Storm Prediction Center, located here in Norman). After about six years with the TDU, he transferred to the Environmental Research Laboratories Weather Research Program in Boulder, Colorado, in the fall of 1982, as a Research Meteorologist. After four years in Boulder, Chuck decided to take advantage of the developing opportunities here in Norman, Oklahoma, and transferred to NSSL in the fall of 1986, again as a Research Meteorologist. After more than 14 years with NSSL, as of January 2001, he retired from Federal Service, and joined the Cooperative Institute for Mesoscale Meteorological Studies (CIMMS) at the University of Oklahoma, as a Senior Research Scientist. It is a part-time position, and he is continuing his involvement with teaching that he began several years ago ... mainly, his Advanced Forecasting Techniques course. Dr. Doswell is a certified consulting meteorologist. His consulting business is called Doswell Scientific Consulting which is recognized by the American Meteorological Society.
His research interests focus mainly on tornadoes and severe thunderstorms, but he has developed an interest in just about everything related to weather. Chuck has published papers on objective analysis of meteorological data; exploring new data streams like wind profilers, satellite images, and lightning ground strike locaters; weather forecasting; and methods for verification of weather forecasts. His interests range wider than that, and he likes meteorology in part because of the wide range of things a meteorologist needs to know.
