College hosts virtual event for International Women’s Day
ABC Chief Meteorologist Ginger Zee and Melinda Mayo, Arkansas KATV Channel
7 meteorologist, shared their career experiences as part of a Women in STEM event hosted by National Park College via Zoom to celebrate International Women’s Day on Monday.
The 2021 theme internationally was “Women in
Leadership: Achieving an Equal Future in a COVID-19 World,” which celebrated “the tremendous efforts by women and girls around the world in shaping a more equal future and recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic,” a news release said.
While other women worked in meteorology at the National Weather Service, Mayo was the first female meteorologist to work on television in Arkansas. She said she got interested in the science of weather when she had a roommate who was a weather girl on the morning show of KARK Channel 4.
“We got to talking about the science of weather, and I saw what she was doing,” Mayo said, noting she also saw how meteorologists were “using storytelling, but telling those stories through science, and through meteorology.”
“I thought this looks interesting because you get to use your personality. I get to use some of the science that I like. I still get to tell stories every day, and plus, there weren’t a whole lot of women doing it yet,” she said.
Mayo said around the late 1990s it was important to have a meteorology degree because all the stations were looking for female meteorologists.
“These (were) not easy (courses). We’re talking calculus, physics, thermodynamics, just to name a few. These are tough, tough courses,” Mayo said, noting she got her meteorology certificate from Mississippi State University.
“After that, I was able to build on-air as a meteorologist and could not have been happier. I’ve been doing that for 23 years now,” she said.
“I feel like I’ve made a difference every day in people’s lives. We find that when we talk to people in the news that they say the weather is the main reason they watch, they want to know what the weather’s going to do, you can help save lives,” Mayo said.
“We are in such a crazy state,” she said. “Who thought that just last month, we would have negative 1 temperature, we would have three winter storms in a row and an ice storm followed by 1 to 2 inches snow, followed by 10 inches snow?”
Zee said science is everywhere, and she knew she loved it when she was a kid, noting it was her passion for science that drove her into what she wanted.
She said her love for weather goes back to her summers as a child at Lake Michigan, which looks and acts like an ocean, noting she could see storms for miles and always wondered, “how does that power work?”
“I started wondering about what is the puzzle of our atmosphere, and that’s been the thing that drives me even today. Every time I walk outside, I want to know the pieces to the puzzle, and I want to help put it together,” Zee said.
Zee said she saw the 1996 film “Twister” directed by Jan de Bont and “made a choice in my life because the person who represents who I could be, Helen Hunt’s character, Jo Harding, was right in front of me. I knew what I wanted to do after I saw this movie. I’m going to be a storm chaser. I’m going to be a researcher, and I’m going to lead the charge.”
Zee went to Valparaiso University and received a Bachelor of Science in Meteorology and minored in Math and Spanish.
Zee had zero intention of going into television, she said, noting she would never have thought of it until her former professor John Knox suggested she do an internship because he thought she might be good at communicating the science behind the weather.
“I became a storm chasing communicator of science. I still get to do everything that I want and communicate the science and leave the legacy of women and science behind,” Zee said.
Zee said the first big storm she covered was Hurricane Katrina and she went to the locations where the hurricane hit with science in her eyes.
“I was just there hours after it happened. We went straight into Gulfport, Miss., and I went down there thinking science, and within 10 seconds, I realized this storm was up. It was about people, and that’s where my passion immediately shifted to compassion. That’s what my job has really been about,” Zee said.
“It is making sure people are warned, but it’s about telling their stories and making sure those stories don’t get repeated when they’re negative. Telling the stories that are positive and making sure those get repeated when they work,” she said.
“The clouds don’t last forever. They can’t, and they won’t,” she said. “It’s not how the atmosphere works, and it’s not how life works.”