Andrea Thorstensen, a freshman at St. Cloud State University, is like many Minnesotans who had her life impacted by weather.

     “When you grow up in Duluth, it is hard to miss weather,” Thorstensen said. “It’s something that is a part of your everyday life and you can’t avoid it.”

     While many of us would rather hide from the sub-zero winds or white-out snow, Thorstensen is chasing after it. As a student of meteorology and hydrology she is studying an unavoidable part of our lives, weather.

     Thorstensen has long been interested in science. It was in ninth grade, after studying tornados and thunderstorms the year before, that she really began to focus on meteorology as a potential career.

     “But it was my physics teacher in 11th grade who really made me think this is what I wanted to do. This teacher made me love to study physics. He showed me that I could do it.  And after I had looked at what a metrology degree involved, and saw that physics was a part of it; it all seemed to fit together.”

     The first crude forms of meteorology used the stars as predictors of natural patterns. More modern, quantitative meteorology is only a few hundred years old.

     “Nature is not controllable,” Thorstensen says. “But predicting weather gives people a sense of control. I want to be able to predict weather because I like the feeling being able to make correct forecasts out of information that may seem arbitrary to other people.”

     The National Weather Service, a place Thorstensen would some day like to work, helps people with both the prediction and the control. A public service, the National Weather service monitors weather to warn people in the event of dangerous weather.

      To Thorstensen, “working in weather is a way to combine a general interest in science and helping people. If I was going to graduate tomorrow and start work the next day I would want to work for the National Weather Service.”

     “I can do things for myself now and not wait for my parents to do them,” she said. “They aren’t here, so I have to do it.”

     The self-sufficiency of college extended beyond just menial tasks and into the classroom.

     “No one is going to baby-sit you in college,” she noted. “If you don’t do your work no one is going to help you.”

     Thorstensen is taking an active role in her education, becoming fully involved in her classes. The first semester she struggled in an economics class, which she at first claimed she didn’t like. After putting in effort she realized that it was something she liked.

     “In general I see people in my school who are taking classes to get through them and not make them a part of you,” she said. “You can take a class and do the homework and get a grade. Or you can take a class understand and use it.”

     As a part of one of her classes Thorstensen is part of a forecasting game. By using the skills that they have acquired in class, the students make predictions for the coming week. Thorstensen is beginning to make consistently correct predictions. If past experience can predict the future, Thorstensen will have few problems overcoming the chaos of college and producing continuously sunny skies.