Andrea Thortensen has long been interested in science.  It was in ninth grade at Hermantown High School, after studying tornadoes and thunderstorms that she began to find an interest in meteorology.

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

While most of us would like to hibernate from the biting winds and blowing snowstorms, Andrea is a storm chaser who began to chase her passion in weather seriously around her junior year of high school.

“It was my physics teacher in eleventh 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.”

Andrea is passionate and articulate about studying the fascinating and unpredictable weather systems and their impacts on the planet.  This led her to her concentration in meteorology and hydrology.

Meteorology, the study of the physics of water in the atmosphere, demands fast and accurate thinking. Modern, quantitative meteorology is only a few hundred years old.  By reading models and looking at radar and other data, meteorologists identify patterns to our weather.  They must reach conclusions based on chaos theory.  Forecasts are only good for a short period of time. 

“Nature is not controllable,” Andrea 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.”

As a student at St. Cloud State University, Andrea has learned the self-sufficiency and assertiveness that will help her in a dynamic and quickly evolving career field in science.  The college experience has positively changed her outlook on independence from her parents and the difference between high school learning and preparing for her future.

“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.”

Andrea is serious and active in defining and completing her education, immersing herself fully in her classes and taking everything from them that she can get.

“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.”

For Andrea, her career path in science is about helping people. “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.”

As a student, Andrea has begun to make increasingly accurate weather predictions in a game played in one of her classes at St. Cloud State where students make predictions for the upcoming week.  If this is any definite indicator of Andrea’s future success, she will have few problems overcoming the chaos theory of college.