featuring Connor Mockett
Hello, everyone! Welcome back to another week of Life with Connor the Weatherman. This week I thought I’d pull out the old fashioned Q&A for the first time in 2024. I always love to answer questions people have for me, so this will be fun. I’ll answer as many as I can, so here we go!
Q: What do you and your Fiancee like to do for fun/entertainment?
A: We’re pretty simple! Generally the movies are always a fun and easy thing to do for us for entertainment. We really love going to hockey games together as well. Also, nothing wrong with a nice date night to Montana’s!
Q: How did you learn to forecast the weather? Is there an online course or are you self taught?
A: I’m actually both of those things! I self taught watching videos online, reading writeups, and reading breakdowns from people who are WAY smarter than me. It all came so naturally to me as I’m so passionate about what I do, so it was easy for me to learn about it. Storm chasing helped a lot as well so I could physically see what was happening on the ground relative to what the environment was.
Q: If you could go anywhere in the world to chase, where would you go and why?
A: This answer is easy, it’s Texas. Well, it’s generally the US Plains in general, but Texas is at the top of the list. The US Plains is the leading area in the world for tornadoes and supercells. It’s just totally different there. I actually am planning to go there myself in May during their peak season for tornadoes!
Q: What’s your favourite forecasting snack?
A: I actually don’t snack much while I’m doing my forecasting work. My fingers are too busy typing up a storm (pun intended) to be able to grab a snack. However, if I had to choose, it’d be Ruffles All Dressed chips. Cannot beat those.
Q: What differences in weather are you seeing between Eastern Ontario and New Brunswick?
A: I actually find it way windier here than at home in Ontario. We’ve had very windy days here more often than we haven’t. Also, it has snowed more often, but that’s just because of the pattern the atmosphere is in right now.
Q: When did you first realize the weather and storm chasing was what you wanted to do?
A: I was young! I used to religiously watch Storm Chasers on discovery channel when I was 9 years old before getting on the bus in the morning. From then on, I got addicted to that show, and I knew I wanted to do what they were doing. My first chase happened when I was 14 years old, right around Winchester on a tornado warned storm, and after that day I knew it was what I wanted to do.
Q: What was the most dangerous weather situation you’ve encountered when chasing?
A: Not that it was dangerous as a chaser because I knew where I was in relation to the direction that it was going, but it has to be the Findlay Creek tornado on August 3rd, last summer. I saw the wall cloud put the tornado down as I was driving east on Rideau Road. The tornado was also moving east as it went through Findlay Creek, so I was paralleling it, but it was objectively dangerous being about 2km away from a tornado that ended up doing damage as I was watching it.
That’ll do it for this round of Q&A! I enjoyed answering your questions and look forward to doing this again another time this year. Thanks for reading!
