Sam Wray Email & Phone Number

Wakefield, Virginia, United States

This position entails daily interrogation of meteorological data to generate forecast and warning products for the protection of life and property in the public, marine, and aviation sectors (including TAFs). Other primary tasks include composing and delivering tailored briefing products to local partners (local and state-level government officials, emergency managers, private sector companies, and the media), on-site and virtual deployments in times of critical weather support for events, and the collection of meteorological observations necessary to the NWS mission.

Wakefield, Virginia, United States

In the summer and early fall of 2022, I volunteered at my local National Weather Service office in Wakefield, VA. The goal of this position was to gain hands-on experience within an NWS weather forecast office (WFO), which included using the Advanced Weather Interactive Processing System (AWIPS) to generate forecast and warning products (marine, aviation, and public) for eastern Virginia, northeast North Carolina, and the lower Maryland eastern shore. Additionally, I participated in a local research project to analyze radar- and environmental-scale processes with the goal of improving the probability of detection (POD) of tornado events and reducing false alarm rates (FAR) of radar-indicated tornado warnings. My engagement in office operations ultimately led to my hiring as a full-time meteorologist in October 2022.

University Park, Pennsylvania, United States

My master's degree research focused on the scales of near-surface atmospheric turbulence, with the energy-containing (or integral) scales being my primary focus. I utilized high-resolution field observational data from the Canopy Horizontal Array Turbulence Study (CHATS) and aimed to develop realistic connections between spatial and temporal scales for a range of atmospheric stability conditions. The broader impact of this research surrounds improving turbulence parameterization schemes in numerical weather models in the future.

In this role, I performed general teaching assistance for METEO 414, an undergraduate mesoscale meteorology course in Penn State's Department of Meteorology and Atmospheric Science. Duties included hosting weekly office hours and grading weekly homework assignments.

Virginia Beach, Virginia, United States

Virginia Beach, Virginia, United States

As a way to interact with our youth and gain teaching experience, I took up part-time substitute teaching for my childhood school district in Virginia Beach. Although the quick emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic limited my overall duration here, I still learned valuable aspects of our public education system and connected with children across a wide range of ages (primarily Kindergarten to 5th grade-aged children).

Virginia Beach, Virginia, United States

Master Of Science - Ms, Atmospheric Sciences And Meteorology

Bachelor Of Science - Bs, Atmospheric Sciences And Meteorology