Gab at the Lab: Ryan Hastings

Ryan Hastings, NRC Postdoc

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Background:Ph.D. Meteorology, Penn State University (2013)
M.S. Meteorology, Penn State University (2009)
B.S. Mathematics, University of Texas (2004)
Experience:Ryan Hastings began college in 1994 as a religious studies major at Indiana University. After two years, he dropped out and moved to Austin, Texas, where he would eventually go on to earn his bachelor’s degree in mathematics at the University of Texas. While in Austin, he was intrigued enough by the severe weather of the Plains that he decided to continue his education in the field of meteorology. He studied multi-platform observations of transition in convective organization of convective boundary layer and the VORTEX2 project under Yvette Richardson at Penn State University, and completed his Master’s degree in 2007. Ryan then shifted his focus to observations and simulations of mergers between ordinary cells and supercells for his Ph.D. work at Penn State. In 2013, he accepted a teaching position at Purdue University and remained there as a visiting professor until coming to CIMMS. In May 2015, Ryan was hired as an NRC Postdoc working with NSSL’s Mike Coniglio.
What He Does:Since joining OU CIMMS, Ryan has taken part in the Plains Elevated Convection At Night and Mini-MPEX field programs. He also studies idealized modeling with the Lab. He is currently looking at Quasi-Linear Convective Systems and examining why these systems do not have severe winds at night. He has discovered that an alteration in the pressure perturbation structure of QLCS storms causes downdraft winds, once they reach the ground, to accelerate to the rear rather than the front of the storm. His work is helping scientists to better understand these complicated systems, which present a significant challenge for forecasters in NOAA’s National Weather Service.
Trivia: Ryan is a comic book enthusiast and has been an avid collector for many years!

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