He’s a Meteorologist and the Digital Media Coordinator with the Florida Public Radio Emergency Network (FPREN) and the South Carolina Emergency Information Network (SCEIN).

He has a broad range of experience and interests, including:

• Operational Meteorology
• Web Development
• Meteorological dataset visualization
• GIS
• Automation
• Cloud Computing
• Multimedia Broadcasting
• Blogging and Writing
• Project/Product Management

Ray’s Journey

Ray grew up in South Jersey (Philadelphia suburbs) and moved to Tallahassee to attend Florida State University. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Meteorology from FSU. His first job as a television meteorologist was in Sioux City, IA. He returned to Tallahassee to work under the legendary Mike McCall at WCTV, the CBS affiliate.

Weather Central and The Weather Channel

His love for technology, broadcast, and the weather sent him north to Madison, WI, where he started as a Customer Development Specialist at Weather Central. There, he traveled to dozens of stations across the U.S. to setup, train, and commission the company’s broadcast display systems.

He knew he could serve broadcast meteorologists in an even more profound way, and became Product Manager of Weather Central’s radar and severe weather tracking system, ESP:LIVE. Some of his major accomplishments include the integration of dual-polarization radar into the display system, automatic on-air severe weather notifications, and major enhancements to the product’s patented “hand tracking” technology.

The Weather Channel’s purchase of Weather Central in 2012 sent Ray on another course. He became Product Manager of the Enterprise Division’s insurance product line where his team launched notification and display software to alert property and casualty insurers of hail, tornado debris, damaging wind, hurricanes, and other perils.

Healthcare and … Coding?

Ray’s path took another — and some would say unpredictable — turn. He left the weather enterprise to work in healthcare IT at UW Health in Madison. He became certified to train and build within Epic’s “OpTime” application, which surgeons and other healthcare professionals use around the globe.

During his time at UW Health, he spent much of his free time learning to code in Python. He immediately put that skill to use through the automation of required medical record training classes for new employees. Soon thereafter, he learned JavaScript and front end libraries and frameworks, starting with AngularJS and then ReactJS. He continued on to the back end to learn NodeJS, Express, and MongoDB. He became familiar with and used the server-side language, PHP.

A Return To Weather - With A New Twist

With this new set of knowledge, Ray returned to his professional roots as a meteorologist in an entirely new role: Digital Media Coordinator with the Florida Public Radio Emergency Network and South Carolina Emergency Information Network. He combines his skills as a software developer and a meteorologist to deliver web applications, plugins, and widgets to partner stations. He also has been interviewed many times on NPR shows, like “Here and Now” and “Morning Edition”, often when a hurricane threatens the coast. He contributes audio and web narratives that are widely distributed in both states. The two statewide networks utilize modern weather graphics display systems, which he (not surprisingly) maintains.

Future Work

Ray says his next challenge is in the realms of cloud computing and artificial intelligence. He has started coursework in Amazon Web Services (AWS) and endeavors to earn a AWS Associate Architect Certification in early 2022.