Alex Sosnowski

Well, I first became interested in the weather in the 1960s while watching giant snowstorms in the Northeast. I was at an aunt's house in "Weatherly" Pennsylvania during a vicious thunderstorm that dropped 3 inches of pea-sized hail. We made snow cones! Lightning hit a telephone pole in the back of the house;another strike hit a pole in the front of the house. A year or two later my home was destroyed by the swollen waters of the Susquehanna River during Agnes in 1972 in Kingston, Pa. So, I guess God was trying to tell me something. I remember hearing Elliot Abrams and John Kocet on WARM radio in Scranton soon after that, as well as seeing Dr. Joel Myers, Dr. Joe Sobel, Elliot and Mike Steinberg on Weather World in the mid-1970s… which pretty much solidified the whole deal.

I also remember having a terrifying experience when I hit a patch of black ice on I-80, while driving from University Park to my parents place in the early '80s. I was a student at PSU at the time and was having second thoughts about meteorology earlier that week. The experience changed my mind for good. I thought 'why weren't these roads treated?' I felt I had to do something about it… to save people's lives by keeping them safe and forewarned.