Julie Adolphson is the Meteorologist in Charge of the National Weather Service Office in Pleasant Hill/Kansas City, Missouri, the Federal Government office who issues all of the severe weather warnings 24 hours a day to over 2 million people in 44 counties in northern Missouri and eastern Kansas. Before arriving in Kansas City in 2006, she did the same job in Glasgow, Montana, which served an area the size of the state of Indiana, but had more livestock than people! In fact, the nearest shopping mall was 300 miles away! Before Montana, Julie lived in Indiana, not far from where she grew up in southern Michigan. She spent 4 years prior to that in Colorado, teaching at the National Center for Atmospheric Research; which was a good place to learn the latest on tornadoes! She chased an F-5 tornado with the team that the movie “Twister” was portraying; one day after Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton left Oklahoma to return to Hollywood to finish filming the movie.  Before her exciting return into the weather world, she was a Space Physicist in the US Air Force, where she was the last investigator for the Roswell, NM claim of alien landing! She was the chief of space physics programs, so she spent a lot of time with NASA scientists and engineers, including a fascinating trip to England to help in the design of a space tracking radar. Before that job, she lived in Italy for 3 years, and was the Commander of a solar observatory, where they watched the sun because explosions send high energy to the earth and disrupt many important systems.

Julie had many adventures in the USAF, including flying aboard a mission control airplane all over the world. She studied a lot of math and science in school and has college degrees in Meteorology and Space Physics. Julie has no greater joy than her family…she has four boys, ages 10 to 23, and a great husband who works in an aerosol lab in Drexel, MO. She’s excited to share some fun stories and spark your interest in science and math!