What sparked your interest in weather and meteorology?

I was always interested in the weather page of the newspaper when I was little. I’d even make fake weather forecasts for fun. Got more into climates and actual observations and data ~2014

Thinking back it's always been convective events. First time was in 1999 when I lived in SE England. On 3rd July there was a stroboscopic lightning storm that woke me up at 2AM. The lightning was so fierce and constant the outdoors was bright green fields/trees and buildings lit up like daytime, and the strobe effect combined with squally wind and rain create a most peculiar appearance, which would probably cause an epileptic fit in a person with the condition (yes, really). Never seen lightning like it, before or since, anywhere ever, and only once in a video on youtube somewhere in the USA Midwest. Later that year there was a storm in France I witnessed, where the lightning was right overhead for a good time, and blew up all the power in the house we were in, a lightbulb actually blew out of a lamp like a rocket and the storm could wake the dead. I guess these events started it all. Then in 2003 I moved to Buxton, and there were no real storms so I began to forget my interest in the weather. When I lived in Lincoln though a tornadic thunderstorm in September 2006 re-awoke my interest after I got caught outside in it. The super close CG lightning and ground shaking thunder was awe inspiring to me, though the other guys I with seemed a bit scared. Severe T storms are rare in the UK (only because thunderstorms are in the first place), and on the latter occasion before the storm broke I remember thinking how awfully dark it was for mid-day, but not thinking why. It was dark in my apartment before I left, then I met up in a bar and I remember wondering why we could barely see each other at the table we were sitting at (the interior lights were off for some reason, but the building had big windows).

Early the next year 2007 I began doing weather records that I still do now.

So that's it really, looking back it's been generally convective stuff that interested me.

Lol at people here saying 2013-13. For me it started way back in the late 90s when I was a little kid. I was interested in temperatures and temperature differences in the world. I envied my relatives back in 2000 because they had a 24 hour weather channel and we didn't. I just loved weather forecasts growing up. It was not until 2013 when I found out that there are other people like me, on City Data. So I joined the forum. 😁

Ha! Me too! Forgot to mention that. I'd get a hold of the newspaper just to read the weather section! 😂

I can't remember a time when I was not interested in the weather/climate.
I still have the thermometer I used to hang in the shade of a Liquidambar Tree ( (Liquidambar styraciflua ) growing in our front yard, as a 10 year old, and I would dutifully record the temps. Any days over 100f were especially important...lol

I'm fortunate to have worked in every State and Territory of AU, and whilst I dont claim to have a precise technical or scientific knowledge of climatology, I have a reasonably comprehensive collection of historical data/records re AU climates and I have always been a keen observer and photographer of local weather events.
I have kept rainfall records since I arrived in Darwin in 1980.

2006. I was 10-11 years old and I was going on a trip to NZ with my mum. She told me to look up the weather for our holiday so that we could pack the appropriate clothes. I remember searching for the weather and just becoming enamoured with all the numbers, facts and figures. We did a tour for some of the trip and I annoyed some of the people there with random weather facts because I was excited about what I was learning lol.

I joined CD in 2014, but I had been paying attention to the forecasts online, on teletext and on the TV since that time in 2006.

I also witnessed a flood there at Arthurs Pass and apparently someone died in it so that was something

I didn't care about forecasts as a kid, but from a very young age I was fascinated by the different environments (forest, deserts, mediterranean sclerophyllous vegetation etc.) that different climates can shape. In 2002, I got my first Atlas with a world map of climate zones and climate diagrams, which was my new bible, and a few years later I started to explore the Walter & Lieth climate charts on the German Wikipedia.
My interest in actual weather observations and forecasts came a bit later, maybe around 2007-2008, when I started rooting for snow in winter and summer heat waves (I also started gardening around that time, which hepled to develop my interest in weather). However, what really sparked my interest was the fantastic year 2010, when we had nice heat waves in summer, and especially one of the coldest and snowiest Decembers in recent decades.

August 1999. I was six years old and was watching the news with my dad on a weekend morning when the weather forecast came on. Six-year-old me was so depressed that it was only supposed to be in the 60s that day, which I knew even at the time was chilly for August and cooler than I wanted it to be! (Thankfully, it hit 90 again less than a week later, so I was back to my usual happy-go-lucky self at that age.) I became obsessed with heat and storms from then onward, checking out weather-related books from the library, watching TWC every morning for the forecast before school, and trying to find the perfect spot in the world where it was hot and sunny every day and it DIDN'T get cool in August! Now it's almost a quarter-century later and I'm still obsessed with heat and storms.

In 2001, I was in third grade and my mom worked the before-school program at my school, so we were there every morning by 6:30. I would grab a sheet of paper and some markers, make a weather forecast each day, and set it on the table in the front of the room so that parents would see it as they dropped their kids off in the morning. I made my own forecasts based on a combination of what I'd seen on TV and my own intuition, and I actually ended up being relatively accurate!


Same here. I was the world's biggest heat wanker as a kid haha!

I think part of why most people are saying 2013 or so is because most of the posters on here nowadays weren't alive yet when you and I got into weather stuff for the first time.