Staff Writer
CARIBOU — The newest member of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration office in Caribou is the city’s own homegrown Matthew Doody.
Aroostook Republican photo/Natalie Bazinet
Born and raised in Caribou, Matthew Doody returned to the area after earning his masters degree at SUNY Albany to work in the Caribou office of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association
Having graduated from the State University of New York (SUNY) at Albany with a bachelor’s of science and Master’s of science in meteorology, Doody had an interview with the NOAA in late January.
“It was very exciting,” he said. “The fact that I had gotten the interview was a very exciting thing on its own because it's not easy to get into the Weather Service; just getting the interview was a great step forward.”
Even now, Doody is still very excited about his job.
“Everybody here is great to work with — that's one nice thing — every single person in this office is incredibly easy to get along with and just great people to work with and work for,” Doody said. “To have that kind of relationship with everybody is unbelievable, and just the fact that I'm working in my field is a great thing; I do enjoy when things get kind of busy and [the weather gets] little more severe — we'll see more of that with summer time,” he explained, admitting that he could go on for a very long time about everything he liked at his new job.
Though he has his master’s degree is meteorology, he is currently titled an intern at the NOAA, a term that Doody finds to be slightly misleading.
“When you start at the Weather Service, you basically start as what they call an intern, which I personally believe is kind of a misnomer because when you think of intern, you think of someone who's basically going and getting coffee for everyone,” he said with a smile, “but really you're a forecaster in training for the Weather Service; you're learning the trade of being a forecaster and you're following the forecasters who have been here for a while, picking their brains and learning the ropes to build up a good set of forecast skills. You can learn so much just by listening to [the forecasters] discuss the weather,” he added.
While Doody does spend a good deal of time learning from those who have gone before him, he also spends his time knee-deep in data.
“[NOAA] has an observation program; we have spotters and we have people who send us data all the time, so as an intern, a lot of your job is looking at and gathering data; we have different measurements that we take on-site, including ozone observations and evaporation measurements,” he explained. “Also, when it comes to severe weather days, [interns are] the people who are on the phones calling to obtain spotter information to find out where the events are and verifying warnings,” he added. “You kind of do the observation work as well as forecasting and building up forecast skills so that down the road, you can work up to being a forecaster”.
Though Doody has strong Maine roots, he chose to obtain his education in Albany for two main reasons.
“I had heard that they had a good meteorology program, and I was looking for a meteorology school; unfortunately, nothing was really available in Maine,” Doody said. “Basically, I chose Albany out of the four colleges I applied to because having grown up in Caribou, I wanted to experience living in a bigger city for a little while. SUNY Albany is also very well known for their meteorology program, and between the two reasons, that's pretty much why I decided to go there,” he added.
Doody wasn’t always interested in being a meteorologist, though.
“I have always been interested in the weather, but it wasn't until mid high school that I really wanted to go to school for a weather-related career,” Doody remembered. “When I first entered high school, I was thinking something in medicine.”
“I've always been interested in the sciences, so I think no matter what, I was going to end up somewhere in the science field,” he added. “One of the things I recall that started my interest in weather, especially from when I was younger, was my grandmother, on my mother’s side,” Doody explained. “We had a family camp at Portage Lake, (which is still in the family), and we had this little pact that whenever a thunderstorm would wake one of us up in the middle of the night, we would wake the other up and then we'd go out onto our screened porch and just watch the storm because on the lake, you could really see everything,” he fondly recalled. “So that was kind of a big thing and that was something I always enjoyed and so that's kind of where my interest in just watching the weather and everything about it was just kind of started.”
Passionate educators also fueled his interest in the weather.
“I had two professors that I looked up to a lot and they became my mentors when I was going for my master’s,” Doody said. “They're the ones who I did the research with for my thesis — Lance Bosart, distinguished professor, and Dan Keyser, professor. They’re just incredible pioneers in the field of what they call synoptic-dynamic meteorology,” Doody described. “Basically it's the act of taking what we know about the physics of the atmosphere and the dynamics that drive it, and applying it to what we would see on weather maps while trying to link the two to understand the processes that drive everything,” he explained. “They've both been a huge help to me and I look up to them greatly; they're just extremely intellegent people and just the chance to work with them was worth it all just in that sense, so I'm thankful that I was able to have them as both the readers of my thesis and as the people who basically guided me through the whole thing,” Doody added.
Obtaining a master’s degree is no small feat, and Doody did his thesis on the study of strong anticyclones, “which is high pressure systems basically on a global scale,” he explained. “I looked at the variability of them over the last 40 years or so, trying to understand where they occur most often, what the trends have been over the past several years, and their linkages to more common localized weather, like a really strong high pressure systems particularly in the winter, is very closely linked to those real cold snaps,” Doody described. “It was basically looking at the climatology and the variability of strong high pressure systems on a global scale. I did focus a little bit more on North America just because it was closer to home, but I also tried to look at it globally too.”
While Doody is the newest NOAA employee at Caribou, he is a familiar face around the office.
“I had actually volunteered here when I was in high school and early in my college career, (when I was coming home during my summer breaks), I would come up here and volunteer and just kind of watch the forecasters and shadow them a little bit, so I knew that I enjoyed it,” he said. “I'm very blessed that I got the job here, which is where I grew up.”
Living in Albany for three years while he got his master’s was an experience, but Doody is glad to be home.
“To be honest, everyone [here] does seem friendlier,” he admitted. “I remember in high school, my friends and I would walk to Ouellette’s at 3 a.m. to go get some food or something like that; in New York, you wouldn't even think of doing that in some places. It is a slower paced way of life [in Aroostook County] and I like that,” Doody added. “I really did want to try to come back to the Maine if I could; most of that was driven by the fact that I want to be close to my family and friends, but also, I'm a Mainer at heart and I wanted to come back home.”
