Dr. Greg Postel

Dr. Postel was born in Philadelphia and raised in Princeton, New Jersey. Like many weather enthusiasts, his fascination with the skies began early in life. But it wasn't a particular storm that got him hooked; it was the everyday weather. "Wind blowing through the trees captured my imagination from day one, literally. I could waste endless hours watching the anemometer dial in my room, wondering how high it would go, no joke. Afternoon naps on the back porch as an infant may have had everything to do with that." Perhaps not surprisingly, installing meteorological equipment in his backyard and keeping daily climate records were his favorite childhood hobbies.

Dr. Postel was fortunate to live just down the street from a legendary weather historian. David Ludlum, who founded Weatherwise magazine and served as a lead forecaster for the Allied Forces during World War II, mentored Greg early on. "Not only did he share fascinating stories about great weather events of the past, but he also encouraged me to plan ahead for a future in meteorology. He basically told me to get my Math and Physics down in college, and then go to graduate school. So I did."

After majoring in mathematics in college, he earned an M.S. and Ph.D. in Atmospheric Sciences from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. There, he studied "pretty much anything I could get my hands on." When not hitting the books, Greg tracked tornadoes and hurricanes, at times traveling thousands of miles for a single storm. "There were a solid 2 decades in there where I logged a ton of miles. But I really learned a lot tracking with experts in the field, beginning with my brief time as an undergraduate at Oklahoma in the late 1980s."

Dr. Postel's strong interest in tropical weather led him to a post-doctoral scientist position in Wisconsin, where he studied the development of tropical cyclones from African wave disturbances. A decade-long stint in the weather derivatives sector led Greg and his family to Kansas City (a place he also calls, "home"), where he helped direct weather-risk management operations, focusing on weather predictability and forecast uncertainty. And most recently, he was the "Tropical Weather Expert" for the Washington Post's Capital Weather Gang, and an on-camera meteorologist in Lawrence, Kansas.

Dr. Postel enjoys traveling, taking his daughter to swim meets, and “playing his drums as loudly as possible."

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