Leanne Blind-Doskocil

Full CV here

ORCID iD: 0009-0000-3324-3330

Education

M.S. Atmospheric Sciences, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (2023)

B.S. Meteorology, summa cum laude, Texas A&M University (2021)

Interests

Meteorological Instrumentation, Field Research, Severe Convection, Radar Meteorology, Forecasting, and Community Outreach

Biography

Howdy! I am the Staff Meteorologist in the Department of Geography, Meteorology, and Environmental Science at Valparaiso University. I maintain the meteorological instrumentation at the university, which includes a C-band Doppler radar that is currently under maintenance, a campus mesonet tower, weather balloon launching systems, and much more. I am also the main contact for departmental outreach; if you would like to visit the department, have us come to your career day, or want to know more about yearly outreach events that we hold, please contact me! I co-lead the Convective Field Study where students have the opportunity to observe storm structure and dynamics in the Great Plains for 11 days at the end of May.

Field research is my happy place! I have participated in various field campaigns including the Boundary-layer Evolution and Structure of Tornadoes (BEST); the Propagation, Evolution, and Rotation in Linear Storms (PERiLS); and the Verification of the Origins of Rotation in Tornadoes EXperiment-Southeast Mesoscale 18-19 (VORTEX-SE Meso18-19) projects. I was also most recently a Co-PI on a grant that studied the evolution of the planetary boundary layer during the 2024 solar eclipse. Observations were made by launching weather balloons and by deploying the University of Wisconsin–Madison Space Science and Engineering Center Portable Atmospheric Research Center (SPARC).

For my master’s degree, I researched tornadic quasi-linear convective systems (QLCSs). I am primarily interested in the factors that cause a QLCS mesovortex to become tornadic and how QLCS forecasting techniques can be improved. I assisted in assembling and operating the quickly-deployable C-band On Wheels (COW) radar during the PERiLS field campaign. I used in-situ pod and COW radar data to determine the characteristics that differentiate tornadic from nontornadic mesovortices within linear systems, and a manuscript on this work is currently in review.

External Links/Resources

• Valparaiso University’s Online Weather Center
  • Real-time data from our campus mesonet tower
  • GFS 4-panel
  • Forecast by our senior meteorology students for Valparaiso, IN
• Follow Valparaiso Meteorology on X (@ValpoWeather) and on Facebook
• Summer Opportunities for Undergraduate Students
  • Please add internship opportunities for the coming school year/update as you see fit!

Publications

Blind-Doskocil, L., R. J. Trapp, S. W. Nesbitt, M. Parker, K. A. Kosiba, and J. Wurman, 2024: Characteristics of tornadic and nontornadic QLCS mesovortices observed using radar and pod data from PERiLS. Weather and Forecasting, in review.

Kosiba, K. A., and Coauthors, 2024: The Propagation, Evolution, and Rotation in Linear Storms (PERiLS) Project. Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc., 105, E1768–E1799, https://doi.org/10.1175/BAMS-D-22-0064.1.

Recent Presentations

Blind-Doskocil, L., R. J. Trapp, S. W. Nesbitt, M. Parker, K. A. Kosiba, and J. Wurman, 2024: Characteristics of tornadic and nontornadic QLCS mesovortices observed using radar and pod data from PERiLS. 31st Conference on Severe Local Storms, Virginia Beach, VA.

Blind-Doskocil, L., R. J. Trapp, S. W. Nesbitt, M. Parker, K. A. Kosiba, and J. Wurman, 2023: Characteristics of tornadic and nontornadic QLCS mesovortices observed using radar and pod data from PERiLS. PERiLS Science Meeting, Memphis, TN.

Blind-Doskocil, L., R. J. Trapp, S. W. Nesbitt, K. A. Kosiba, J. Wurman, and M. D. Parker, 2023: Radar-based characteristics of tornadic and nontornadic QLCS mesovortices during PERiLS. 40^th Conference on Radar Meteorology, Minneapolis, MN. Oral.

Blind-Doskocil, L., R. Trapp, and S. Nesbitt, 2023: Characteristics of tornadic and nontornadic QLCS mesovortices during PERiLS. Department of Atmospheric Sciences Seminar, Urbana, IL. Oral.

Blind-Doskocil, L., R. Trapp, and S. Nesbitt, 2023: The differentiating characteristics of tornadic, winddamaging, and non-damaging QLCS mesovortices during PERiLS 2022. 103rd AMS Annual Meeting, Denver, CO. Poster.

Blind-Doskocil, L., R. Trapp, and S. Nesbitt, 2022: Evaluating the predictability of QLCSs and embedded TLVs using the HRRR. 30th Conference on Severe Local Storms, Santa Fe, NM. Poster.

In the News

High-Tech Eyes on the Sky, March 2023

‘Tornado Alley’ Storms Becoming Deadlier and More Frequent, April 2023

External Service

Doppler On Wheels (DOW) Advisory Board Member, 2024 – Present

American Meteorological Society (AMS) Radar Scientific and Technological Activities Commission (STAC) Committee Member, 2023 – Present