About My Work & Studies
Hi, I’m Devin Henrickson. I live and work in Lake Havasu City, Arizona, where dust-choked downdrafts, lightning-laced outflows, and towering monsoon storms are part of the summer routine. I’m finishing a B.S. in Geoscience with a concentration in meteorology, and I spend most of my time digging into the inner workings of the North American monsoon—tracking how heat, terrain, and moisture team up to build those afternoon thunderheads that can turn a blue-sky day into a wall of wind and rain in minutes.
My research blends hands-on field work with plenty of screen time. I maintain a small network of weather stations and cameras around western Arizona, pull NEXRAD Level II radar and GOES satellite data into AWIPS CAVE, and crunch everything in Python so I can spot the subtle mesoscale signals that warn us a microburst or flash flood is brewing. I publish the data sets and code on this site, together with easy-to-read summaries and graphics, because I believe open science leads to better questions and quicker answers.
Beyond the numbers, I work with local emergency managers, fire departments, and radio operators to turn research into action—whether that means drafting clearer storm briefs, refining spotter training, or stress-testing our alert workflows before the clouds build over the Hualapai Mountains. If you check the blog you’ll also find case studies, equipment notes, and the occasional deep dive into how irrigation systems handle monsoon surge runoff.
Everything here points toward a single goal: faster, sharper, and more useful thunderstorm warnings for the communities that live under these skies. If that mission resonates with you, feel free to explore the data library, sign up for field-project updates, or just drop me a note—I’m always up for a good storm chat.
As A Student
School is my proving ground. I’m finishing up a Bachelor of Science in Geoscience, and I treat every course—whether it is Synoptic Meteorology or a Humanities seminar on culture and sustainability—as another lens for seeing storms more clearly. Lecture notes never stay on the page for long; I run them through Python, test them against radar loops at three in the morning, and then drag the ideas out to the desert to see if they hold up under real thunderheads.
Because I have ADHD, I build routines that keep the gears turning: short, focused coding sprints, quick sketchnotes of complex equations, and plenty of field breaks to recalibrate. The extra effort pays off. I have turned class projects into live tools—like a monsoon‐trigger script that pings local emergency managers when CAPE values spike, and a series of open-access data dashboards that classmates now use for lab work.
I also lean on the humanities side of my degree. Writing essays about art and identity forces me to slow down, ask different questions, and translate technical jargon into stories that non-meteorologists can use. That skill shows up in my storm briefs, in the public talks I give around Lake Havasu City, and in the learning modules I post here for fellow students who may be wrestling with the same material.
Grades matter, but what really counts is whether the work leaves the classroom better than it arrived. If you ever need a study partner, project collaborator, or just someone to swap late-night radar screenshots with, reach out—I am probably already charting the next outflow boundary with a mug of coffee in hand.