Meet the Meteorologists Behind Treasured Haven Farm Weather
Welcome! We hope you are enjoying Treasured Haven Farm’s Weather Resource website! I’m Elise Johnson Schultz, eldest daughter of Pete and Peg Johnson owners of Treasured Haven Farm. Along with my husband, Chris Schultz, we serve as Treasured Haven Farm’s personal Meteorologists. We each currently hold two degrees in Atmospheric Science/Meteorology (working on the third) and have a great passion for the weather. Read on to learn more about us and how we’ve ended up where we are at today.
Chris Schultz
In addition to maintaining Treasured Haven Farm Weather, Chris also helps out with the creating recipes (trust me he’s a great cook!) and helping out on the farm whenever we visit.
Chris is currently studying lightning and severe weather from a ground-based and satellite perspective at the UAHuntsville working towards his Ph.D. in Atmospheric Science. In 2008,
he earned his Master of Science in Atmospheric Science from UAHuntsville. His thesis consisted of relating the occurrence of severe weather to lightning “jumps” or increases in lightning flashrate within a storm. Prior to moving south to Alabama, Chris earned his Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Missouri in Soil and Atmospheric Sciences.
Throughout his college career, Chris has been involved with local chapters of the American Meteorological Society (AMS) and the National Weather Association (NWA). Chris also serves on the AMS Local Chapters Affairs Committee, the student member of the AMS Atmospheric Electricity Committee, and is a member of the AMS Student Conference Planning Committee.
Chris became interested in weather at the age of 6 when a F5 tornado struck Plainfield, IL (about ~20 miles west of his home) killing 29 people and injuring 350 others. He listened to the coverage worried about his father who worked just beyond Plainfield in another western Chicago Suburb. Chris is now passionate about severe weather and hopes his work with lightning jumps and severe weather can help aid in increasing lead time for severe thunderstorm and tornado warnings.
Elise Johnson Schultz
My passion for weather began even before I can remember. Growing up on the farm, I learned from birth the intimate relationship between farming and the weather. At the age of four, I told my parents that I wanted to study the weather when I grew up. I decided then that I wanted to become a doctor of weather even though I couldn’t even say the word meteorologist correctly! As I grew up, my parents were very supportive of my dreams. While others would tell me (or them) it was just a phase, mom and dad were buying me weather books and taking me to meet meteorologists at the Minnesota State Fair. Every chance I got, whether it be for a school or 4-H project, I would find a weather topic to research and present to help educate others. I never changed my mind and 20+ years later I’m a meteorologist working on my doctorate.
As with everyone else, weather good and bad is a part of our daily lives. When I was not quite 2 years old, we had a scare when a storm developed fast and formed a small tornado that passed through the farm causing minor damage. The winds severely rocked the small mobile home we lived in. Mom was certain it would flip. Dad was milking cows and ducked between cows and the barn creaked around him. The most notable weather event to significantly impact our lives on the farm was on June 15, 1998. Severe wind producing storms were moving westward into east central Minnesota in the early evening hours after a typical June summer day. At 9:35 pm, as we were in a break between two thunderstorms, a lightning strike hit the farm house and immediately ignited a fire. (Read more on our lightning experience.) This experience focused my passion to find the secrets behind lightning in order to help save others from experiencing what my family went through began.
Another part of my story that makes my passion for weather even stronger and my goal for becoming a meteorologist even sweeter. At the age of 12, a class assignment/local contest required each student to interview a grandparent or other elderly person and write an essay. My mother encouraged me to interview my grandfather, her father, since none of the other grandchildren had ever done so for the project.
We called Grandpa up the night before the paper was due and I interviewed him. As I hung up the phone I didn’t know what to think. In the conversation, my mother and I had learned that Grandpa had wanted to be a meteorologist when he graduated high school but because of WWII he had to stay home on the family farm and that is what he did for the rest of his life. When I read my 1st place story at the awards luncheon with Grandpa in the audience, I saw tears in his eyes when I finished with “someday I’ll tell him what its like being a meteorologist.”
Time played its hand when four months before the house was hit by lightning, Grandpa left this world. His body had lost its battle with cancer. Days before he died, he told me one night when I was feeling down, “Don’t ever let anyone tell you what to do. Do what you really want to do.” On the morning of February 10, 1998, I woke up knowing that Grandpa had died and with the vision of me reading the same essay in front of family and friends at his funeral. Moments later mom walked in confirming my dream and asking if I would be willing to read the essay. I did read the essay and remained strong until the last line, “Someday I will tell him what its like being a meteorologist.” I am now not only living my dreams but my grandfather’s as well.
My story is what drives me to find the secrets behind lightning and severe storms and find ways to better predict them in order to give people more warning to protect themselves. I also believe it is very important to provide people the knowledge about weather in order for them to practice effective weather safety measures. I enjoy sharing my story with children and hearing how they have gone home and discussed weather safety with their family.
Each day I continue to live my passion and further build on my story.
