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Andy 
Ervin
"BlackCloud"
Who am I??
BlackCloud?...Hailboy?...
To many I am Andy Ervin, a meteorologist and one heck of a nice guy, but also, I'm one of the most passionate people they've ever run across. I've been in love with weather since I knew who I was, and since then it just keeps growing. I grew up in the upper Midwest on the northern end of "tornado alley". This area of the country gets **Lots** of nighttime thunderstorms. More than anything else, this probably lead me into a life of weather. I am a light sleeper!! To my geeky knowledge, I never slept through a single thunderstorms as a boy!! My father, who is wise in the world of science, helped me understand what this noise was and calm my fears. I was set to learn to love it from the start!!
I began seriously chasing at Iowa State University in 1997. No, I did NOT get my ideas from Twister!! I had always been somewhat satisfied in letting the storms come to me, but then I took a research job at the PIRCS laboratory in Ames, Iowa. A great research job, but it also could be described with TWO WORDS......NO WINDOWS!! I couldn't take the sterile walls and began chasing storms down.
After a few busts I saw this July '97 tornadic storm near Le Mars, Iowa with Chris Anderson and Matthew Johnson of Iowa State University.
((( I was hooked )))
