My name is Scott Kaplan, and I'm a meteorology graduate from the University of Massachusetts-Lowell. 

People may wonder why I chose this profession, since it is one of the most ridiculed professions there is (aside from being a Major League Baseball Umpire). Well, when I was in first grade, we got sent home from school one Monday afternoon (February 6, 1978), because it was snowing sideways. When I woke up the next morning, there was over three feet of snow on the ground that wasn't there the previous morning. Two things immediately popped into my head: 1 "We're not going to school for a long, LONG time!" and 2. "How can we get another one?" Well, I've been searching for over 20 years, and still haven't answered #2 yet. (#1 turned out to be correct. February vacation lasted 3 weeks that year).

I've set up a list of links to the pages that I use most often when looking up weather data on the Internet or making a forecast. This includes links to various sources of data for the Northeast and the tropics, and links to pages that contain the many forecast models that are widely available. While this is by no means a complete list of every weather link out there, it is the ones that I find most useful.

Besides weather, my other passions are hockey, baseball, Whatifsports.com, anything 80s, and music.

I compete in several fantasy baseball, hockey, and football leagues, and even run one on my own. In nearly every league I compete in, my team name is the Springfield Atoms. I took it from The Simpsons, which has to be one of the best TV shows to come along in the last 15 years.

Hockey is my favorite though. I grew up near Boston, so obviously, I'm a Bruins fan. (Gretzky was great, but let's face it, he's no Bobby Orr). I also am a Pittsburgh Penguins fan. This started when I began following a young player named Mario Lemieux, one of the most amazing hockey players I've ever seen. The other is Jaromir Jagr, the best hockey player in the world today (and anchor of my fantasy team for 7 years). Then of course, there is the UMass-Lowell River Hawks. They compete in Hockey East, the nation's premier College Hockey conference.

Well, this is getting long, so I'll end it here. If you've got any comments, please feel free to send me some e-mail.

Last Updated: Tuesday October 28, 2008