Matthew Flournoy, Ph.D.

I hail from the Boston, MA area, home of great craft beer,  good sports teams, and Nor’easters. It was probably these massive snowstorms, associated school cancellations, and watching Twister during summertime thunderstorms that piqued my interest in meteorology.

I earned my B.S. in meteorology from the Pennsylvania State University in 2015 and M.S. and Ph.D. from the University of Oklahoma in 2017 and 2020. After working as a postdoctoral fellow for a couple years, I recently began working as a Research Scientist with CIWRO in Norman, OK. My work focuses on understanding how storm-environment interactions and intra-storm features influence tornado potential using modeling, observational, and theoretical approaches. These “research-to-operations” initiatives continue to yield novel techniques for better understanding and predicting severe thunderstorm processes in real-time. I have been involved in numerous field campaigns to collect observations near and within severe thunderstorms, including PECAN, MiniMPEX, RiVorS, and TORUS. I have also taught an undergraduate/graduate course on applying severe weather theory to forecasting (which coincidentally was taught during storm season!). Students derive equations, participate in group forecast discussions, and issue severe weather warnings in a “real-time” forecast setting. I also mentor several students, whose work broadly focuses on better understanding severe thunderstorm processes and warning performance related to tornadoes. They are working to answer questions like: what processes lead to mesovortex and tornado development within supercells and QLCSs? How might these processes differ in different, more predictable background environments? How could we use new radar-derived real-time variables to help predict these events? How do false alarm rates and tornado warning lead times vary as a tornadic storm progresses in time? I enjoy guiding these students in their research and very much look forward to the outcomes of their hard work!

On the side, I enjoy being a cat dad (Diego on the left, Mogli on the right), drinking malty beverages at 405 Brewing, blowing my whistle at soccer fields across Oklahoma, and playing piano. In this case, talking back to the referee won’t result in a yellow card! Please feel free to get in touch with me on the contact page.