David Neal
Weekend Meteorologist
David's love of weather began as a child growing up in Northeast Alabama in Gadsden chasing storms and seeing the aftermath of what tornadoes can do in the South.
"The first tornado I saw was on the proverbial trip to Grandmother's house near Snead's Crossroads and several cotton haulers had just been twisted up and thrown into the road ahead of us on Highway 278. It had only been minutes before we drove up because the sky was still raining, or in this case ‘snowing’ small pieces of cotton from the sky as we neared and truly from that point on the intrigue never cooled inside of me. I was in complete awe of what had just happened on a few seconds before we arrived."
In 1983 David went on to Florida State University, one of the top meteorology schools in the country, and began working for the meteorology department there while attending school. There he studied and chased several of his first hurricanes, ironically, with one of his classmates who is now Dr. Jack Bevin, one of the seven Lead Hurricane Forecasters with the National Hurricane Center in Coral Gables, Florida.
David was soon asked to be a weather consultant at the local television station in Tallahassee. A few months later, he was asked to become the full-time weather anchor for WTXL-TV as a sophomore in college, (no pressure there with dozens of critical meteorology students and professors in your ear everyday!) which he held for two years, until he graduated. After graduation, he accepted a position as Chief Meteorologist at WDEF-TV in Chattanooga, Tennessee. David then moved on to be Chief Meteorologist for the Fox television affiliate in Birmingham, which he held for 11 years.
"This summer (2008), I took my second recon flight, but first into a major hurricane, actually just a few weeks again because way back in my days of being a weatherman in Tennessee a young man used to drop by the station to see me because he was an aspiring meteorologist. Today, he is with the Air Force Reserve and has been flying into hurricanes for years and asking me to go time and time again. Finally I had the chance to go, and we flew into Hurricane Ike literally just a few miles off of the coast of Cuba and for nearly a 13-hour mission across the Gulf and over 3,000 miles. I learned so much once again from someone who said I taught him a little something a long time ago. He actually later came back to work with me there at that very station!”
“In late spring 2008, I went with some young men on a ‘chase’ and captured a tornado on tape in Arkansas from the very beginning stage, just as a small spinning area of dust in a field behind me, to what eventually became a large F-3 tornado in front of me and just brushing a community of hundreds of people. Having been on television for over 20 years reporting that kind of thing I can tell you that I only wish I had seen one like this first. I think I could have been more succinct all these years. I watched it LIVE in front of me actually stirring dirt in the newly plowed field, and then looking down on my laptop radar before me as well with all the same radar data we have on air each time we stand before you during severe coverage. There are many things that I know now since then, that I didn't know before just because of that one event. Seeing both of them at the same time was almost like a scene from a movie. I guarantee I pass those learned elements along from now on when I explain radar data from this day forward.”
David is married and has four children.
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