ABOUT ME
I guess I will tell you all a little bit about myself. My name is Russel Parsons, and I currently reside in Pittsburg, Kansas, a town with a population of about 19,000 people. I'm a police officer with the Pittsburg State University Police Department, and I have been employed with this department for eleven years now. I have also worked for the City Of Pittsburg, Kansas Police Department and the City Of Arma, Kansas Police Department, for a total of seventeen years of law enforcement experience. I have really enjoyed being a police officer, since I'am always doing something different everyday that I go to work. I also really enjoy being outdoors, and the majority of my time at work is spent outside.
As you can tell by looking at my website, I call myself a weather enthusiast, a storm chaser/observer and an amateur photographer. My love for severe weather goes back to the evening of March 15, 1982. I would have been eleven years old, and I saw my first tornado just outside of Strauss, Kansas. The whole situation was kind of scary at the time, since the tornado occurred at night. My mother, my sister and I were on our way home from Parsons, Kansas. If we would have been about five minutes sooner to the Strauss, Kansas area, the tornado would have likely struck our car, and I may not have been here today to tell this story. The tornado was well illuminated by the intense lightning, and it was only about a mile ahead of us, as we continued to our residence, located just outside of McCune, Kansas.
Ever since that mid March evening, I have had something deep inside me that has made me search out severe thunderstorms. After I graduated from Girard, Kansas High School, I decided I wanted to become a meteorologist, and someday work for the National Weather Service. In August 1990, I enrolled at the University of Kansas so I could work towards a degree in Atmospheric Science. I took courses such as Introduction To Meteorology, Unusual Weather, and Weather Forecasting. I was also a member of the University of Kansas Severe Storm Intercept Team, which is where my love for storm chasing started. Well, after about a year of course work in the Atmospheric Science program, I determined that things were not going to work out for me in this field of study. However, I decided to stay at the University of Kansas, and I obtained a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Crime And Delinquency Studies in 1994. I got my first job as a police officer, with the Arma, Kansas Police Department in 1995.
Currently, I keep busy with storm chasing, and all types of photography. I volunteer with the Springfield, Missouri National Weather Service Office as a severe weather spotter. I also volunteer as a local coordinator for the Community Collaborative Rain, Hail & Snow Network, also known as CoCoRaHS. I'am responsible for the Southeast Kansas Counties of Cherokee, and Crawford. CoCoRaHS is a volunteer organization, whose members report precipitation amounts via an internet website.
Well, that has been a brief summary of my life in a nutshell. I hope you enjoy browsing my website, as I continually update it with interesting links and information.
God Bless And Take Care,
Russel Parsons
