When Tropical Storm Fay was expected to hit the Florida coast this past summer, senior Andrew Kerr got a call from CBS producers in Atlanta asking for his advice.
They wanted to know whether national weatherman Dave Price ’87 should stay in Daytona Beach or drive elsewhere in search of more severe conditions. Kerr, a weather intern at the network’s New York City offices, checked the radar and suggested that Price travel south to Melbourne, because the eye of the storm—an area of limited activity—appeared headed for Daytona.
The worst of the storm moved farther north of Price’s broadcast that evening, but Melbourne was still deluged. The broadcast showed the forecaster trudging through a couple feet of water because of Kerr’s decision.
A meteorology major from Staten Island, Kerr has been interested in weather since eighth grade earth science.
“My teacher was a little unorthodox,” he remembers. “For the meteorology section he got up on a desk with the globe and walked around the room on our desks to illustrate the apparent motion of the sun during winter and summer.”
Last spring, his mother called from home and told him about an internship with the New York City CBS weather desk. “She is always looking out for me,” he said.
At Cornell, Kerr has been on the track team, lives in the Risley Residential College for the Creative and Performing Arts, enjoys creative and narrative writing classes, and works at Louie’s Lunch Truck on north campus.
— Marissa Fessenden
