The Storm Seer: Mish Michaels, Ed.M.’95

Photo by Boston Herald/John Wilcox

For many New Englanders and weather junkies, Mish Michaels is a familiar face. A meteorologist with nearly 20 years of forecasting under her belt, she has been on a tornado chase in Oklahoma, on a flight into Hurricane Isabel, and to the 6,288-foot summit of New Hampshire’s Mount Washington in mid-winter. While Michaels has spent the bulk of her career on Boston TV stations like WBZ and WHDH, she has also been on the nationally syndicated Weather Channel show, Atmospheres.

“I always was fascinated by weather,” Michaels says.

Some of her earliest memories involve the weather, like watching a tornado unfold in Maryland as a young girl, to obsessively watching weather forecasts on television. However, when she decided to apply to college at Cornell University, she picked animal science as a major. But then, in what she calls a moment of divine intervention — counting the seconds between thunder and lightning while eating lunch a couple weeks before starting college — she decided to change her major to science meteorology.

By 23, she landed a coveted job in the highly competitive Boston news market.

And then, after many years of working successfully as a meteorologist, Michaels decided to go back for a graduate degree. She looked no further than the Ed School.

“While working as a broadcaster, you are called upon to be an educator all the time, like when doing the forecast,” she says. “I enjoyed taking [the forecast] beyond what was happening to why. To me that’s the essence of the work. As a meteorologist, you need to be able to communicate what you know.”

Additionally, her job as a meteorologist regularly called upon her to speak to children at schools.

She enrolled in the Technology, Innovation, and Education Program, which she credits with being a game changer in her career.

“I became a much better writer and it really added depth to my oral presentation,” Michaels says, noting it also inspired her to help launch a publication called The Weather Almanac and take on an adjunct lecturer position at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell. “Reframing what I know was born out of my work at the Ed School.”

Though Michaels left her position as a television meteorologist in 2009 to focus on raising her now-5-year-old daughter, she continues to funnel her enthusiasm for weather and education. As part of a new business venture, she launched a children’s clothing line called Natural Cloud Cover. The 100 percent organic t-shirts and onesies are themed around — what else? — the weather. Michaels says she was always giving weather-related gifts to friends and had the idea of weather-themed t-shirts for some time. An artist and watercolorist, Michaels designs the t-shirts, which feature phrases like “Official Snow Taster” and “Rainy Day Puddle Jumper.” At the heart of the venture is her desire to get kids talking about the weather and perhaps spark another child’s passion for science. Five percent of sales go to the Blue Hill Meteorological Observatory, a Massachusettsbased science center geared toward education.

As far as what the future holds for Michaels and a potential return to television, she says it remains to be seen.

“I miss the excitement and the intensity, but most of all the learning,” Michaels says. “Every time I forecast a storm, I’m always learning and I always want to know more.” — Jill Anderson