TUPELO, Miss. (AP) - Growing up in the middle of Tornado Alley, WTVA’s chief meteorologist Matt Laubhan was terrified of severe weather.
His childhood home in Russell, Kansas, was across the street from a tornado siren. When the city tested them every Monday, Laubhan’s stay-at-home mom would run down to the basement with him and his brother in tow.
His mother was hyper conscious of the weather. A day or so before predicted severe weather was expected to arrive, she’d take pictures off the walls and move anything of value to the basement.
Over time, Laubhan fed his fear with information; eventually, it turned into a passion.
“Being scared to death means there are conversations,” Laubhan said. “It’s kind of like how you sometimes have a child that has a defeatable cancer as a kid, beats it, and becomes a doctor. You find yourself exposed to it extensively because of that.”
Laubhan has now worked 17 years as a meteorologist - seven years in Lubbock, Texas, and 10 in Tupelo, as of April 4.
THE BLUR OF TORNADO SEASON
Tornado season in Northeast Mississippi typically ramps up in March, peaks in mid-April and slumps off quickly going into May, according to Laubhan.
On paper, Laubhan is scheduled to work weekdays from 2:30 p.m. until around 11, but that changes during tornado season. As severe weather events become more frequent, the station is often forced to cut into scheduled programming with hours-long radar-scanning marathons.
Unsurprisingly, the typical day during tornado season is a blur for Laubhan.
“I can enjoy nice springlike days in February, but by the time they arrive in March and April, they’re usually a day or two before storms, and I’m busy coordinating the plan on who we’re going to have out, who’s working, how we’re going to approach this from social media and discussing what could happen with everybody,” Laubhan said.
Attempting to strike a balance between underwarning and overwarning viewers before a severe weather event, and dealing with the fatigue that can set in when threats don’t pan out, is a challenge. The goal is to avoid having people become complacent when the next round of storms rolls through.
“It’s just like if you’re talking about the recruiting game for college athletes,” Laubhan said. “How many times have you had the 5-star, best quarterback that doesn’t pan out? There’s a difference between what all of the metrics say and the X-factor of reality.”
Laubhan and his wife, WTVA anchor Emily Leonard, have two children, 7-year-old Penny and 5-year-old Leo. Combining their personal and professional partnerships helps things run more smoothly during tornado season.
“When we get into these severe weather situations where I’m here at weird hours, all hours of the night, what people don’t realize is because we do work together, that means Emily is at home taking care of the kids,” Laubhan said. “She goes full-on single mom, and then when I get home and I get a day off to rest and relax from all that stuff, she’s had all that plus then she has to come in to work.”
“My wife is a saint and when people give me credit for all of the hard work, my wife is pulling double, triple duty at home and then comes in and doesn’t get the days off,” Laubhan added.
LIFE IN THE PUBLIC EYE: ‘MY BEST IS GOOD ENOUGH’
During his first decade with WTVA, Laubhan has had his share of viral moments, and has developed a large, devoted following on social media.
He said there’s a degree of pressure that exists because people have a tendency to give meteorologists more credit than they deserve.
“The reality is that we are human beings, and while we do a good job, and I would like to think we’re right way more often than we’re not, we’re far from perfect,” Laubhan said. “And we’re one day closer to making a big mistake, frankly.”
Still, every time the wind picks up, local social media is filled with funny hashtags like #ListenToLaubhan, #MattSaidGoToBed and other Laubhan memes.
The longtime meteorologist knows there’s a bond between the local weatherman and the audience, and he feels that pressure every time storm clouds fill the sky.
“There have been times in the past where I felt like I had to live up to some kind of standard that I had built, but I’ve realized over time that God has given me everything I need to do the best I can this time,” Laubhan said. “And my best is good enough.”
“At the end of the day, we’re predicting the future,” Laubhan added. “We’re not actually making this come true.”
For viewers at home, Laubhan said, as long as they know how they’re going to find out if they’re in danger and where to seek shelter, “everything else we do is performance theater.”
Meant to be in Tupelo
Laubhan’s most memorable day on the job came less than a month into his tenure at the station, when an EF-5 tornado devastated Smithville and left 16 dead on April 27, 2011.
After a full night of tracking tornadoes on April 26, Laubhan had gone to bed for a couple of hours before waking up to “death, doom and gloom” on a level he’d never forecasted in his career.
“I remember being in the shower that morning and just racking my brain trying to think of any way that this wasn’t going to happen,” Laubhan said. “I got out of the shower, I called my boss and I’m like ‘I cannot see a way that this doesn’t turn into just an absolutely awful day.’”
After getting to the station, it was “guns blazing, every storm you look at is just awful.” Most of the fragments he remembers from the day are from clips he watched afterward because it was such a whirlwind.
But it was the day Laubhan felt he was meant to be in Tupelo.
“I went home that night and I just cried because I felt like God moved us here for a reason,” Laubhan said. “And whether that was truly it or not I can’t say, but in my mind it was like ‘So this is why you wanted us here. I was going to be a part of this with these people, and it’s going to change all of us together.’”
‘AN AWESOME RESPONSIBILITY’
It’s impossible for Laubhan to look at everything that happens with the weather as a series of random events.
That’s not to say weather events can’t be explained through physical properties, but in “every single terrible thing that’s ever happened, I’ve been able to see amazing ways in which God has used that to improve the lives of people around them,” he said.
Most people don’t see the stories of redemption after deadly storms or the amount of near-death close calls that change lives in profound ways - instances of people who slept through a storm and narrowly missed being crushed by a tree.
That’s part of the reason Laubhan will occasionally pray on social media after a bad storm or share that he feels blessed when our area has been spared.
“Some people think science and religion are opposite one another,” Laubhan said. “For me, I believe that science has strengthened my faith because it’s hard to believe that so many things could happen just by chance. I feel like that’s a bigger jump than the opposite.”
Knowing he is there for people at an intensely stressful time in their life is where he draws the most fulfillment.
“One of the crazy things about my job is that I have the opportunity to speak to people at what is a very God-centric moment,” Laubhan said. “There’s something ‘act of God’ about weather. There just is. And to hopefully, without excessively worrying somebody, leading them through that time is an awesome responsibility.”
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