It was a ruined vacation back in 1972 that led Patrick Rockey to meteorology.
Rockey, a Hampton Roads native, was with his family at Lake Gaston in North Carolina when the remnants of Hurricane Agnes arrived. The campground quickly became a mess, he said, so the trip was cut short. On the way home to Northern Virginia, they couldn’t go through Richmond due to heavy flooding.
“It was weird and crazy,” Rockey said of the trip. “I remember seeing a lot of things and kind of being fascinated by it. I think that’s what started my fascination with weather, and I started paying a lot more attention to it. It wasn’t like that light-bulb moment saying, ‘I want to be a meteorologist,’ but eventually I got there.”…