Paul Cousins

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Paul Cousins is the founder, principal and CFO at Atmos Forecast, a meteorologist consulting company based in Portland. He has been analyzing weather in the northeast for over 40 years. Thanks for coming in.

Paul Cousins:

You're quite welcome. And I'm still analyzing it and I hope to get it right someday.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, it seems a little bit like my field of medicine, where you're always going to be learning new things and technology is going to change and, you know, there's probably never a place where you're going to get to say, I know everything about this.

Paul Cousins:

That's right. The learning curve is there is no end in sight. Right?

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Yeah. Which is exciting.

Paul Cousins:

Absolutely.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So why weather? Why were you interested in this in the first place?

Paul Cousins:

I'm sure it had to do with my youth and my large family, many brothers. The myth is that I was baptized in my crib during Hurricane Carol. I'm dating myself again in the 50s. My grandmother's house, the roof leaked, was baptized by a hurricane. And so as a very young child, my mother was always kicking us out of the house because she needed some space. So we were always, you know, playing outside any sports or on the beach. And when the weather turned inclement, my father would rope us in and get us out of harm's way. And I recall as a very young, young sprite, he would sit us on his knee and we'd watch storms roll across the bay or down the south shore of Massachusetts and watching lightning strikes ping the surface of the bay and everything just turned white, this aureole of, you know, charged water. And I thought that was fascinating. So we, every time there was a thunderstorm, we said, dad, porch view. And that's where it all began. And then of course, everything we did outside was weather dependent. You know, summer sports, winter sports, skating, you name it. So I was very highly tuned attuned to, you know, the local day to day vagaries of weather. And it was, I think in junior high school I was a budding young science nerd and I was fascinated by the weather. And I took a mentor on public television, no, commercial television in Boston. His name was Don Kent. He was one of the first broadcast meteorologists in the country. And I took quite a liking to the way he presented weather. And to make a long story short, I struck up a relationship with him and he became my mentor. And I would visit him once every year in the studios of WBZTV in Boston. And we talk shop and we became really great friends over about a 10 year period. He said, Paul, what are you gonna do with yourself? You're gonna graduate from high school. He said, go into solar energy. Well, back in the day that was, you know, a crazy thing to do that was almost heretical as a concept. And I said, no, I wanna do what you do, Don. I wanna be a television meteorologist. He said, paul, I. It's crazy. It's 40% science and 60% showbiz. And of course I was thunderstruck to part expression. And so I went to Middlebury as a geophysicist and enjoyed it. But I graduated, worked for the U.S. geological Survey on Woods Hole for a year or two. And I said I miss weather too much and went back to school and got a degree. And the circle became very short. Within a few years of obtaining a degree in meteorology, I was contacted by the news director at WBC TV in Boston and they wanted me to come down to audition because Don Kent, my mentor, was retiring. Lo and behold, I got the job. So here, my childhood mentor was retiring and I was going to make an attempt to fill his shoes, which was virtually impossible. But we had a ball for two weeks in his retirement party. He and I were on the air together every day. Talk about a dream come true. And then the rest is history. I just stayed in the industry, never regretted it for a minute.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

A geophysicist, that's a very, that sounds like quite a hefty subject.

Paul Cousins:

It was. The calculus just about killed me. But there's a lot of math and physics. I was Working through the Geological Survey at a time when the United States was considering leasing the eastern shelf to oil companies for exploratory drilling. And you can imagine that environmentalists were quite concerned at the time. Still are. So we were charged by the Bureau of Land Management to do a lot of research out there to see how stable the continental shelf was. You guys are going to put oil rigs out there? What are the waves like? What's the bottom like? We found out it was a very turbulent area. There were sand dunes 20 to 30ft high that would migra across the continental shelf. Can you imagine what that would do to an oil rig? And to say nothing about the hundred year storms which turned out to happen every couple of years. Sandy is not that unique. That was five years ago. So we found there was cutting edge science back in the 70s. Fascinating. We'd spend weeks at sea doing exploratory drilling to find out the stability of the strata and monitoring currents and waves. Worked with a lot of redneck crews from the bayou. They were a hoot. I learned a lot from these crews from the deep south while we were at sea for weeks at a time. But anyway, it was a fascinating time with the U.S. geological Survey. But weather was still burning a hole in my back pocket. So I left and went back to school.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

It seems as though weather, at least broadcast weather, has changed quite a lot in the last 30 years.

Paul Cousins:

Absolutely. Now I couldn't speak with total accuracy at how it's changed, but when I was in the business we had two and then three newscasts a day with hours in between on multitask. I did a lot of radio work on my own volition. But now what I understand from my associates who I still chat with from time to time, you have five or six newscasts a day. You're working for two or three television stations, you're blogging, you're maintaining other websites, doing radio. You know, it's non stop. I guess it's nine or ten hours straight. Barely enough time to, you know, tie your shoes.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

You were with WCSH initially? Initially.

Paul Cousins:

And then I went to Hartford and Boston and then came back to gme.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So why decide that you wanted to do something so different for yourself with your current.

Paul Cousins:

My consultancy, yeah. Actually when I began my stint at GME in the 80s, I launched a large radio clientele. I launched the the Weather column and the Portland Press Herald. No one was doing it and I was enjoying the freelance work. And I was also advising a lot of municipalities and large construction companies and Bath Ironworks, Central Main Power Weather sensitive industries. And it became quite a full boat. And it was fascinating that I was an entrepreneur. I was my own boss. And so I thought, you know, this television industry, it's great, but it's changing and I think I should make room for some young blood. And so my consultancy was certainly well fleshed out so I could pursue that as a, as a sustainable profession.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

What about the broadcasting piece of it?

Paul Cousins:

Do you miss the camaraderie? Without a doubt. Miss that a lot because I work for myself in a home office with a very simple broadcast studio. There's no one there but me, the microphone and I. But the bulk of my work is really consulting for industry and the energy companies and our litigious community. I do a lot of consulting for attorneys and insurance companies, which I never thought would be so engaging.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, tell me about that. What does it mean to be someone who consults on the weather?

Paul Cousins:

The term is called a forensic meteorologist. A lot of it is weather event reconstruction. Let's say someone slips on a sidewalk. Was someone negligent and not sanding or salting or plowing. But the far more interesting cases I've had, I think it was when Hurricane Floyd passed through Maine 15, 20 years ago, a fellow had a deer herd up in Jefferson and the allegation was that a lightning bolt struck a pole near where all the deer were congregating and they were electrocuted and they died. So the owner quickly buried all the deer in a mass grave so that they would not infect the rest of the herd. You know. Well, the insurance company says, ah, just wait a minute, first of all, was there lightning that struck your yard? Deer yard. And so that was my. I was, you know, charged with determining whether or not that happened. And they also brought in a veterinarian and they exhumed the deer, found that the deer had some illness prior to the date of this storm. So it turned out that this fellow was actually trying to collect insurance proceeds for something that was not a natural cause, that they were sick and died from this disease. That was an interesting case and there have been many others, but that happened to Maine. And I testified in Superior Court in Vermont. I mean, there have been a lot of very engaging things that have happened. The funny story, when I was in Superior Court in Vermont, this high powered row of attorneys from Boston were representing the plaintiff. And I was representing the defendant, Small Construction company in Northern Vermont. And they're laying out their grand case. And the judge is sitting there and he turns to me and he looks at my resume Would you happen to know this professor at Middlebury said yes, he was the greatest guy. So he started talking to me at sidebar and the attorneys from Boston were flabbergast. What's the judge doing talking to this witness on the stand? Many, many funny things have happened in and out of court and on and off the air.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So I'm interested in this person that attempted to get his dead deer paid for and the idea that insurance fraud, pure and simple. Well, but the idea that in this day and age you could actually claim that something weather related occurred and think that nobody else is going to know whether you're right or not. Is that a common thing or do most people accept that with the technology we have we can reconstruct things?

Paul Cousins:

That's an excellent question. There are skeptics who don't want to believe the data and then you can say the data can be interpreted in a number of different ways.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So there's still, even if you testify that for example there was a lightning strike or there wasn't a lightning strike, you can still have people who can question whether you are accurate in your situation.

Paul Cousins:

Did that gauge really catch every lightning strike within a 10 mile radius? You know, anything can be questioned.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So why forensic meteorology? Why that as opposed to other types of meteorology?

Paul Cousins:

Well that's just, that's probably one third of the time I spend. Most of what I do is push a very sharp pencil. For a lot of utilities in New York, Connecticut and Maine and energy providers, they need to know heating to greeting information, that's the day to day gist of what I do. And Maine Public Broadcasting, that's the entertainment mouthpiece.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So what types of things do these energy companies need to know?

Paul Cousins:

Well, when you, and for example Bath Ironworks, when you have 5,000 employees and they're looking at shift changes and so forth, they have to plan ahead both in terms of maintaining their physical plant. When to call in shifts early, let them go early. Water levels in the Kennebec, they need to know about that. Occasionally they have sea trials, they want to ping on me to German Sea state and so forth. Visibility ranges, it's fascinating. And for central Maine power, it's wind, lightning, icing. All the concerns that have been very real this winter.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Again, how accurate are you able to be?

Paul Cousins:

Oh, I would be disingenuous if I said I was better than 90% but

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

that's still pretty good.

Paul Cousins:

I hope so. They renew my contract from year to year. So I guess that speaks for itself. No, I've been doing this now for 30 years.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So there's some amount of looking at the information that you have access to, and then there's, oh, it's phenomenal. But there's also some amount of your experience that enables you to kind of translate that information correctly.

Paul Cousins:

I would like to think so. I think the biggest challenge for a modern day meteorologist is to decide which information to review and digest because there is a plethora of data out there. Simply overwhelmed, you know, on a, on a 247 basis, which is marvelous. One thing I do miss are a set of eyes to actually see the weather and record it. We used to have thousands of weather observers that were part of NOAA's Cooperative Observing Program. There's still several dozen out there, but most of them have retired. And now we rely on telemetrics sensors. Never as good as a pair of eyes, but that data network is actually more robust than the actual physical observers of decades ago. But nothing replaces a pair of eyes on observing what is actually transpiring at any given location. And I use that data a lot for weather meant reconstruction.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

I recently spoke with Robin Alden, who worked for 40 years with fishermen off the coast of Maine. One of the things that she talked about was this idea that people with their eyes could make observations that really nicely complemented the science that was out there.

Paul Cousins:

Absolutely.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So it seems as though maybe we could find benefit from both. Do you think this will ever come back?

Paul Cousins:

I highly doubt it for two reasons. Manpower is expensive and the, the technology for these, you know, remote transmitting devices continues to improve. We have a dozen buoys out in the Gulf of Maine that transmit wave heights, wind direction, speed gusts, seawater salinity, I mean, currents, a plethora of data. So they're, they're really good.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So you're saying that we might not actually need these eyes?

Paul Cousins:

Well, I just don't see it happening. I would love to see observers return. I mean, used to have ships out there who'd report in every hour what the sea state was and how much freezing spray there was. Now we have to make an educated guess based on the telemetry that's radioed in, in some cases every 15 minutes. It's really quite remarkable.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

You have an interest in the water. You actually, when we asked who you think we should recognize for the job they do in our community, you said the Friends of Casco Bay.

Paul Cousins:

They do a terrific job.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So why, why in particular that group? You must work with so many groups around the state, but you think that they're worthy of recognition? In particular?

Paul Cousins:

Well, I think it's probably an area which I really cherish having been voting on this bay for 30 years. It's really a jewel. And every time I sit out there quietly at anchor, nothing's moving, nothing's turned on and just see the splendor, really. How fortunate we are to have this. 15 minutes from my doorstep and people travel across the country to see this beautiful body of water which now is, you know, burgeoning with aquaculture. You know, it's wonderful, it's wonderful. And my concern is now with climate change and the warming and the green crab invasion and the acidification of the water or losing soft shelled clams. These are all manifestations of climate change.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So when people out there say that climate change is not real, I'm not one of these people, but I know it is being said, how do you kind of mentally work with that?

Paul Cousins:

Oh, first of all, I gauged the tenor of this individual. How malleable are they? How impressionable? Believe it or not, 30 years ago, I was a skeptic. I, as a geologist, I had seen through paleoclimatological records the climate on this earth changed dramatically over millions of years. We've known about ice ages coming and going for millions of years. I mean, all of North America was under ice millions of years ago. So I thought, hey, it's a natural change. It has to do with the sun's radiant energy and the tilt of the earth and all those other pieces. But over time, listening to professionals who know much more about the intricacies of our global circulation system, I said, there's just no way I can deny this anymore. I mean, just look at the carbon dioxide trace. In the last 40 years, we've gone from 360 to 400. 400 parts per million. That's not natural. That's purely anthropogenic forcing, burning fossil fuels. There's no question in my mind.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So does it ever frustrate you when you hear people suggest that we shouldn't pay attention to this because it's just pretend?

Paul Cousins:

Certainly. But if they don't believe that climate change is occurring, I'm not going to take up that argument. You know, you pick your battles, right?

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

You and I share a connection in that your family from many generations ago was actually responsible for founding or at least being an early settling family of Cousins Island. And I live off Cousins Island. So that's a really special connection that you have with the state of Maine.

Paul Cousins:

Yes.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

You originally you told me that your,

Paul Cousins:

it was a great grandfather, eighth great grandfather.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Eighth great grandfather was originally off of Cousins. His last name is obviously Cousins, and was somehow too friendly with the Native Americans and sent up the coast and originally landed in Ellsworth, but then found his way to Bar Harbor. Is that right?

Paul Cousins:

That is correct. He was booted out of one town from another, first in Plymouth Colony, Massbay Colony. He was too friendly with the Indians. John Cousins go. Settled in Cousins, and the locals said, John Cousins go. But I think when he got up to Ellsworth, he decided, hey, this Bar Harbor's a pretty nice place. I'm heading down there. And then he stayed. And then the family generations rippled on and on and on.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Isn't that a strange thing to think about? That one could be too friendly with the Native American population.

Paul Cousins:

I think he must have been some sort of ambassador or is trying to strike up commerce. Who knows what his agenda was.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And it was some sort of a threat to people who were coming in later to settle the land.

Paul Cousins:

Maybe he's just trying to pave the way for colonization. I don't know. No one has ever written the history or the treatise of John Cousins and his ambassador tendencies.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, I find this all very interesting because I just wrote a story for Maine Magazine about Turner Farm, which is located on North Haven.

Paul Cousins:

Oh, really?

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

They found evidence of the. A group they're calling the Red Paint Indians.

Paul Cousins:

Really?

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

From 7,000 years ago. So we have this very interesting and old history of our state that I think a lot of us don't often ponder.

Paul Cousins:

7,000 years ago. So these preceded the Norwegians and the Vikings, then the Norsemen.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Absolutely. And this is about the extent of my background. I just thought it was very interesting.

Paul Cousins:

Absolutely.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

We think about colonization as going back a few hundred years, but there were colonies that already existed. They just were before the people who came over on boats.

Paul Cousins:

And didn't you wish you bought a couple of acres back in the day?

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, I'm happy to.

Paul Cousins:

Well, you're in a great spot if you're up near Cousins Island. I mean, that's spectacular. As I told you, I think Casco Bay is a jewel.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

It is a jewel. Yeah. So are you happy that you ended up coming back to the state that your family was originally from?

Paul Cousins:

I'm happy to be here because of the quality of life. I mean, it's just ancillary that none of my relatives. Actually, I think I have a great aunt who lives near Southwest harbor, but otherwise I don't have any living relatives in the state any longer.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And how is the quality of life different here than where you lived in other places?

Paul Cousins:

Well, when I grew up outside of Boston, I grew up outside of Boston, came back to Boston as a professional. It was fun to think that I was actually coming home. I just found the intensity of the lifestyle and the congestion unpalatable. And I couldn't get from my home outside of Boston to the water in 15 minutes, nor could I get from my home to Sugarloaf or Sunday river in 15 minutes. It's a lot closer in Portland than it is outside of Boston.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And you've been skiing, you said in Sunday river from oh, when they had

Paul Cousins:

T bars and one tiny little base lodge.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

That's a few years ago.

Paul Cousins:

Oh, absolutely.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So how have you seen Maine change? You talked about living in outside of Boston and obviously there was a lot of changes over the years as a result of people coming in and living and working. How is Maine changing?

Paul Cousins:

Well, it's certainly becoming more populated and I used to be able to zip downtown in 10 minutes. Now it takes a half an hour. Obviously, everybody wants a piece of the pie. You can't blame them. Spectacular. Fortunately, where I live, it hasn't changed much. There are neighborhoods going around, but the schools are still pretty much the same. In fact, I occasionally substitute in the falma schools and some of the teachers at taught my two children are still there, which is just phenomenal.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Tell me what your favorite, I guess weather activity has been over the last. We'll give it five years because you must have some when by weather activity, I mean events, things that we have all been impacted by.

Paul Cousins:

Well, we missed Sandy here. That was a near miss for Maine. I think Irene was pretty impacting, even though again, that affected western New England more than Maine. That was a pretty significant storm. And of course, when these storms are approaching, I'm on, you know, DEFCON 4 full alert. My clients just can't get enough of me, which is great because I feel like I'm contributing to storm preparation and so forth and mitigating loss of property and so forth. So obviously the major storms are a rush. Is that the question you're asking?

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Yeah. And I guess even as I said it, I realize saying your favorite storm is probably kind of weird because a

Paul Cousins:

lot of people are people's least favorite events.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Yeah, I mean, a lot of people really are impacted negatively by these storms.

Paul Cousins:

Oh, absolutely. I don't discount that for a minute.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So what is it about these major storms that energizes you in some way?

Paul Cousins:

Oh, well, I mean, just to see the atmosphere throw us such a curveball and to see all of these elements come together in concert to create, you know, such a dramatic natural environmental calamity. I mean, you got to think that the forces of nature are just insurmountable. We really are at the mercy entirely of mother Nature.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Is that something that you think we forget?

Paul Cousins:

Well, in our very technologically advanced and insulated lifestyle, I think a lot of people have lost touch with the fact that, you know, weather events are significant and due to climate change they're going to become more extreme and more frequent. And we should prepare for that.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

We are just coming off of what was called a, I believe it was a bomb cyclone, a major weather event, bombogenesis.

Paul Cousins:

We'll see more and more of those.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Talk to me about that.

Paul Cousins:

Well, as the climate warms, air temperatures rise, sea surface temperatures rise and ocean temperatures rise, we're enabling the global climate to harbor more energy, more potential energy with these higher temperatures. So when we have the right, what's the word? Collusion of weather elements, you're going to get a bigger play.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And this is something that impacted not only our part of the world, but really was all the way down into Florida where they got snow.

Paul Cousins:

Snow in northern Florida this last week. Yeah, that's pretty rare. And they had snow in southern Louisiana. What did I see the first time in two decades. Yeah, I mean it's. Weather extremes are going to become more prevalent, both hot and cold, wet and dry. I mean, look at all these fires in southern California.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So that would make it very hard for us to stay prepared. If you are in northern Florida and you know, you haven't really needed to have snowplows or sanders, but now you're going to have these extremes of weather that could be a very costly and difficult situation.

Paul Cousins:

I can only imagine.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

What do you see the next phase of your life looking like you've done so many things over the past 30 years in this field, is there anything new and interesting that you, you'd like to tackle?

Paul Cousins:

I'd like to have more time playing the piano. I used to play daily, but now when you work for yourself, you're 24 7. Even though I don't work non stop, I have less time than I know that I'm going to have free and clear. And I'd also like to learn how to play the saxophone. I think that's one of the most sensuous instruments out there other than the piano. But I couldn't be a three man band on the drum and saxophone, the piano. But I really enjoy music and I enjoy both jazz and classical piano. I used to play in the piano bars here in Portland. Years ago, I just walk in, I said, anybody, is someone taking that piano? And they say, no, go ahead and play. And I would play until the patrons would come in. And sometimes they start to tip me. Don't bother. But that was fun.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, I hope you have the chance to do that.

Paul Cousins:

I do, too. And it could happen.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Yeah, it could happen. I've been speaking with Paul Cousins, who is the founder, principal and CFO at Atmos Forecast, a meteorologist consulting company based in Portland. He has been analyzing weather in the northeast for over 40 years. Thanks for taking the time to come in and for all the work you do.

Paul Cousins:

Oh, my pleasure.