#MyFirstJob: Meteorologist Caroline Carithers

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Posted on June 4, 2019

Alice Jackson

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#MyFirstJob is a series focused on University of South Alabama Class of 2019 graduates who are beginning their careers.

Twenty-two-year-old Caroline Carithers hit the ground running after receiving her Bachelor of Science degree in meteorology from the University of South Alabama on May 4, because she was headed to a new job with WKRG-TV in Mobile.

While many graduates take the summer months off as a break before starting their first career job, Carithers knew it wasn’t an offer she could refuse.

“I was kind of shocked I got my dream job so quickly, so I’m very excited,” she said. “Both of the WKRG meteorologists – Alan Sealls and John Nodar – taught me at USA, and they both inspired me.” At the station, she works Saturday through Wednesday, delivering weekend morning weather and weekday digital reporting.

Before starting her new job May 20, she continued commuting to a part-time job in Ocean Springs, Miss., with WeatherVision, a company based in Jackson, Miss., that provides on-the-air weather forecasts for television stations that don’t have their own meteorologists.

“I began working there at the beginning of April. When I got there in the morning, I would produce and direct the show for the other meteorologist, then he would do the same for me. I did weather for clients in southern California; Kalamazoo, Mich.; and even one in Detroit. I learned a lot there,” Carithers explained.

She decided on a career in weather in 2005. She was in the third grade when her family moved from Michigan to Daphne three days after Hurricane Katrina struck, causing unprecedented and horrific damage from coastal Louisiana eastward through Mississippi and into Alabama.

Initially, Carithers wanted to attend college far away from home “because I wanted to be off on my own,” but she changed her mind after touring South’s meteorology department.

During her four years on campus, she worked as a resident assistant, worked in the Student Government Association, became a member of the Meteorology Club and met her future husband, who was her physics lab partner. The two will marry in Michigan on July 14. But first, they will close on a new house in Mobile.

“He graduated in mechanical engineering on May 4, but he had his job at Olin in McIntosh lined up in December,” she said, speaking of the chemical facility just north of Mobile.

“Going to South was a 100 percent good decision for me,” Carithers added. “I wouldn’t have had the opportunities anywhere else that I had at South. With so many good things happening, graduation day still doesn’t really seem real, but I think it will really hit me in the fall when I don’t have to return to class.”

 

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