Dr. Rebecca Adams-Selin was inspired by a Nebraska storm and now studies hail and severe weather, with her research featured on NOVA.
Dr. Rebecca Adams-Selin still remembers the storm.
It was a summer afternoon in July 1993, outside her hometown of Arapahoe in south-central Nebraska. As her mother hurried to get the family home ahead of an approaching thunderstorm, she peered out the rear window, watching the clouds swirl behind them.
“I just remember being in awe of it,” she said.
That moment sparked a lifelong curiosity, one that would carry Adams-Selin from a small Nebraska town to the forefront of atmospheric research.
Growing up in Arapahoe, she didn’t just watch the weather. She tried to understand it. She set up a homemade weather station, tracking conditions and recording observations. In first grade, after reading a book about the tornadoes that struck Grand Island in 1980, she and a neighbor created their own forecasting system.
By eighth grade, a supportive science teacher helped nurture her curiosity. Adams-Selin dove into a meteorology unit with enthusiasm, sharing data from her weather station and exploring questions beyond the classroom.
That early interest turned into a clear path. She pursued a degree in atmospheric science at Creighton University in Omaha, then continued her studies at Colorado State University, where she completed graduate work to deepen her expertise.
Today, Adams-Selin is a principal scientist with Atmospheric and Environmental Research, where she studies some of the most complex and destructive weather phenomena in the country.
Her work took her across the Great Plains last year as part of a major hail research campaign, the first of its kind in the United States in four decades. Over six weeks, Adams-Selin and her team chased storms from Texas to North Dakota, collecting hailstones, deploying instruments and gathering data across more than 15,000 miles. Some of the data came from a severe weather outbreak near O’Neill, and more from storms near Scottsbluff.
Back in the lab, scientists analyze hailstones by measuring, scanning and slicing them open to study their internal structure, finding clues that can reveal how they formed and how they fall.
They also map hail size and distribution based on dents made in Styrofoam hail pads. (Adams-Selin has a tall stack of dented pads in her home office in Omaha.) The findings could help improve forecasting and lead to better materials, like impact-resistant roofing, that can reduce damage from severe storms.
“We’re trying to understand how to help people better prepare,” Adams-Selin said. “That’s a meteorologist's dream.”
Citizen scientists can also play a key role in their work. Whether it’s on weather apps or reporting to local media or the National Weather Service, everyday Nebraskans who experience hail can help researchers track when and where storms produce hail.
Hail research is part of a story featured in Rain Bombs, a new film from the PBS science series NOVA, that explores these intense downburst events and the science behind them. Hail plays a role in rain bombs as melting ice helps cool the air inside a storm, accelerating powerful downdrafts that drive rain rapidly toward the ground. Adams-Selin’s research helps scientists better understand how those processes unfold inside severe thunderstorms.
That work recently reached a broader audience as Adams-Selin was interviewed for the NOVA episode. She was filmed at a specialized cold lab in Colorado where hail samples are preserved and studied in a minus 4-degree Fahrenheit storage facility.
For Adams-Selin, the experience was both exciting and challenging. Since she most often speaks with fellow scientists, she had to adjust her approach, explaining complex ideas in ways that would connect with a general television audience.
“They were very good at helping translate that,” she said of the NOVA team.
Connecting with people is a mission she values. Adams-Selin is a longtime viewer of PBS documentaries on Nebraska Public Media, appreciating how programs like NOVA make science accessible and engaging for every viewer.
“It’s something we all experience,” she said of weather. “So understanding why it happens – that’s exciting. It's not 75 and sunny everyday here.”
And while hail research now spans continents and uses cutting-edge technology, it still connects back to that first moment of wonder and a young girl’s curiosity about a summer storm sweeping across Nebraska.