CONTRIBUTED PHOTO Toledo native and 1982 South Tama County High School graduate Mike Buresh, pictured in front in the light colored shirt, was recently named the 2024 National Weatherperson of the Year. Also included in the photo are his wife Heidi, father Bob, sister Doreen, nephew Brian, and many coworkers at Action News WJAX/WFOX TV in Jacksonville, Fla.

JACKSONVILLE, FLA. — It all started back in second grade for Mike Buresh.

The Toledo native and 1982 South Tama County High School graduate was attending a parochial school in Tama when his teacher told the class the sun was out, but it was snowing at the same time. For some reason, he found himself fascinated by the apparent contradiction, and Buresh said his interest in the weather has been “full bore” ever since that moment.

He started making his own weather maps and even had his own recurring article in the Toledo Chronicle titled “Mike’s Weather Corner,” and his parents, Robert Buresh and the late Connie Buresh, even took him to the National Weather Service in Kansas City as a kid.

“Every day, he’d come home from school, go in his room, shut his door and make weather maps of Iowa. We had a whole stack of them,” Robert Buresh, a retired banker who spent nearly 40 years full time at the State Bank of Toledo, said. “So then about a year or two later, I got him a recorder so that when they do the weather, he could listen back to it.”

This nearly lifelong passion recently culminated in Buresh, who is now the chief meteorologist at Action News WJAX/WFOX TV in Jacksonville, Fla., receiving the 2024 National Weatherperson of the Year award, the highest honor in the field, on Feb. 2. Several members of Buresh’s family including his father, who winters in central Florida with his wife, traveled to Jacksonville to help him celebrate.

“When he came into the studio and we were all standing there, it was awesome. It brought tears to all of us. It’s just hard to believe this happened to my son, and I’m very happy about it,” Robert said.

In a press release accompanying the award, Buresh was commended for his timely, precise and accurate forecasts.

“It is with great honor that we recognize Mike for his dedication to his viewers and the advancement of weather awareness and education,” said Federal Alliance for Safe Homes, Inc. (FLASH) President and CEO Leslie Chapman-Henderson. “His tireless efforts to ensure community safety in the face of severe weather are truly commendable. We congratulate Mike and all of our outstanding 2024 National Weatherperson of the Year finalists who serve the public with unwavering excellence every day, especially during hurricane season.”

As a freshman in high school, Buresh decided he would attend college at the University of Oklahoma, one of the best meteorology schools in the country, in the heart of tornado alley, and he cut his teeth chasing storms and working for the National Weather Service while he was there. He eventually transferred back home to Iowa State University to finish his degree before starting his professional career as a teacher in the Des Moines area.

From there, he broke into the weather game as a part-time employee at WHO-13 alongside fellow area native Ed Wilson, and Buresh considered Craig Johnson his mentor. Eventually, he worked his way up to a full-time gig (he loved the fact that his parents could watch him) before moving on to an 11-year stint with WKRC TV in Cincinnati, Ohio.

For the last 22 years, Buresh has called Jacksonville home, and it’s where he plans to retire. Of course, living and working in Florida, tropical storms and hurricanes have become “the biggie” in terms of where he focuses his attention.

“I’ve had an opportunity to fly into hurricanes with the hurricane hunter aircraft with the Air Force Reserve, so that’s been interesting. I go to a number of hurricane conferences,” he said. “We had a period where we didn’t have many tropical storms and hurricanes right here in Jacksonville from about 2006 to 2016, but before that and since then, we’ve had a number of storms. And then it’s not uncommon for me to cover the storms after the fact, so I go talk about the damage, the survivors, what they learned from it, all that sort of thing.”

Among all the storms he’s experienced during his career, Buresh still recalls one from his Des Moines days where the city received 2 ½ inches of freezing rain that unleashed “catastrophic” ice damage and a 1997 flash flood in Cincinnati that was like a storm surge from a Category 5 hurricane with damages resembling an EF-5 tornado as a few of the most unforgettable along with several of the major tropical storms in Jacksonville.

As most local residents remember, the Tama-Toledo area was among the hardest hit by the derecho of Aug. 10, 2020, with most people without power for at least a week, and Robert Buresh, who was well into his 80s at the time, was still out cutting trees and lending a hand in whatever way he could. His father, a longtime volunteer firefighter, also noted that his son’s passion for weather has increased his own level of attention to the topic over the years.

“It’s just so neat to see a boy be that interested since he was in second grade. Normally, you don’t know what you’re into before you get to college,” Robert said.

Weathermen and women famously take a fair amount of guff if a forecast happens to be wrong, but as the recipient of such a prestigious award in the field, Buresh weighed in on what he feels makes someone good at the job.

“For me and for local TV meteorologists, first and foremost, it’s forecasting the weather and hopefully accurately and without ‘The sky is falling.’ I really like to think that I don’t cry wolf, I’m practical, I don’t use hyperbole, I’m not trying to scare people and I’m pretty even keeled,” he said. “And I think that’s a really critical part of our job, and obviously we see all kinds of extremes in that regard, especially with social media.”

Another key aspect is simply being involved in the community where he works and visiting students to give them more information about the field if they might be interested in pursuing it. Buresh, who has been married to his wife Heidi for 28 years and raised daughters Willa and Reis together with her, has been deeply involved with local nonprofits like the Salvation Army and the Mayo Clinic, and he sees it as a critical part of his mission.

While he’s become a household name in Jacksonville, Buresh did joke that he still occasionally gets stopped on the street, and his daughters do get a little tired of it. And while the study of meteorology has changed more than a bit during the almost 35 years he’s been in the profession, he’d still recommend it to anyone looking for a challenge.

“It’s a great field… Meteorology specifically is a lot of math and science, so with that degree, you have a lot of options besides meteorology if you don’t think that’s what you want to do,” he said. “Persevere, stay with it. I mean, I go back to second grade. There’s not too many that know what they want to do in second grade and end up doing it all their lives. I understand that, I get that, but open your eyes and be aware of what’s around and what interests you. It’s cliche, but if you love the job that you’re doing, you’ll never work a day in your life. It’s not quite that simple and easy, but it helps. And I do love the weather, and that’s what drives me.”

He concluded with one more humorous anecdote from the STC days — when Buresh was in high school, his counselor told him he had no idea what he could possibly do in the field of meteorology or how he could make a career of it. Needless to say, Buresh has proved him wrong and then some.

“That drives me to this day,” he said.

The other finalists for the 2024 award were Dr. Phil Klotzbach, a research scientist at Colorado State University; Bryan Norcross, a meteorologist and hurricane specialist with FOX Weather; Nicondra Norwood, a meteorologist with FOX 8 WVUE; and William (Bill) Read, a meteorologist and former director of the National Hurricane Center.