How I Got Here
I was born February 12, 1968 in Nairobi, Kenya. At the time, my dad was working as a consultant in range management for the Agency for International Development (AID). We lived in the town of Embu, along the slopes of Mt. Kenya in the Eastern Province. Then, when I was two years old, we moved to Gainesville, Florida. So my memories of Kenya are not particularly clear!
During the eight years that my dad taught at the University of Florida, the most important time to me was the three years that we lived near the small town of LaCrosse (north of Gainesville). There we had our cattle ranch, a bunch of chickens, and lots of fresh vegetables from the garden. Of course, getting up early to feed the animals before school on a cold day wasn't always fun. But me and my brother could always have fun exploring in the swamp or having 'cow pie fights'. It was also during this time that I made the most significant decision of my life by accepting Jesus Christ as my personal savior and lord, while attending Antioch Baptist Church.
In the spring of 1978, my family pulled up stakes and headed for Texas, so that my dad could get out of the rat race of the university for a while and back to more practical involvement with ranchers. While he was the range management extension specialist in Uvalde, Texas for about 20 counties, I got to see a very different world. Besides the fact that it didn't rain every other day, we were close to the border with Mexico and at the edge of the Texas Hill Country. Florida hills just don't compare! The beautiful spring-fed rivers of the area and my involvement in Scouts made it only natural for me to get interested in canoeing. There were also opportunities for hunting (mostly deer) and exposure to lots of good music.
After graduating from high school, I ended up going off to Texas A&M University, basically because they offered me a nice scholarship. Of course, I didn't know what to study really, just that I liked math and physics. So ended up getting a B.S. in Math, with lots of physics courses along the way. I also got involved with Campus Crusade for Christ, and the India Association while I was at A&M. And the football games were great! Gig'em Aggies! The last year of my undergraduate study made it clear that pure math or physics was not the direction for me to continue in. So I found myself entering graduate school at A&M in Meteorology. This was a neat time of learning some new stuff as I completed my M.S. under Dr. Steve Lyons. Although my thesis involved using 'empirical orthogonal functions' (EOFs) to look at patterns in daily Texas rainfall, I also got some exposure to pollution dispersion modeling for an environmental impact assessment.
As if I hadn't tortured myself enough with school by this time, I made the move to Florida State University to begin my Ph.D. in Meteorology. Under the world reknowned modeler of tropical meteorology Dr. T.N. Krishnamurti, I was finally able to combine many of my varied scientific interests into a modeling study of the impacts of vegetational variations on global climate modeling. Of course, being in Tallahassee has been sort of like being back in my old childhood home, except for the adjustment to life in a 'big' city. After finishing my Ph.D., I worked at the Center for Ocean-Atmospheric Prediction Studies (COAPS) at Innovation Park (FSU's research park) under Dr. J.J. O'Brien. On November 14, 1998 I escaped the "freedom" of single life when I married Nancy MacMinn of Bathurst, New Brunswick, Canada [pretty picture not scanned in yet]. Since December 1998 I have been at Jackson State University, teaching meteorology and continuing my research efforts as a visiting assistant professor.
Scientific stuff
White, L.D., M. Tewari, and T.N. Krishnamurti, 1998: Application of a GCM to study the surface hydrological budget of Amazonia. The Journal of Applied Meteorology.
Krishnamurti, T.N., L.A. Ogallo, L.D. White, and G. Daughenbaugh, 1994: Climate Atlas of Africa: 1980-1989. Dept. of Meteorology, Florida State Univ., Report #FSU-94-14, 696 pp.
More information about my work is available on my resume.
Personal Interests
My interests include canoeing, hiking, music, religion, languages, travel, and history. I taught Children's Church at my old church in Tallahassee and also led the music at Iglesia Bautista in nearby Quincy.
Here's some information on the "Perspectives on the World Christian Movement" course which is being offered in Tallahassee starting in January 2000 through the Tallahassee Bible Institute's Center for Biblical Studies .
Some other links of interest:
