Stormin' Bob Swanson

Blogging Bob

Life imitates art

Many of you know that I travel with my family to play shows at schools and libraries featuring science demonstrations and weather/astronomy-themed songs. If you’ve been to a show, you also know that it is a production. Okay, there’s no laser light show or pyrotechnics, but I still bring a lot of equipment — demo […]

Read More

Get in the meteorological mix

When I was working as a weatherman (TV and print/online), it was not unusual for me to forecast (and explain the atmospheric setup for) a “wintry mix” of snow, sleet and freezing rain. Whether as a full-time meteorologist or as a physics/astronomy instructor, I make a sincere effort to explain scientific processes in an understandable […]

Read More

Smiles make it all worthwhile

Fans who have a physical copy of my CD (believe it or not, these are still available) may have noticed that, in the liner notes, I thank the thousands of school kids who have enjoyed my shows over the years. Though I wrote those liner notes nearly 20 years ago, getting kids excited about science […]

Read More

So long, SOFIA . . .

In my last post (“How ‘Bout Them Jackets?“), I featured a couple of my weather jackets. I have also been known (especially during the 2019 “Out of this World” tour) to sport a snazzy NASA flight jacket. I got that cool jacket as part of my work as an Airborne Astronomy Ambassador (AAA) aboard NASA’s […]

Read More

How ’bout Them Jackets?

For those who don’t know, I’m based out of Starkville, MS — home of the Starkville Yellowjackets! I had the pleasure over the summer to be involved with one of the SOCSD (Starkville-Oktibbeha Consolidated School District) educational camps — Discovery Street. This involved bringing elementary-age kids to my campus (Mississippi State University) on two separate […]

Read More

Bloom where you’re planted

When I’m not teaching or singing songs about science or picking figs or building sheds, I can sometimes be found out in my garden. I don’t have the greenest of thumbs, but I harvested some raspberries, yellow squash, tomatoes and green peppers this summer. The stragglers of the summer harvest are some strange looking squash-watermelon […]

Read More

What I did with my summer vacation

Well, my summer tour has wrapped up and, while I could go on about the cool places I went and the cool people I met this summer, one of the highlights from my summer was playing music with the people I love most in this world. If you recall, I blogged previously about the China […]

Read More

Christmas in July

So it’s been a sizzling summer in Mississippi — highs pushing 100 and heat index flirting with 110 most days so far this month. But it’s felt like Christmas of late, for a couple of reasons. The first of which is that my latest video, “How Hot Is It?,” is the closest thing I’ve had […]

Read More

An itch I gotta scratch

Like any other creative person, I go through periods when my artistic juices are flowing as well as “molasses moments.” Starting with writing a new tune (“Punderwater”) and reworking an existing tune (“The Weather Wiggle” as “The Tropical Twist”) for my “Dive into Science” tour this summer, the past few months have been one of […]

Read More

Merch madness

Now that my “Dive into Science” tour is underway (two of my boys and I will be heading for Eupora when I finish this post), wanted to mention some of the merchandise I’m selling this summer. Because of the summer reading program’s marine theme (“Oceans of Possibilities”), the merch table is looking a little bit […]

Read More