Stormin' Bob Swanson

Category: Uncategorized

Staying busy in the off-season

While my last blog post was an adieu to Summer 2024, turns out that I’ve found some opportunities to stay active. This past week I was invited to speak to the entire 3rd grade class (300+ students!) at Henderson-Ward Elementary in Starkville, MS. I don’t always perform for groups of that size (thank goodness I […]

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Nine years ago — Tupelo tornado

I’m surprised I’ve not blogged about this before, but today is the 9th anniversary of the EF-3 tornado that rolled through our neighborhood when my family was living in Tupelo, MS. My family was lucky that day. We rode the storm out in the basement garage of a neighbor (the Rhea family) along with several […]

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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 […]

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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 […]

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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 […]

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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 […]

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Just under the surface

Each summer I try to offer a slightly different show to go along with the summer reading program theme of the year. For example, in 2018 I played my “Music & Meteorology” program to go along with the “Libraries Rock!” summer reading theme. In 2019, I presented an “Out of this World” astronomy show to […]

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The Not-so-little Drummer Boy

Ever wonder what this “singing weatherman” does when I’m not doing Summer Reading Program performances? I teach — in fact, I just wrapped up my fall semester which included teaching a synchronous online Physical Science II course (conceptual chemistry, with a smidge of geology, meteorology and astronomy mixed in) and two online sections of Descriptive […]

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