Meteorologist Donald Jones has been a part of the Lake Charles office of the National Weather Service for the past 12 years, and has become a face many in Southwest Louisiana turn to when monitoring adverse weather conditions.

Having grown up in Slidell, Jones said he became enamored with all things related to weather in 1992 when he watched as a middle schooler as Hurricane Andrew formed and threatened the Gulf Coast.

“At the time, all I could think as a kid was, ‘Wow. This is so cool.’ Now as I’ve grown up and experienced hurricanes personally, I respect the storms a little bit more and I feel a little differently when I see a massive storm develop. There will always be a part of me that gets excited about storms, though,” Jones said.

After Hurricane Andrew, Jones began to self-study weather patterns by reading magazines and books. In high school, his teachers took note of his growing passion and helped set him on the path to enrolling in college at Louisiana Monroe, the only university in the state that offered a meteorology program.

It was in his freshman year that he experienced first-hand the damage a major hurricane could deliver when Hurricane Katrina made landfall, followed by Hurricane Rita.

That early personal experience laid the foundation for what he and the rest of Southwest Louisiana would experience in 2020 and early 2021.

“We have experienced over the past year what we would call ‘1,000-year events,’ meaning they would only occur once in a thousand years. Except we have experienced them back to back. On a professional side it’s interesting, but it’s also incredibly taxing and then on the personal side it’s just as tough,” Jones said.

It began in 2020 when a cluster of tornadoes touched down in Rapides and Vernon parishes, moving into Beauregard Parish. That was followed by the historical landfall of Hurricane Laura, trailed by Hurricane Delta that only exacerbated the damage that Laura had left behind. Then, the same area was struck by an unprecedented winter storm before being slammed next by floods in May.

“We just couldn’t catch a break,” said Jones, who still has a slice of plywood serving as a back door while he waits with the rest of the area on insurance agents and contractors to repair his home.

It is that resiliency; that fire to keep moving forward even after the most unprecedented string of weather events recorded, that endears Jones to Southwest Louisiana. While home for him might be in east Louisiana, he said the people who trust him and tune in to his live weather feeds give him a sense of fulfillment — even if it’s a role he never actually wanted.

“Being an on-air personality was never my intention at all. I have always been more interested in the science of it all from behind the scenes, but when we began testing out a few live pieces on our website and then social media, I got some really good feedback. It just kind of grew from there,” he said.

Jones takes no credit for the success of his live weather updates, but says it was just the unfortunate weather situations that brought viewers to him. From there it has been clear that Southwest Louisiana has invested trust in the weatherman who delivers updates in his signature black shirt while dropping “dad jokes” with an unabashed smile.

The shirts, he said, became an unintended signature that grew from his need to fill his closet quickly during a weight loss journey. As he lost 135 pounds in one year, he needed clothes that he could replace easily and without a heavy hit to his bank account.

“Black shirts are cheap and easy to find, so I just went with that and now it has actually become something that viewers expect to see from me. That kind of normalcy has actually been proven to provide comfort in a crisis or stressful time, so I’ve kept with it. The jokes I actually just enjoy personally. I want people to realize I’m just a normal guy who likes to talk about the weather,” he said.

Knowing he has provided some amount of comfort or reassurance to those who turn to him for weather updates is important to Jones, and he says he hopes to remain a stable voice as the area pushes through the remainder of the hurricane season.

With the peak of hurricane season nearly here, Jones said he remains cautiously optimistic by what he has seen so far. While it has been an active season, Jones said he hopes to see the area make it through the end of September without a major development. The second half of the season makes it more difficult — though not impossible as was seen with Delta and Rita —for a stronger hurricane to develop.

Most importantly, he said he wants the public to realize that a year like 2020 into 2021 is not the new normal. What happened was historic and crazy, he said, but it can’t be expected to happen every year.

“I think that after everything we have been through, people are just kind of waiting on the next major storm to hit, but that’s not the case. I just encourage everyone to stay prepared and to stay strong, but also to know that it will get better. The future is not getting hit with a major hurricane every season.”