I arrived at SIU in the fall of 1968 after completing my MS in physical geography at Oregon State University.  I was drawn to SIU by Doug Carter and his work with the climatic water balance.  Doug Carter was a stimulating, challenging, demanding, and patient mentor who was particularly gifted at communicating how environmental systems are connected.  I benefited from working on summer research projects and in seminars with Dave Sharpe and from frequent discussions with Ted Schmudde.  I was fortunate in 1971 to receive a Woodrow Wilson Dissertation Fellowship which was the first awarded by this foundation to the SIU campus.  My research focused on a distributed system watershed model for a river in a diverse climatic setting.  I valued my training at SIU and the mentoring provided by Doug Carter which culminated in my PhD in 1973.  My SIU experiences served as a strong foundation for my research and teaching at the University of Cincinnati (1971-1975) and the University of California, Davis (1975-2002). 

I joined the Department of Geography at UC Davis in 1975 after four years in the Department of Geography at the University of Cincinnati.  The UC Davis campus was a good match for my interests in energy and moisture exchanges, coupling of the climatic and hydrologic systems, drought, and climate change impacts on the water supply.  These interests were shaped by my experiences at SIU interacting with faculty and graduate students.  In 1977, I was loaned for one year to the State of California as the Director of Research for the California Water Atlas which was published in 1979.  I was promoted to Associate Professor in 1981 and was the first physical geographer to be awarded tenure in the UC Davis Department of Geography.  I served as department chairperson from 1983-85.  My book Climate and Weather:  A Spatial Perspective was published in 1988.  I was promoted to Professor of Geography in 1990, and I served as an associate editor for the Journal of the American Water Resources Association from 1991-99.  I transferred to the UC Davis Department of Land, Air and Water Resources as Professor of Atmospheric Science in 1994.  This gave me an excellent opportunity to focus my research on hydroclimatology and my teaching on climate, climate change, and severe weather.  At the time of my retirement in 2002, my publications included two books, four book chapters, two monographs and 44 articles in peer reviewed journals such as the Annals of the AAG, the Geographical Review, the International Journal of Climatology, the Journal of the American Water Resources Association, and Physical Geography.  I began work on another book before retiring, and Hydroclimatology:  Perspectives and Applications was published by Cambridge University Press in January 2009.  I recently completed articles on California and the Hydrosphere to appear in the Encyclopedia of Global Warming to be published in December 2009. 

I continue to reside in Davis, California, with my wife, Sue, whom I met while a graduate student at SIU.