Cyndee O’Quinn

Senior Communications Specialist

Cyndee is a contractor providing support as the Senior Communications Specialist for the Weather Program Office (WPO). After a tornado hit Huntsville, AL during her senior year in high school, she decided to become a meteorologist to help save lives by providing earlier warnings. She joined the local NBC station at 17 as their youngest employee and began working for Bob Baron who started Baron Weather as a result of the same tornado. 

Cyndee received her B.S. in Meteorology from Florida State University. She spent 15 years as a broadcast meteorologist covering snow and ice storms in the Midwest to severe weather and hurricanes in the Southeast. Not fond of the 5 a.m. live shot every time it snowed in Cincinnati, Cyndee took a job in the Top End of Australia where it never snowed. She joined the Australian Bureau of Meteorology’s Volcanic Ash Advisory Centre (VAAC) Darwin as their Communications Director and became the Acting Senior Manager. VAAC Darwin is one of nine VAACs in the world that provides advice to international aviation about the location and movement of volcanic ash. They monitor an area that is 1/7 of the globe with 150+ active volcanoes across the southern Ring of Fire. There, Cyndee became specialized in satellite meteorology and was on the media team.

Back in the states, she joined the University of Florida (UF) as a Multimedia Meteorologist with the Florida Public Radio Emergency Network (FPREN). At UF, Cyndee covered weather for the state of Florida including on-air coverage for Major Hurricanes: Irma, Florence, Michael, and Dorian. During Hurricane Irma, she was part of a team that covered Irma for 82 hours as it moved across the state of Florida. Before joining NOAA, she worked in Project Management and Change Management.

When the weather is nice, you can find Cyndee hiking, kayaking, or exploring. Her passion outside of weather is traveling and she has visited five continents and 36 countries so far.