This week's question comes from Morning Brief reader Maddie Stehling, who asks, "I want to be a meteorologist as my job. What are some steps I can do now to prepare to become a meteorologist? What schools are the best for meteorology, too?"

Intern Miriam Guthrie: Hi Maddie! I'm a meteorologist intern on the content team. I just graduated in May from Georgia Tech with my bachelor's in Atmospheric and Oceanic Science. After my internship, I'm going to continue my education at Georgia Tech to get my master's in Earth and Atmospheric Science.

I can remember finding my passion for the weather early on. Growing up, I had 3 different trees fall in my house when I was a kid. So, early on, I had a fear of the weather, especially tornadoes and thunderstorms, and I feel like my mom had a lot of anxiety around it and then like that went on to me. But learning about the weather helped me become less afraid of it.

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That passion for weather is important. I don't know what stage you're at, whether you're in middle school or high school, but I would suggest really focusing on your math and science classes to prepare for the right school. When you're taking those hard math classes and you feel like you want to give up, remembering why you're passionate about this is really gonna help.

There are a lot of really good schools for meteorology. Some of the other mets on our team have gone to Florida State University. I know they're really good with tropical stuff. There’s University of Georgia, Wisconsin-Madison, Mississippi State, and Penn State's a really big one. I've also heard that Oklahoma is really good, especially for severe weather and tornado chasing, if that's up your alley.

I decided to go to Georgia Tech because it's a really good school for math and science, and I knew that that was something that I wanted to pursue. The most important thing for education is to know there are the 1340 requirements, if you want to work as a meteorologist for the government, places like the National Weather Service and NOAA. So, making sure you go to a school that can fulfill those requirements while getting your degree is important. Even outside of the government, most other meteorology jobs will look to make sure you have those requirements, too.

My time at the Weather Channel so far has been awesome. I love teaching people about the weather and it's been exciting the past few days with the first hurricane of the year, Hurricane Erick, just with the chaos of it all. It's a fun job, but it is a chaotic kind of fun.