This week's Ask A Met question is a little different. Usually, we take a question from Morning Brief readers for one of our meteorologists to answer. But this week, as digital meteorologist Sara Tonks delivered a week-long exploration of the relationship between sharks and the weather, I could not resist asking one myself.

I had to know: "Sara, why are you, a meteorologist, so interested in sharks?"

Sara Tonks: There's a long and a short answer to that question.

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The short answer is "because they're cool, duh!"

And the long answer goes back to when I was a kid. I don't really remember when I first started liking sharks, but there are two key events involved... One was when I saw Jaws for the first time.

Don't get me wrong, Jaws scared me. You could probably argue that I was maybe a little too young when I saw it for the first time, but eh, it all turned out okay. But I tackled that fear by researching, which led me to the second key event in my love of sharks: a short story I wrote in fifth grade called "Swimming with Shadow" about a little girl who becomes friends with and helps rescue a young great white shark from a man with a knife. (And no, I will never share that story publicly.)

That was a project for school, so I had to put more work into it than just casual interest, helping build a more solid framework for my growing interest and love for sharks.

Today, I can still say I love sharks because they're cool. But I can also say it's because they're misunderstood animals that have been victims of a really bad PR campaign. There are sharks that I wouldn't want to dive with, but most sharks are tiny and not at all interested in humans.

Most of the sharks I've dived with over the past couple of years are more like big old dogs that are vaguely annoyed you've woken them up so they mosey over somewhere there aren't any people.

Meanwhile, the shark finning industry is absolutely brutal to sharks and sometimes involves fishermen cutting the fins off of a shark and returning it to the ocean still alive, causing a slow death. Humans actually kill hundreds of millions of sharks each year while sharks only kill on average 5 to 6 people. Hippos kill over 500 people each year, by the way.

Ultimately, my love of sharks is from both a fascination in the animals and a sense of empathy for them. Sharks are incredibly diverse, and if you're afraid of them, that's okay, but it probably just means you haven't met the right shark yet.

Do you have a question to ask the meteorologists at Weather.com? Write to us at [email protected] and we’ll pick a new question each week from readers to answer.