A dramatic nighttime thunderstorm illuminates the sky as multiple lightning bolts strike the ground beneath a towering, swirling cumulonimbus cloud. The bright flashes reveal layered cloud structures overhead, while distant hills and the lights of a town or industrial area line the horizon below. The foreground is in deep shadow, emphasizing the contrast between the dark landscape and the brilliant lightning.

Member Profile: Meet Tim Raupach, proud member of the thunderstorm nerd club

When it comes to making the most of his involvement with 21st Century Weather, self-confessed thunderstorm nerd Dr Tim Raupach is a strict adherent to the three Cs – collaboration, community and Cumulus.

An Industry Scientia Senior Lecturer with the Institute for Climate Risk and Response at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Tim is an expert in hailstorms, convective processes, and precipitation microstructure. He studies how climate change affects severe convective storms and the dangerous hazards of hail, wind, and rain they create, which are a significant driver of insured losses.

Tim Raupach addresses an audience during a workshop in the Hunter Valley, NSW, in 2024.

He’s also a highly engaged Associate Investigator with 21st Century Weather, regularly attending events, co-supervising students, encouraging early career researchers to seek out training opportunities, and he has the unusual distinction of being the only person (so far) to appear twice on the Centre’s podcast, Totally Cooked.

In addition to regular work with Centre members and formal partner the Bureau of Meteorology, Tim has been working with Chief Investigators Marty Singh, Todd Lane, Steve Sherwood, Negin Nazarian and Lisa Alexander, contributing to a forthcoming Assessment Report that seeks to synthesise the latest and most influential climate and weather science for Australia and the surrounding region.

“My understanding is that it’s a bit like a mini IPCC report, but with an Australian focus,” Tim said of the project.

“It’s about bringing together what we know, what we don’t know, and the current state of the science. It also makes sense for the Centre to position itself within that broader scientific ecosystem.

“My own contribution is through hail work. I’m involved in the Small-Scale Processes chapter, the High-Impact Weather chapter, and the Urban chapter. Most of my work is focused on hail. We’ve got a good club of thunderstorm nerds.”

And for any Associate Investigators, Partner Investigators or other collaborators who are yet to fully capitalise on their relationship with 21st Century Weather, Tim believes there’s one unmissable place to start. 

“The Annual Workshop is fantastic because it brings together this huge community that’s working on the same broad scientific challenges,” he said.

Click on the image above to listen to Tim dissect the classic weather disaster movie Twister during a recent episode of Totally Cooked: The Climate & Weather Podcast

“It’s a really valuable opportunity to catch up with colleagues, meet new people, talk about science, understand what everyone else is doing, and see how my own work fits into the bigger picture. I could only attend a couple of days of the Launceston workshop in 2025, and I wish I’d been able to stay for the whole thing. I certainly wouldn’t miss future workshops.”

The next opportunity to follow in Tim’s footsteps and be immersed in the Centre’s biggest yearly event will come at the 2026 Annual Workshop, taking place in Wollongong from Monday 30 November to Friday 4 December. Registrations are open now to all Centre members, including Associate Investigators and Partner Investigators. 

The Annual Workshop isn’t the only chance for AIs and members of their research groups to form closer links with Centre members. 

“I think one of the biggest benefits for students associated with 21st Century Weather is the additional training opportunities,” Tim said.

“Presentation training has been excellent, and there’s the Graduate Colloquium. There have also been various hackathons over the years. The workshops and the sense of community are hugely important.

“Students get to know people from across the Centre, and later on their work becomes recognised across the community. Opportunities like contributing to the Assessment Report will hopefully be valuable for their careers because people begin to associate them with their area of expertise.

“Not every PhD student or Honours student will stay in academia for the next ten years, but building those professional relationships early is valuable wherever they end up working. And the transferable skills they’re developing—things like presentation training—are valuable no matter what career path they choose.”

Mechanisms for connection and knowledge exchange also extend beyond in-person events and into the digital sphere. 21st Century Weather boasts a hugely successful and versatile online workspace. Operating via the Discourse platform, it’s appropriately known as Cumulus, because it’s a friendly, non-threatening type of cloud, one we can all benefit from. 

“There’s a huge range of support that the Centre provides—you just have to make use of it,” Tim said.

“The computational support is excellent, and the online forum, Cumulus, is a fantastic resource. You can post a question and receive helpful replies very quickly from a really active community.

“I don’t post very often—I’m more of a lurker—but whenever I have asked a question, I’ve received responses almost immediately. It’s a really useful platform.

“More broadly, it’s the community that stands out to me. You really see it at the workshops—everyone is welcoming, genuinely interested in what other people are working on, and keen to make connections.”

This article is part of a new series focused on the working relationship between 21st Century Weather and our Associate Investigators at organisations in Australia and around the world.

In the previous edition, we met Dr Chermelle Engel to learn about her involvement with the Centre’s Modelling Science Project through her role with ACCESS-NRI.

If you would like to know more about 21st Century Weather’s engagement with other science organisations and research groups in Australia and around the world, please contact Deputy Director (Science Parternships) Negin Nazarian via n.nazarian@unsw.edu.au.