Longtime NWS Nashville Meteorologist-in-Charge Larry Vannozzi Retires

Larry Vannozzi, who has served as the Meteorologist-in-Charge at the National Weather Service Office in Nashville since 2004, is retiring on March 26, 2022. Larry has served for 36 years in the NWS, the latter half of which were spent at the Nashville office. His leadership and goodwill will be terribly missed, but he does leave behind a phenomenal team in Nashville.

Larry has assembled a staff of highly-talented and motivated meteorologists and other staff members that has helped turn the Nashville office into one of the most desirable locations in the National Weather Service. His quiet, hands-off style of leadership created an office culture that encourages individual creativity, team camaraderie, and unique innovation. In other words, he allowed us to be ourselves. Nowhere is this more evident than our entertaining (and sometimes edgy) Facebook posts.

Although we coined the phrase “Vanilla Vannozzi'' about Larry, there is nothing plain about him. Larry has gained the respect of his peers, the appreciation of his customers and partners, and the admiration of his staff. He and his wife Bethany moved to the Nashville area 18 years ago with their two sons and ended up embracing the Music City as their home.

Larry's journey began in Rochester, New York. Like so many of us in the field of meteorology, his fascination with weather began as a child, especially with snow. He recalls "thundersnow" being his first obsession; even today he is the first to make a Jim Cantore joke. Larry graduated from Penn State in 1986 with a degree in Meteorology. Three weeks later, he moved to Houston, Texas to begin his National Weather Service career as a Meteorologist Intern. His career started off with a literal bang; his first three days on the job were spent under a Hurricane Watch/Warning for Hurricane Bonnie. (Larry actually spent time as a volunteer firefighter, too.)

After three years spent learning the NWS ropes in Houston, Larry traded tropical weather for life in the high desert and mountains with significant winter storms in Albuquerque, New Mexico. In 1993, Larry was promoted to one of the first Warning Coordination Meteorologist positions in the NWS at the office in Lubbock, Texas. Seven years later, Larry became the Regional Warning Coordination Meteorologist at Ft. Worth, Texas, where he served WCM’s at local offices across the Southern Region and also led the severe weather and hurricane programs. He returned to Lubbock two years later to assume the role of Meteorologist-in-Charge before coming to Nashville in 2004.

Larry’s most significant weather-related milestones include:

* Served on the Service Assessment Teams for the May 3, 1999, Oklahoma/Southern Kansas Tornado Outbreak and, later, Hurricane Katrina

* Worked several hurricanes at the National Hurricane Center as a Hurricane Liaison Team member

* Founding member of the Enhanced Fujita Scale

* Surveyed several long-track tornadoes in Middle Tennessee including one that came within two miles of his home in Hendersonville

* Served as a facilitator for Southern Region’s “BLAST” (Building Leaders for a Solid Tomorrow) leadership development program for over a dozen years where his work exploring servant leadership was one of the highpoints of each year’s class.

Larry is definitely not one to make a fuss. In fact, it was a struggle to even get him to agree to a retirement lunch at the office. So if you’d like, please leave your well wishes on our Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/NWSNashville. We'll make sure he sees them all.