It’s early on a weekday morning and two reporters are rushing up stairs of the Driftmier Engineering Center on South Campus.

“That’s the way it has been for the past month,” said Pam Knox of the center as a reporter set up a camera.

The reporters want to interview David Emory Stooksbury, who has become a major source of information on the historic Georgia drought.

Stooksbury, a University professor and the state climatologist, has been sending out news releases about the drought for more than a year, but said only recently did his popularity increase. Calls come from farmers wondering how to keep their crops and business owners struggling to remain economically sound. He’s been interviewed by the British Broadcasting Corporation, Reuters, Time, USA Today and The Associated Press, among other media. Stooksbury’s name has been in the news so much, he said a Georgia fan called him asking for information about football gameday parking.

On Aug. 23, Stooksbury declared 51 counties, including Athens-Clarke, in an exceptional drought , which occurs about once every 100 years. He said the forecast calls for a warmer and drier-than- normal winter. He also said rainfall in the upcoming months will not replenish the dwindling water levels.

With the drought, much of the attention is focused on something Stooksbury has been concerned about for years.

In 1998, when he interviewed at the University, Stooksbury proposed development of a state drought plan.

“I told the interviewer, we do not have a drought plan, and I would like to develop a drought plan,” Stooksbury said. The following year the Georgia alumnus returned as an assistant professor, teaching engineering and atmospheric sciences, and as the state climatologist.

From 2000 to 2003, he wrote the state plan, which is held as a model by the National Drought Mitigation Center. He also worked on a Georgia water management plan that state legislators may approve next year.

The Journey of a Nature’s Man

A Georgia native, Stooksbury was born on Peachtree Street in Atlanta and grew up in then-rural DeKalb County.

“We were out in the country,” he said, adding he remembers I-285 building a perimeter around Atlanta while he was in middle school. Stooksbury said his fascination with weather and geography began at a young age.

“Like many kids, I had an interest in the environment around me and ignored that uncoolness in middle school,” he said.

In third grade, his fascination with the Pleiades star cluster began after a visit to Fernbank Science Center and Museum. In fourth grade, Stooksbury witnessed his first lunar eclipse. His fifth grade leaf collection began where Northlake Mall is today, and he said he has recollections of Hurricane Camille, a tornado that hit the governor’s mansion. He said he “discovered the stars in January 1970″ at Fort Yargo State Park with his Boy Scout troop.

“It was a bitterly cold night in winter and the sky was perfectly clear. That is when the stars are the most brilliant. The stars jumped at me,” Stooksbury said.

Seven years later, he was a freshman at the University. Stooksbury joined Phi Kappa Theta fraternity, of which he is present-day adviser.

Andrei Ionescu, vice president for recruitment, said Stooksbury was instrumental in getting the fraternity re-chartered and reclaiming its 104-year-old house on Milledge Avenue.

“He’s very involved and always around for us,” Ionescu said. “He puts the footwork in place for us.”

But Stooksbury added students are more academically prepared than 25 years ago when he was a student.

He was a resident assistant in Creswell Hall the first year it became co-ed and in Russell Hall before it had air conditioning.

“Being a student doesn’t change. We partied. We had fun. We dressed up for football games. And we celebrated when professors cancelled class,” he said. “Having fun and being a good student are not mutually exclusive.”

Stooksbury was the first University student to major in physics and astronomy. His second major was plant genetics, a degree the University did away with in the ’80s.

Stooksbury remained at the University for graduate studies and earned a master’s degree in agronomy – the study of crop and soil – specializing in wheat breeding and disease resistance genetics.

Stooksbury left Georgia for the University of Virginia where he earned a Ph.D. in environmental science. He worked as an assistant in the Virginia state climatology lab and was a lieutenant on the local rescue squad. He said the training has been instrumental in disaster management.

“I have ground training in emergency management and the technical training of knowing the environment,” he said.

Stooksbury taught introductory biology at Clayton State University and researched solar and wind energy at the University of Nebraska. In Nebraska, he worked as the high plains regional climatologist, his desk just three feet from the National Drought Mitigation Center.

The Working Man

Science is Stooksbury’s specialty, and he dedicates at least 60 hours a week to it.

Stooksbury works closely with climatologists from Alabama and Florida, studying the impact of agricultural, coastal and water resources. He teaches three courses this semester.

“I’m dedicated to the three-fold mission of UGA: to teach, inquire and serve,” he said. “Fifty percent of my time is service to this state.”

His desk is cluttered with a digital weather hazard alert monitor, a snow globe containing Smokey Bear, Rolodex, files, physics textbooks and papers.

Stooksbury said he ran into high school classmate O’Neill Williams, Georgia football broadcaster, and the two joked about who has the better job.

“I told him: I have the best job in the world,” Stooksbury said. “I get to spend my time with Bulldogs – interacting in the classroom and at the fraternity house. And I take pride in serving the people of Georgia.”