Shawn, Arleen, and Mark – Your Pagosa Weather team
Arleen, Shawn, and Mark are the National Weather Service (NWS) Archuleta County Weather Ready Nation (WRN) Ambassadors. They were recognized by National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) at the national level as 2022 WRN Ambassadors of Excellence. Arleen and Shawn are the NWS Community Collaborative Rain, Hail and Snow (CoCoRaHS) Network coordinators for Archuleta County. Arleen and Shawn are both members of the American Meteorological Society (AMS).
Pagosa Weather was founded in 2016 by Todd Cook to express his interest and love for weather, and to give something back to the community.
Joining the Pagosa Weather team in March 2019: Arleen & Shawn!
Both Arleen and Shawn were members of Air Force Weather in support of Air Force and Army Aviation forces; Arleen for 24 years, Shawn for 20 years.
Their multiple deployments, including Iraq and Afghanistan were the highlight of their careers. Though conditions were harsh, their decisions had significant, life or death impacts.
Another highlight was forecasting for the Rescue Coordination Center in Alaska. They provided pin-point forecasts for life-threatening situations such as climbing accidents on Denali and commercial fishing boat incidents in the Gulf of Alaska and the Bering Sea.
They were stationed in Alaska, New York, Colorado, Washington, and Germany. In addition, Arleen was stationed in Korea while Shawn was in Portugal.
When they retired from the Air Force in 2011, they started a full time RV traveling odyssey to explore their own country for nine years. After decades of living a nomadic life, they chose spectacular Pagosa Springs to settle.
Joining the Pagosa Weather team in November 2019: Mark Langford!
I consider myself a “weather journalist” who has been studying and following meteorology since taking an earth science class in eighth grade.
Later, as I turned my other passion of photography into a career, I learned that my continued studies in meteorology gave me an edge over my competition. Since many of my commercial assignments were outdoors, being able to predict the weather was a great bonus for ad agencies and companies hiring me.
I’m now a semi-retired professional photographer who shoots an occasional assignment, maintains a south Texas Facebook weather page and displays my work at Two Old Crows Gallery in downtown Pagosa Springs.