Zoe Searcy

Assistant Professor

schrodez@erau.edu

Department of Applied Aviation Sciences

Daytona Beach College of Aviation

Areas of Expertise

Tornadoes, Convective Environments, Climate Change, Hazardous Weather, Statistical Modeling

Zoe Searcy

Overview

Dr. Searcy is an Assistant Professor of Meteorology in the Applied Aviation Sciences Department at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University -- Daytona Beach. After graduating from Florida State University, she began her career at ERAU-DB in January 2022. Her primary research focus is on the influence of convective environments on tornado outbreaks in the United States. Dr. Searcy enjoys teaching and has taught multiple classes during her time at ERAU-DB.

Ph.D. - Doctor of Philosophy in Geography, Florida State University

M.S. - Master of Science in Geoscience: Professional Meteorology/Climatology, Mississippi State University

B.S. - Bachelor of Science in Geoscience: Professional Meteorology, Mississippi State University

American Meteorological Society

American Association of Geographers

2026 Textbook Affordability Champions, Honorable Mention

Teaching

WX 201 - Survey of Meteorology

WX 261 - Applied Climatology

GEO 295 - Natural Hazards

WX 301 - Aviation Weather

WX 363 - Thunderstorms

WX 422 - Meteorology Statistics and Data Analysis

Research

Schroder, Z., T. Fricker, K. Malloy, and D. Burow (2025). “U.S. Natural Hazards Climate Change Projections: Tornado.” National Center for Disaster Preparedness, Columbia Climate School. https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/1c0de890d9ff4fe2b6088126ba1d3db5/page/Tornado Launch Date: February 2025 

Burow, D., Kressler, K*. and Searcy, Z. (2025), On the Convective Environments,  Modes, and Warning Verifications of Tornado- and Flash Flood-Warned Storms in the Southeast United States. Meteorol Appl, 32:e70062. https://doi.org/10.1002/met.70062 

Schroder, Z., and T. Fricker, 2023: “Exploring the overlap: comparing STORGIS and  ONETOR data between 1950 and 1989”. Theoretical and Applied Climatology, 155 (3), 2283–2295. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00704-023-04755-z.  

Schroder, Z. and Fricker, T., 2023. "Expanding the historical ‘outbreak’ climatology between 1880 to 1989". In: Natural Hazards.  https://doi.org/10.1007/s11069-023-05986-z  

Schroder, Z., 2022. "Regional SST and SLP conditions related to tornado ‘outbreak’ environments 15 days later". Theoretical and Applied Meteorology. https://doi.org/10.31223/X5BS6Q 

Schroder, Z. and Elsner, J.B., 2021. "Predicting ‘outbreak’-level tornado counts and casualties from environmental variables". In: Journal of Weather, Climate, and Society. https://doi.org/10.1175/WCAS-D-20-0130.1 

Schroder, Z. and Elsner, J. B., 2020. "Quantifying relationships between environmental factors and power dissipation on the most prolific days in the largest tornado 'outbreaks'”. In: International Journal of Climatology. https://doi.org/10.1002/joc.6388. 

Elsner, J. B. and Schroder, Z., 2019. "Tornado Damage Ratings Estimated with Cumulative Logistic Regression". In: Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology 58.12, pp. 2733–2741. https://doi.org/10.1175/jamc-d-19-0178.1 

Elsner, J.B., Fricker, T., and Schroder, Z., 2019. "Increasingly Powerful Tornadoes in the United States". In: Geophysical Research Letters. https://doi.org/10.1029/2018GL080819