Jared Leighton is a Senior Forensic Meteorologist with Haag, a Salas O’Brien Company. Based near Kansas City, Mr. Leighton has over 18 years of experience in operational and forensic meteorology. He spent a decade as Senior Forecaster for NOAA National Weather Service in Kansas City, Missouri, and as a General Forecaster with the NWS in Topeka, Kansas, prior to that position. As a forensic meteorologist Mr. Leighton has valuable experience giving testimony in trial and deposition settings, and has conducted meteorological analysis on over 100 cases, including severe and winter weather, vehicle accidents, and tropical storms and hurricanes.

Mr. Leighton has extensive, comprehensive experience in operational meteorology, including detection and analysis of large hail and damaging winds in his time issuing and supervising severe and winter weather warnings within NWS forecast operations. He regularly conducted tornado and hail surveys, both solo and as storm survey team lead, including multiple tornadoes in Kansas and Missouri, as well as a severe weather event on September 15, 2010, in which 7.75-inch hail occurred in Wichita, Kansas (the second largest certified hailstone recorded in the US). Mr. Leighton led and participated in several research teams, resulting in five peer-reviewed formal publications as well as presentations at local, regional, and national conferences. He also organized local storm spotter training in coordination with emergency management and led the Storm Ready community preparedness program.

Mr. Leighton earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Atmospheric Science from the University of California Davis. He is an American Meteorological Society Certified Consulting Meteorologist (CCM #783).