Neil Jacobs was mowing his lawn in North Carolina when he got the call. It was a (202) number – the area code for Washington DC – and since he had worked on The Hill in the past, Jacobs presumed it was someone he knew; an old colleague, perhaps, calling to catch up.

So he stopped pushing the old-school reel mower, and answered.

“It was the White House calling directly on my cellphone,” Jacobs told me months later, while he was visiting the Outer Banks to pick up some freshies from Wave Riding Vehicles, after making the 300-mile drive from his new, adopted home in DC. “I thought it was a joke. They said, ‘would you consider this position?’ It wasn’t even a question. I was like, ‘heck yeah.’”

The position in question was the assistant secretary of commerce for NOAA’s Environmental Observation and Prediction, a post previously held by President Obama’s appointee, Manson Brown. But under the Trump administration, Jacobs was the new pick. Duties for the assistant secretary are manifold and multifaceted; NOAA describes the position as, “driving…priorities for weather and water services, climate science, plus the agency’s integrated mapping and Earth-observing capabilities…also agency-wide direction for satellites, space weather, water, and ocean observations and forecasts to best serve American communities and businesses.”

In other words, Jacobs is a helluva smart dude. And this new gig comes with massive responsibility. But Jacobs has the experience: prior to accepting this job in the public sector, he worked for Panasonic’s avionics and weather observation division, for NASA’s earth science department, and NOAA’s Geostationary Observational Environmental Satellite system (which, during his first week Washington, launched a potentially game-changing weather data satellite).

But when he’s not making crucial environmental observations or attending satellite launches, Jacobs can be found surfing his beloved Outer Banks, or traveling to international haunts like Bali in search of swell. Which begs the question: Is Jacobs the highest-ranking hardcore surfer in a government position? For the answer to that provocative potential development in American politics (and other questions regarding his actual job, too), we gave Jacobs a ring.

Winter is here in the Northern Hemisphere — Surfline has a team of forecasters monitoring the activity nonstop. Who you gonna trust? Try Surfline Premium Free

And this time, he was sitting in Surfline’s OBX offices when we called. (No lawn-mowing was interrupted in the making of this interview).

For political and/or weather-forecasting novices, please explain what this position entails.

A lot of the position is really looking at policy, both from a business sense and a scientific standpoint. And then of course, as the title suggests, observations and predictions – across all time scales, from short term down to lengthy climate forecasts, and then all the observing systems that are used to aggregate the data. You know, observing systems that are subsurface in the ocean, to space-based observing systems that’re both observing the earth from space as well as the sun. It encompasses a tremendous amount of data and technology and modeling capability to do both the observations and predictions.

If you look at how many industries out there are sensitive to weather, it’s pretty much everybody. It’s just a matter of – do they understand how much weather impacts their business or not?

One of the priorities of the current administration is having the best global prediction system on the planet. We have the best scientists, we have the most amount of resources. And everyone is getting tired of hearing how we’re getting beat up by the European center on the modeling. That’s something that, when I was at Panasonic, we were able to figure out certain things that could really improve it with a small group of people.

“If you look at how many industries out there are sensitive to weather, it’s pretty much everybody.”

And how did your past get you to where you are today?

This wasn’t my plan. As a kid I was pretty good at math, and I really enjoyed physics. I was always pretty argumentative, so at a very early age I joined the speech and debate club, and I started getting involved in policy debate. I ended up financing some of my undergrad on a debate scholarship, which is weird, because a lot of debaters are pre-law or philosophy or English majors. So, for a physics major to be involved in that was kind of goofy.

I did my undergraduate degrees in just straight physics and math. Then I started a graduate program in condensed matter physics, and I was doing some work with the semiconductor industry, and I just got tired of it. I worked in the basement of this lab, and I never knew if the sun was going to be up or if it was going to be dark when I left. And the entire time, I was thinking: ‘I started surfing when I was a kid, and I’ve always been an armchair forecaster, so, why don’t I just do that for a career?’ Predicting weather is just applied math and physics. I switched gears and did a master’s in air/sea interaction, largely studying the gulf stream’s influence on east coast storms on the Outer Banks and New England. Then that rolled over into a PHD program and I was working on data assimilation, sea surface temperature data assimilation, and other three-dimensional data sets.

I was still involved in doing some coaching on debate, I was always interested in policy. And, after my dad retired from the air force, he went back to school and got a PHD in economics and became an economics professor. We’d sit around the dinner table at night and talk about Paul Krugman, Milton Friedman, and debating economic policy. I had this weird mix of math, science, and economics with an ability to speak publicly – which is kind of a bizarre combination.

I found myself doing a lot of work on The Hill – random testimonies, and stuff. Because I went straight from grad school into private industry, and I’d done a lot of work with start-ups and business models, and I realized that the business model in the weather enterprise – like how industry and the public-sector interfaces – is kind of dysfunctional. Instead of working with each other, they end up competing. That doesn’t help anybody. The taxpayers get the short end of the stick on that.

I thought this could be an interesting opportunity to retool the business model and work on public/private partnerships from the public side.

How did surfing influence your career trajectory?

Moving to South Carolina, Folly Beach became my adopted homebreak. By the time I graduated from high school, I had been surfing there mostly. That was when I started watching the Weather Channel, back when it was just a blue screen and text and looking at the pressure maps they would put up, just doing general armchair forecasting stuff. I learned to predict when the waves would get good and when the wind would switch offshore. And that was it.

I’ve been surfing since the early ’80s. I got my first board in ’83, I think it was a Nectar twin-fin. I sold Blow Pops at my middle school to get enough money to buy it. That was my first venture into a startup company. I would buy Blow Pops at Sam’s wholesale for like six cents apiece, but you’d buy ’em in bulk, then I’d sell ’em for a quarter. The profit margins were pretty decent. But I got in trouble for undercutting the band; they were selling candy bars to raise funds to go on a trip. I guess my dad probably thought it was funny, being an economist.

My mom would drive us down to the beach and make us wear different colored jerseys, so she could spot us from the sand. It was like a little ESA heat. They considered it a good, healthy, wholesome sport. They basically said, ‘pick an instrument, pick a sport.’ My dad was all American in like 10 different sports. I didn’t want to do any of those because I never could live up to what he was back then. So I decided to pick something he’d never done.

I’ve been surfing ever since. I went to grad school in North Carolina, which meant I migrated my homebreak up the coast. Actually it was a coin toss between MIT Woods Hole and NC State. When I went up to interview at Woods Hole, I talked with a couple guys who surfed up there and they said, ‘oh yeah, you know, sometimes we have to climb through the second-story window, because the snowdrifts are holding the front door shut.’ And I’m from Miami. That was too hardcore for me. So, North Carolina and the Outer Banks, it’s hard to beat what they got.

What was the process like from appointment, to confirmation, to swearing in?

I got the call, and I talked to my wife about it. We’re both really proud Americans. But she’s got a fulltime job and we’ve got a two-year-old and a four-year-old. This would mean that she’d basically be operating as a single parent, because I’d be working in DC Monday through Friday and commute back on weekends. It’s really going to be hard on the family, but there was no question about it. You say yes, and then you figure out how to make things work afterwards.

After the nomination process, you go to what’s called committee. In the Senate, there’s all these different committees and they oversee different sections of government. And the committee that oversees the nominations for NOAA, they have a vote, and then you go to the full Senate for a vote. The way I was confirmed was what’s called a unanimous consent. If there’s no opposition, it doesn’t go to a vote on the floor or what they call a roll call. There’s a lot paperwork, a lot of meetings, and since I have no online presence – I’m not on any social media whatsoever, I’m not even on Linkedin – for a lot of people on The Hill, I was an unknown. If you look me up, you don’t find much except for a few stories from my days at Panasonic. So, there were a lot of meetings where people wanted to ask things like, ‘what do you think about these issues?’ and ‘what’re your plans?’ They want to know what you’re like as a person.

Have you had any face-to-face time with President Trump?

No, the White House has an entire staff that works on White House appointments. And that’s the first line of due diligence with the nominees. And then of course there’s a massive FBI background check, which was kind of an interesting experience because they go around talking to your friends and family, then they ask them for names. They finally get a couple layers down and they were asking people that I hadn’t mentioned anything to about this position. Then they call me like, ‘the FBI is over here. What’s going on?’

What’s been your impression of Washington as a whole?

It’s a completely different vibe up there. I can’t even leave my apartment unless I have a coat and tie on. And I’m usually the guy just in a hoodie.

But my impression hasn’t changed much. Everything is political no matter what it is. I’m fortunate that NOAA’s basically a science agency, and I’m going to do my best to keep politics out of it. We’ve got a job to produce the most accurate, robust and defendable science; policy-makers need to be able to trust the science, but we’re the ones producing the science and it’s up to them to do the policy decisions based on that. We have to make sure that everything is objective and transparent and try to keep politics out of that, which is fine by me.

“I can’t even leave my apartment unless I have a coat and tie on. And I’m usually the guy just in a hoodie.”

You’ll be replacing Manson Brown, the previous assistant secretary under Obama; is there anything you hope to do differently than your predecessor?

[One] primary objective from my opening statement in my hearing was getting the weather service global modeling program, both the research and operational forecasting side, on a track so that it will ideally outpace [the] European center. Predicting the future of weather is largely an initial value problem. You start with all these observations and you aggregate them into your best guess of the current state of the atmosphere. Having accurate observations is extremely critical and having a lot of them is helpful. We’re going to need the help of the academic university sector as well as industry to do it. Public/private partnerships and win-win-win business models [are] the best strategies moving forward.

Speaking of the privatization of weather forecasting within the federal government, I saw some articles talking about that. Could explain your stance on that issue?

Yes. [Laughs]. That was my first introduction into being taken out of context. The headline of an article said something I never said – you actually read down in the article and they got the quote right because it was from congressional testimony, but the headline was misleading. A lot of people don’t understand the difference between privatization and public/private partnerships. My position is I would like to see NOAA harness the capabilities in the private industry through public/private partnerships working together in a collaborative versus competitive relationship. It’s different from privatization, which is just replacing the public sector with the private sector.

What is your take on climate change?

It’s real. No one disputes that the climate is changing. I think the debate is how much influence are humans having on it versus how much is from natural variability and natural signals and we’re still doing a ton of research on that. I think what it’s going to come down to is the policy-makers are going to be in a situation where they’re going to have to make decisions on policy before all of the facts are totally in and we understand everything. I cringe a little when people say that the science is settled. To some degree I understand what they’re getting at. We do understand some basic things, but I hate to say the science is settled. With that argument, you’re basically saying: ‘Then why fund the research?’ There’s still research that needs to be done.

With this new position, are you still going to find time to surf?

That’s going to be tough. I think any free second I have, I’ll need to be spending that with my family. Maybe I could meet up with them at the beach, then I could get some waves in. But I’m basically resigning myself to the fact that I’m not going to have a lot of free time to do anything, including surf. I’m super stoked on some new boards that I just got, but I’m going to be stuck in DC.

When you do have time to surf, do you use Surfline?

I’ve been a Surfline user forever. In fact, when I was a kid you guys got me in trouble. This was back when it was a (900) number. And my parents were like, ‘what’s this (900) number on our phone bill?’ They called it up one day and just realized it was the surf report. But yeah, I use Surfline all the time. When your time is so limited to go surf, and you want to make sure it’s going to be good before you make the decision to surf or do work, you don’t want to go down there and get skunked. I can’t remember the last time I went to the beach and didn’t know what the surf was going to be like before I got there.

How do you think Surfline could help the nation outside of surfing?

There’s a lot of industries that, I think, are sensitive and exposed to waves and currents. Particularly the shipping and port industry. Then there’s the obvious ones – alerting people about land-falling storms. And using you guys as an additional platform for getting information out to the public. I know people use the service to know when the waves will be good to surf, but the byproduct of running Surfline’s wave models means you can predict storm surges and when the waves are going to be damaging. It taps into the whole mission of protecting life or property.

Where’s your favorite place to surf?

When I worked at Panasonic, I was very fortunate to be able to travel the world. I’ve got boards stashed all over the place. But that’s a tough one… My friends on the east coast are going to hate me for saying this, [laughs], but Bali is probably my favorite place to surf. I’m a goofyfoot, so, you know. But the Outer Banks in mid-February – that’s also my favorite.

As far as you know, are you the highest ranking hardcore surfer in a government position?

You know, I’m not sure. I don’t really know anybody else that surfs in DC. I haven’t really asked anyone yet. Maybe people will read this and some more senior person will be like, ‘nah, it’s me. I’m gonna drop in on you on every wave now.’ [Laughs].