Ryan Vandersmith

Ryan Vandersmith is an R&D software engineer with over 10 years of experience and a deep self-taught background in meteorology. He builds weather forecasting and analysis tools used by photographers, storm chasers, and researchers, including Mesoview (skychaser.mesoview.app), a cloud inversion forecast tool, a mountain wave visualization tool, and a stepwise CAPE/CIN contribution to SounderPy. Professionally, he worked on Caffeine.ai, an AI website builder, and led Motoko programming-language tooling, including a VS Code extension with more than 85,000 installs. He also has experience with cross-chain EVM integrations, developer-experience products, UX research, Rust research software at the University of Colorado Boulder, consulting, and public-sector software.

[Skychaser](https://skychaser.mesoview.app) is a global database of sky and weather observations. Users submit photos with time and location details, then browse reports on a map or in a feed.

Community-suggested tags give a way for researchers and enthusiasts to share and annotate cloud formations, storms, auroras, and other sky phenomena.

A global, community-powered database for sharing, browsing, and mapping photos of clouds, storms, and other sky phenomena.