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Squinting at a dark gray monsoon cloud dumping rain across the city, Shawn Bennett, the new head of the National Weather Service in Albuquerque, looked worried.

Lightning flashed; thunder cracked through the air a few seconds later.

"We should really be inside," Bennett said, standing near the door to his office as large drops started thumping the pavement.

He has never tried green chile, never been to the Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta, but monsoons? Those are features of New Mexico he's familiar with.

"You have to remember the 30-30 rule — that's what it's called," Bennett said, blue eyes critically evaluating the ominous sky. "That means if the bang comes less than 30 seconds after the flash, you should seek shelter. And you should wait 30 minutes after the last clap of thunder before going out again."

Bennett began his tenure managing a staff of 27 at the Albuquerque office last week. The U.S. Office of Personnel Management lists his salary between $105,000 and $136,000.

A few different steps in life, and the 49-year-old Oregon native would have been educating teens about the 30-30 rule rather than monitoring storms, he said, but meteorology sort of got in the way.

"My biggest influence actually was Eros Osterloh, my high school geology teacher," Bennett said. "She took us on field trips in all of the Earth sciences. I really went into weather science because of her."

Bennett remained fascinated with Earth sciences after high school, when he joined the Navy, and he quickly gravitated to Naval Weather Services on the USS Nassau.

When he finished his service in the early 1980s, he went to Oregon State University and earned his bachelor's and master's degrees in atmospheric science — but changed his mind a little bit about teaching and decided to stick with his love of weather science.

Since he graduated from OSU, Bennett has served in several Weather Service offices across the country. He has worked in Maryland, Arizona, Oklahoma, Texas and Puerto Rico. Most recently, he ran the office in Tampa, Fla.

During that time, he has seen a lot of weather phenomena, such as monsoons, hurricanes, tornadoes, floods and fires, he said.

But the biggest challenge that might face him in the Albuquerque office isn't the weather at all — it's the sheer size of the district, said Charlie Liles, who ran the Albuquerque office for 19 years before retiring in April.

"Albuquerque has the largest area of responsibility of any office in the lower 48 states," Liles said. "It's 88,000 square miles, compared to the average, which is 22,000 square miles."

That means the weather Bennett will monitor comes from a huge range of terrains in 24 counties that stretch from the Arizona border to Texas and from the Colorado border to just north of Silver City.

"That's the real challenge - running an office the size of every other office in the U.S. but with four times the area," Liles said. "There's a lot of weather in that area: flash floods, fires, monsoons, snow and dramatic temperature variations."

Bennett speaks fluent Spanish — which will certainly help him in New Mexico, Liles said.

"That's one thing he will bring to the office that we've been lacking for quite a while," Liles said.

Overall, Bennett said he hopes to stress public safety through his office and do a lot of educational outreach.

"Curiosity is the basis of any science: Why? How does that work? That's what's interesting about weather," Bennett said. "Our mission is to save lives and livelihoods by understanding that science — and also to teach people about it."