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Years ago, an aquaintance asked Miguel Miller what he did for a living, not long after he had started working at the National Weather Service in San Diego.

“I forecast the weather here,” he said. She quickly replied: “Is this where they send the beginner meteorologists?”

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Miller, 55, chuckled at the memory recently before pulling a shift at the weather service office, which is actually located in Rancho Bernardo, overlooking the mountains.

“It wasn’t an isolated incident, just one of the most overt,” he said. “I wasn’t offended by it.”

But he has never liked the fact that much of the public believes — wrongly — that the weather rarely changes in the San Diego area and that it doesn’t take much to figure out what’s coming next.

Miller has responded by publishing, “The Remarkable Weather of Southern California: It’s Science and Subtleties,” a book that arrives during a winter of record snow, driving rains and some of the strongest winds to hit the coast in years.

It is an easy-to-read, illustrated primer that explains everything from why Santa Ana winds are usually hot to how coastal eddies evolve into some of the prettiest rotational patterns found in nature.

He went further in interviews with the Union-Tribune, talking about how forecasters get many things right and why they sometimes get important things wrong.

He especially wants you to know that the region’s weather isn’t the static tableau depicted in movies.

“In the plains states people say, ‘If you don’t like the weather, wait five minutes,’” said Miller. “In Southern California they say, ‘If you don’t like the weather drive somewhere for five minutes.’”

He was alluding to the extraordinary size and geographic diversity of the area covered by the weather service’s San Diego operation.

The office forecasts the weather for all of San Diego and Orange counties, western Riverside County and southwestern San Bernardino County. The region is home to more than 10 million people. Only nine states have as many or more residents.

The topography ranges from the wind-whipped Coachella Valley, much of which is below sea level, to the mild, twisty Pacific coastline, to the San Bernardino Mountains, whose highest point rises to 11,499 feet. Some of its peaks have recorded more than 100 inches of snow this winter. The mountain is a borderline for the Cajon Pass, where bad weather regularly contributes to deadly traffic accidents.

In the summer, it’s not unusual for there to be a 45 degree temperature difference between Oceanside and Borrego Springs. And the monsoon can spark intense lightning in East County, which is covered with chaparral, the most flammable type of brush in the country.

“Most people don’t tend to think of the extremes because they live at the coast, in places like San Diego, which gets at least some sun more than 260 days a year,” said Miller, who lives in the Carmel Mountain neighborhood. “But you don’t have to go far inland to experience those extremes.”

The milder weather at the coast also has a distinct and often overlooked impact on daily life. Fewer people go to the beach if the “June gloom” clouds get really thick. That means fewer people rent surfing and diving equipment and fewer file into beach-side restaurants and bars.

The opposite happens when it gets hot and sunny.

“We get calls from the Hotel Del and vendors in La Jolla Cove who want to know just how hot it will be so they can get an idea of how much ice cream they might sell,” Miller said.

That’s where most of his interests lay. As he says in his book, “I don’t need tornadoes, hurricanes, thunder, lightning or blizzards to get excited about the weather … I’m just as stimulated by the subtleties.”

His fascination with the weather arose when he was about 11 years old and began using a thermometer to measure the temperature at his home in Mt. Pleasant, Utah, a small town in the central part of the state. This evolved into a deep passion. He earned a degree in meteorology at the University of Utah and, in 1998, landed at the weather service office in San Diego.

He’s a nerdy, easy-going guy with a corny sense of humor. He’ll ask people things like, “What happens when the smog goes away in Los Angeles? UCLA.”

But Miller is hyper-focused on forecasting the weather, which involves some challenges that aren’t widely known to the public. He says, for example, that forecasting fog at San Diego International Airport — one of the busiest single-runway airports in the world — can be more difficult than predicting a tornado in Texas or a Nor’ easter in New England.

“When it comes to the airport, you’re calling the weather for one small spot,” Miller said. “And the conditions that lead to fog are very subtle and very sensitive to minor changes in temperature and dew point. A 2 mph difference in the wind and a 30 degree difference in its direction can determine whether you get fog that can shut down the airport.”

It also can be difficult to forecast the path of a large, approaching storm, which became painfully apparent in late February.

The weather service told the public that a system that was drawing extra energy from the subtropics would clobber San Diego County with heavy snow and rain. Forecasters warned people not to venture into the mountains because the snow might cause a white-out. Swift-water rescue crews went on alert.

The storm unexpectedly shifted farther north, delivering a comparatively weak hit locally. The change was missed largely due to the limitations of the numerous computer models used by forecasters.

There was a little bit of indication, late in the cycle, that things were shifting. But Miller said, “We don’t want to latch on to the outlier model that might be detecting something that’s really going to happen.

“It’s like we’ve got 10 solutions and only one of them is saying, ‘Hey, it’s going to slow down, it’s not going to hit San Diego very much.’ We’re not we’re not going to ignore the other nine and go off on the lark of one model.”

The weather service had accurately predicted the two storms that immediately preceded the bigger one. But missing changes like the one that occurred with the biggest system bothers Miller, who said, “I feel bad. I got into the business with the intent and the desire to give people the best forecast.”

The opportunity for redemption is never far away. The weather is always changing.

This weekend, forecasters are tracking a storm that might bring significant rain to the San Diego area on Tuesday.

Miller is focused on that. He’s also hoping that more people come to understand the region’s weather and how forecasts are crafted.

“I’d love to have my book go in the science reference section of college libraries,” said Miller, who spent five years writing the tome. “I also want it to be on library shelves at middle schools, and absolutely in people’s homes.”