 He finished his Ph.D. at Colorado State University (CSU) in Ft. Collins in 1992.At CSU he participated in more field work, including researching squall lines in Australia and his dissertation was titled "Observational and Theoretical Study of Squall Line Evolution".Rasmussen became a research meteorologist at the National Severe Storms Laboratory (NSSL) and then the Cooperative Institute for Mesoscale Meteorological Studies (CIMMS).