He is also known for his professional involvement with Carl-Gustaf Arvid Rossby and Tetsuya Theodore Fujita.

During high school Byers developed a strong interest in journalism and worked as a reporter around the San Francisco Bay area, full-time for a year after graduation and then part-time while at the University of California, Berkeley.

degree in geography in 1929, afterward studying meteorology under Rossby and Hurd C. Willett at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) on a fellowship from the Daniel Guggenheim Fund, receiving his M.S.

In 1934 he earned an Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship to study meteorology, attaining his Sc.D.

Byers joined the faculty of the University of Chicago in 1940, eventually helping establish the Department of Meteorology.