01/24/03 Giovanni Leoncini csu-atmos

A member of the elite WWW MiB squad writes...

Today we were ending the class talking about vortex Rossby waves, barotropic instability, and the inexorable phase locking. After class, I was talking to student Giovanni Leoncini about biking in this morning in the cold, stable atmosphere. Perhaps through lack of exercise, or just existing in an unfavorable potential vorticity gradient, his take on all of it was "I'm really out of phase."

Ahh, a classic weenie-ism. Thanks for sharing!

02/07/03 Prof. Chris Kummerow csu-atmos

While discussing Wien's displacement law in his AT622 lecture, Prof. Kummerow made the observation that an individual suffering from a fever would be easily recognized by the decrease in maximum wavelength of emission of that person's emitted radiation. The affect of this discovery on modern medicine has yet to be determined.

02/20/03 Jonathan Vigh csu-atmos

A member of the elite WWW MiB squad writes...

Today we had a meeting for the qual and I asked him if he started wx system. he said "I enjoyed reading Holton so much that I didn't start wx system yet"

Don't we all, Jonathan, don't we all. :)

03/13/03 Special Supplemental Weenie: The WWWWWWVB

We don't like to narc ourselves out, but this just kinda happened and rapidly got out of control. We ended up nominating each other, and well, here we are. This is for the infamous Fujita Shrine that now resides in ACRC 209. The following weenies occurred:

• Matt Rogers: for creating a Shinto-esque shrine to Ted Fujita to fill an awkward corner in his office
  
• John Haynes: for immediately decorating the Shrine with a full-color slide from a JAWS talk by Prof. Fujita
  
• Chris Rozoff: for providing the Shrine a photocopy of Prof. Fujita's autograph, and for the weeniefied way he got the autograph (dragging his whole family to a tornado talk)
  
• Brian McNoldy: when Brian came to the Shrine, he was playing with my pop-bottle tornado generator, and found that he could manipulate the system so that the water would refuse to drop to the lower chamber. Upon this revelation, he decided he was violating the laws of thermodynamics and dubbed himself "Destroyer of Entropy."

So, yeah, we're weenies too. :)

03/13/03 Eric Hendricks csu-atmos

Recently, Eric went skiing, and had the following revelation regarding 'stressed-out air parcels':

It was like being an air parcel in a trough-ridge pattern. Going down the hill was like diverging and subsiding down the ridge and reaching the bottom involved hitting the trough and converging with other air parcels (other skiers.)

He said that converging must be very stressful for air parcels, like it was for him. Incidentally, Chris Rozoff corrected this statement by adding "to be meteorologically accurate, we must be at lower levels for such divergence panels to occur."

Note that to the True Weenie, even fun activities like skiing are subservient to the Weenie Mind.

03/19/03 Toshi Matsui and Chris Castro csu-atmos

During the Blizzard of 2003, CSU took the rare precaution of closing down the school for nearly a week. Of course, this doesn't stop the True Weather Weenie from wanting to come in to work anyways. Toshi Matsui is just such a person - but not only did he walk to work in the middle of a blizzard, he took the extra effort to photograph himself trudging through chest-deep snow to do it. (By the way, photographing yourself heroically battling the elements so you can run one more simulation is a good way to earn yourself a Weather Weenie nomination. :)

Astounding bravery aside, there's a twist to this story: after what must have been hours of hiking through the blizzard, Toshi made it to the atmospheric science building, flush with victory over the elements, only to find...

...yep, Chris Castro already hard at work. It's heartwarming, in a tragic sort of way. :) You can check out the evidence here. Congratulations, you dedicated nuts!

5/7/03 Prof. Bill Cotton csu-atmos

Ian Baker sent in this nomination...

Anyway, Bill Cotton just came into my office with a plastic-laminated skew-T, and he said that he thought that it would make a perfect placemat. Then he tried to defray www consideration by saying that it belonged to Travis Ashby.

Uh-huh... :)

04/28/03 Zach Eitzen former CSU student

Email me to find out why. :)

5/7/03 Mike Nelson KUSA-TV Channel 9

Recently, Mike was in town for a stop at CSU on the Channel 9 severe weather tour. Needless to say, we were thrilled when we were able to get Mike to do a special seminar this week out at the atmospheric science building before doing his talk over at the CSU main campus. During the energetic talk, we were treated to several textbook examples of exemplary weather weenie characteristics (including among other things, some fashion modelling involving a radiosonde balloon.)

The highlight of the afternoon's talk was a passionate rendition of Mike's famous "Tornado Dance." Nobody combines synoptic and mesoscale convective processes (along with as good a description of the dynamic pipe effect as I've heard) into an interpretive dance quite like Mike does - for this, we are honored to present Mike Nelson with this week's Weather Weenie of the Week award. Congratulations!

5/14/03 Katherine Hart Nunn Cornell University

This week we offer evidence that our site recognizes weather weenidom anywhere and everywhere it might exist, not just here in our own stomping ground. Katherine Nunn of Cornell University demonstrates that incorporating knowledge of famous storms into everyday conversation is one mark of a true weenie.

Katherine writes...

At the beginning of this year, I was moving into a double dorm room when my 
roommate hung a Georgia license plate on her wall. Upon seeing that it was a 
Hall County plate, I immediately asked her if she was from Gainesville, to 
which she said yes in a pleasantly surprised manner. She then proceeded to 
ask the obligatory question, "have you ever been to Gainesville?" As I had 
never been there or anywhere nearby, I had to sheepishly explain that I knew 
of Gainesville for the major (F4) tornadoes that hit there in 1902 and 1936 - 
an extremely rare occurrence for such a small town. I just hope, for their 
sake, I never meet someone from Xenia, Ohio or Flint, Michigan...

8/25/03 Steve Hodanish NWS-Pueblo

Weenie King Steve Hodanish has made his inevitable mark on the New WWW board at long last. Those who monitor Hodo's forecast discussions have probably noticed his signature line has been prefaced with a backslash followed with a forward slash, which looks suspiciously like a big, fat wedge. Eschewing our usual stealthy, ninja-like background investigation, a member of the crack WWW MiB squad confirmed the ASCII-nado with this email exchange:

> I was just reading through some PUB AFD's, and I have to ask... is that a
> large wedge tornado that serves as the "trademark" before your name?  I
> was most amused!  lol

ABSOLUTELY!!! Do I get a wx-weenie of the week for that?? :) :)

Hodo

So not only do we have confirmation of Hodo's weenie trademark, but he's gunning for recognition of it, too. Welcome back to the board, Hodo. :)

9/4/03 Paul Ciesielski csu-atmos

A spy reports: Hurricane Fabian was bearing down on Bermuda as a CAT3, looking to make a direct hit even from two days out. In casual conversation with Paul, I mentioned how cool it would be to grab a flight out there real quick to beat it and be there to experience it. With no hesistation, he said he had already looked at flights and prices to Bermuda during the next 1-2 days and they were all in the $1000 ballpark. The part that impressed me was not only did he have the idea before I did to fly there, but had actually seriously looked around online for prices and tickets!

9/12/03 Brian McNoldy/Jonathan Vigh csu-atmos

The day Hurricane Isabel became category 5, Jonathan Vigh had a homemade and appropriately designed "hurricane" cake brought into the graduate student office 318. Brian and Jonathan made special "after-hour" calls to make sure a cake was not duplicated. However, they made one small mishap: they both accidentally brought in a number 5 candle for the cake. Many CSU people attended the cake cutting ceremony. It will be a geeky moment never forgotten by bewildered bystanders.

11/10/03 Greg Elsaesser csu-atmos

Greg went back home to Ohio for his wedding, and was very frustrated to hear that Fort Collins was expected to get snow while he was out there. On the night of his batchelor party (held at a typical strip club), he called fellow snow lover Brian McNoldy to ask for an update on the storm and local conditions. He said he had to ask a lap dancing woman to get off of him so he could talk on his cell phone. After just a minute or so, one of the groomsmen took the phone, turned it off and hid it from Greg. But his determination is heroic, and his weenieism is unquestioned.

12/09/03 Chris Rozoff csu-atmos

This was initiated by Ian Baker, former WWWWWWVB member. Ian, Tak, and Chris were working tirelessly throughout many long days and nights to successfully implement a shallow water model code over topography (from scratch). Delusional exhaustion was evident with Rozoff when he commented on the 2 delta x waves prevalent and parallel to the mountains out Ian's window. Luckily, models should successfully resolve the atmosphere with such discretization of the real atmosphere. However, cloud physics at scales much less than the wavelength of the waves are still a problem.