01/30/06 Tim Vasquez Weather Graphics, Stormtrack

Once again, Tim Vasquez pulls in a weather weenie award, this time for his continued Mr. T tutorial series covering the Weather Research Model (WRF). This tutorial will probably become the standard model press release, if not, it definitely should be:

Mr. T's Storm Chasing School: WRF

04/13/06 Dr. Lyle Pakula csu-atmos

First: Most of Lyle's efforts in preparing his dissertation defense presentation this week went not into the subject material itself, but in the meticulous presentation of his stormchasing footage which was used merely as a pre-defense prelude.

Second: Most PhD students exhibit some form of nerves immediately prior to the Big Defense - they're obsessing over their slides, futzing with paperwork, going over potential questions, etc. Lyle - he posted this to the CSU Stormchasers forum a mere 81 minutes from his defense:

This short wave is still exhibiting very variable behaviour via the GFS ensemble but the location of it via the ETA/UKmets/GFSmean are consistent with putting the low into either southern or northern nebraska and closing it off significantly. Considering how bad 700 temp forecasts are, will wait 24hrs out before any decision but at this point, i think Chris is on the money as the SFC low would be the only place where i reckon a good chance for tornadoes might exist, as storms off the dryline will be highbased or fighting the cap as they move off the convergence zones (90+/60 in the warm sector) if the 700temps verify.

05/28/06 Jim Wirshborn NWS Coop Observer, Fort Collins

Now this is true passion! Jim Wirshborn, a National Weather Service coop observer in Fort Collins, found himself in a predicament that threatened his perfect attendance to weather observation. {Note: His dedication is proved by the fact that he had daily 3 am weather observation duty way back in the day. According to his personal account, he didn't have a car, so he awoke at 1 am and walked miles to take the observation.) This Memorial Day weekend, Jim sadly wrote Colorado's assistant state climatologist the following grim report:

After 35 years of not missing one barometer reading at 12 Z, it looks 
like there won't be one this Sunday morning when I am gone.  I will have 
to backtrack from the microbarograph and our digital weather station.  I 
am so bummed out on this...you can [all] imagine.  I feel like I am 
being punished for getting a day off.

Luckily, it is believed an observation was taken by a substitute observer. You kids these days just don't know how good you have it with your hi-tech "automated" weather observations.

06/22/06 Mike Middlebrooke WFO Guam

Mike Middlebrooke offers us a tropical variant of Supercell Deprivation Syndrome^TM called "Tropical Cyclone Deprivation Syndrome (TCDS)" due to the quiet West Pac basin. He states taht some of the symptoms of TCDS include

1. Logging on to NHC's web site several times per shift to run the Storm 
Floater loop on the latest Atlantic system.  (That's how we made it 
through 2005.)

2.  Checking CDC's and BOM's OLR modes web sites twice a day looking for 
that next MJO, even though they only update once a dayh.

3.  Visiting the FNMOC's WXMAP site daily to see the latest SST 
anomalies, hoping for a weak El Nino.

4.  Worst of all, repeatedly blowing across the top of your cup of 
coffee in order to simulate twin TCs being spun up by a westerly wind 
burst.  

06/22/06 Supplemental Weenie: Brian McNoldy csu-atmos

Regularly simulates twin cyclones, among other vorticity phenomena, in his coffee mug - he purchased his particular mug specifically because it has a wide brim geometry for easy creation of twin vortices.

09/06/06 Jacob Haqq-Misra and Michael Larson

The following paper demonstrates a new mechanism to decrease intense tropical cyclones using pirates. This paper also shows that decreased pirate activity increases hurricane intensity due to decreased upwelling. See the article here: CLICK HERE

10/11/06 The Onion

Chasing Tornadoes Is All I Have

12/12/06 Margie Kieper Twin Cities, MN

If you've been paying any attention to meteorology these days, it's all about global warming and hurricanes. (Okay, yeah, that's like so 2005, but still, non-hipsters still talk about it.) It's a ferocious debate and it has helped fill the void of tension that has existed ever since the fall of the Soviet Union and the cold war. When debate breaks out at every single scientific meeting, the scientific discourse usually goes like this:

Advocate: Global warming is causing hurricanes to go absolutely off the charts.

Skeptic: Nah uh...You are a stupid head. What'dya know?

Advocate: Your ideas are like fossilized plankton left over from the pre-global warming days when there was more phytoplankton.

Skeptic: Nah uh...you abused the data and you never read Michael Crichton's "State of Fear". Plankton rules!

Since such high-level science jargon usually goes over the public's heads, a debate (an expert "panel discussion", if you will) was to be held at last April's 27th AMS Conference on Hurricanes and Tropical Meteorology, in Monterey, to cover all arguments. The media would have full access to the information presented and I'm supposed to tell you that the press got this important information out to the public in a very accurate and non-hyped manner. Many hurricane forecasters attended, as well, since they wanted to know if they would be able to schedule any vacation time in the future or not. Now, knowing forecasters would attend, Margie Kieper, a guardian angel of sorts looking over NHC forecasters, sent the following ACME Global Warming Audience Participation Kit to a NHC Tropical Specialist, so he could survive the panel discussion in order to forecast for the forecasted 2006 cauldron of death known as the Atlantic Ocean:

PLEASE CLICK ON THESE IMAGES TO ZOOM IN:

12/19/06 Becky Adams, Jim Benedict, Todd Ellis, Grant Firl, Phil Klotzbach, Adrian Loftus, Elinor Martin, Becca Mazur, Luke Van Roekel, Russ Schumacher, Mike Smith, Dave Stokowski, and Wes Terwey csu-atmos

For the annual csu-atmos holiday and awards celebration, graduate students put together a skit of a music video awards ceremony for csu-atmos faculty members. The videos included:

The Bugsy Boys "Sabotage!" (Quicktime), and

The Wayne Schubert Orchestra's "Under Pressure" (Quicktime), among many others.

See all of the skit and all videos here:
CLICK HERE!

Yeah! Yeah!

Acoustic Wave Garden