VISIT: Meteorological Interpretation Blog

(From SPC MCD 1327 - Concerning Tornado Watch #509) 

Wednesday night, June 11, 2008, at just after 6:30 PM, some 93 boys, ages 13 to 18, along with 25 adult BSA staff members, were fighting for their lives as a deadly tornado roared through the Little Sioux Boy Scout Camp. Four of the Boy Scouts ended up losing their lives in this fight against Mother Nature while attending what was to be a weeklong leadership training camp.  Over 40 others were also injured and were either rescued and/or attended to by other staff and scouts who used their emergency/first aid training to the best of their abilities.  You couldn’t ask for a better bunch in a situation like this…and even then there were some terrible results.

The synoptic/mesoscale set-up had a cold front extending from a surface low pressure center over eastern South Dakota, south through eastern Nebraska and into central portions of Kansas.  A warm front stretched from the surface low eastward across southern Minnesota (not far north of the Iowa border).  In between these two features lay the warm (and moist) sector with surface temperatures ranging from the mid 70s (north) to nearly 90 (south) and dew points in the upper 60s to lower 70s.  There was also a slowly moving (westward) mesoscale boundary (through Iowa).  Mixed layer CAPE ranged from around 1500 j/kg (north) to nearly 3000 j/kg (south) by this time with lapse rates above 700mb  were running between 7 and 8 deg C/km (there was just a bit of a cap present near and above 600mb that kept the lid on long enough to make things explosive).  Effective shear was running between 40 (far south) and 60 (north in Minnesota) kts with low level storm relative helicities ranging from 200 (south into Kansas) to nearly 500 m²/s² (north into southern Minnesota and northern Iowa).

Movement of the cold front was to the east…with storms initiating ahead of the cold front along a (pre-frontal) trough from southeastern South Dakota into northeastern Nebraska by 4 PM LDT…back-building south southwestward into south central Nebraska by 5 PM (southwest Kansas also had storms going up by 5 PM).

Many of these storms became tornadic within in the first hour since initiation – first starting over portions of northwestern Iowa and southwestern Minnesota…then with reports following, down the line, into eastern Nebraska and western Iowa soon after.  Kansas then finished off the evening with continued reports up to just after midnight.  All told there were at least 53 separate reports of tornadoes (some reports, however, may be of the same storm) covering the four states of Minnesota, Iowa, Nebraska, and Kansas.  There were five fatalities total (the four in Iowa and one in Kansas) and many, many more injured.       

Please give the kids a second (and third) thought.  

Below are some links to, or copies of, some perhaps lesser known meteorological training materials.  Many of these have been born out of Aviation Weather programs either here in the USA through the military Air Force Weather Agency (AFWA) or the FAA, or from up north and our Canadian Neighbors.  Although some of the information is based on region specific examples, all of it (the principles, etc.) can be applied to most of our own geographic areas. 

First up is a link to NAV Canada, a privately run non-profit organization that operates Canada’s Civil Air Navigation Service.  This section contains an in depth training manuals section that is broken into six geographic regions that cover the whole of Canada.  Truly indispensable stuff here for all but tropical forecasters: NAV Canada Maunuals

Next up is the Air Force Weather Agency’s “Meteorological Techniques” which is an in depth compilation of many various weather forecasting parameters and techniques.  It is another truly indispensable item to be used for review, support, rules of thumb (tricks of the trade).   Also by AFWA, great training, practice, and supplemental review is the manual of the Mesoscale Forecast Process. 

This paper by John Mecikalski and Kristopher Bedka titled, “Forecasting Convective Initiation by Monitoring the Eveolution of Moving Cumulus in Daytime GOES Imagery” is a little long in the tooth (title-wise), but is definitely worth a read. 

More in the way of research papers / training materails will be posted here from time to time.  If you know of some lesser known, but valuable training for those of us in the weather business, please send us the information so that we may pass in on to others.�

Many large fires in southern/southeastern Russia have choked the skies with smoke. This image (first image) of the fires (locations outlined in red) was captured by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite late last week (April 17, 2008). Most of these fires are  agricultural fires set by people, much as we do over here in the late winter/early spring.  However, there are so many buring at the same time with the low, mid, and upper level winds conducive to good ventilation and transport, that this morning’s GOES West Visible Image (April 22, 2008 - second image) shows the smoke plume reaching all the way across Minnesota, touching on wester Wisconsin (plume outlined in yellow).

I know it’s a strange title for a meteorological blog…but, really, all too few of you do it.  And, I’m not talking about exercise either.  No, I’m talking about using e-newsletters to promote your (WF) office and to get to know your audience better.

The weather, the forecasters and the people (who it all affects) are a fleeting bunch at best.  The people (customers) come and go, in and out of your CWAs, almost as often as  forecasters tend to move from office to office over their evolution from an “intern” to senior (lead) forecaster (not to mention crossin’ the line into management).  What better way to keep “in touch” across all of these boundaries than to publish a periodic (e-) newsletter.   

An e-newsletter could be used to introduce the office to their communities (the local CWA community in addition to the rest of the NWS forecast community); educate and enlighten both of these groups on new things that going on within their small group and that may also concern them (the new, the old, what works, what doesn’t, why, how, …well, you get the idea).  It’s a great tool for letting the locals “get to know you” … as well as your neighboring offices (or even prospective journeymen forecasters coming in from Timbuktu).  It’s also a great way of spreading new ideas that work (especially those forecasting secrets if you have any) or even “publishing” a short version of your newest discovery in lieu of going the journal route.

By my last count (and it’s by no means exhaustive), I have found about 10 offices that offer newsletters  - and that’s out of more than 120 NWS Forecast offices!  And, of those 10, only 7 are “active” (mostly up to date).   It’s a darn shame that all those other offices are cloaked in secrecy.   Please, if you have a relatively up to date newsletter at your office that I missed, let us (me) know!

Below, I have listed the “Magnificent Seven” that I found to be most up to date and easily accessible (which you all could use as fine examples for your own e-newsletter when the time comes) followed by some tips on doing your own.

 Amarillo, TX:  http://www.srh.noaa.gov/ama/dryline/index.htm

Juneau, AK:  http://pajk.arh.noaa.gov/newsletter.php

Elko, NV:  http://www.wrh.noaa.gov/lkn/newsletter.php

Houston, TX:  http://www.srh.noaa.gov/hgx/stormsignals/

Springfield, MO:  http://www.crh.noaa.gov/sgf/?n=newsletter_index

Tallahassee, FL:  http://www.srh.noaa.gov/tlh/severe/newslett.htm

Buffalo, NY:  http://www.wbuf.noaa.gov/newsletter.html

For national offices:  AWC leads the way with “The Front” which we have referenced before on this blog:  http://aviationweather.gov/general/pubs/front/

And, to get some other ideas from other newsletter sources from within NOAA, go to this page:  http://www.lib.noaa.gov/noaainfo/newsletters.html

Some tips for your new, updated, or future newsletter:

1 Make your newsletter’s name an attention grabber - Too often, editors decide to focus their newsletter title on their company’s name rather than something that might draw in more readers.  Give it something “catchy.” (Good examples are Juneau’s “Cloudburst Chronical” (above), Amarillo’s “The Dryline“ or Buffalo’s “The Lake Breeze”) 2 Write your newsletter’s articles objectively - Although a newsletter can be an excellent for promoting your WFO’s products and services, don’t let it read like a sales brochure. By its nature, a newsletter should be on the “softer” side of things and provide useful information to readers (remeber your audience).  Try to write stories as objectively as possible.  Base your articles on factual information and write them as if you were a neutral third party. Adjust your titles accordingly.  Also, when you insert opinions into your stories, make them into quotes and attribute them to the proper people in your office, just like a newspaper would. 3 Write to express, not to impress - The purpose of a newsletter is to communicate, not to see how many times you can send readers scrambling to find a dictionary.  Although ours is a highly scientific and technical job try keeping the writing as casual, low-tech and conversational as possible (if that’s possible).  An e-newsletter is not just the same content you would put in a printed newsletter, then cut-and-pasted to an e-mail message.  The Internet is a different communications environment and requires a different writing style. People do not read long documents online, they scan to find something relevant or interesting to them. Keep e-newsletters to three screens or less, and format them to be scannable. E-newsletters are like sound bites of the Internet allowing people to be “information snackers.” Provide multiple headers, bullets, short paragraphs and sentences, and links to further information. If you want to draw attention to longer documents, provide either brief summaries or the first few lines of the document with a link to the full document on your Web site.  And, remember to define those acronyms (just that alone can be daunting at times)! 4 Proofread, proofread, proofread - You probably wouldn’t dream of sending out a resume to prospective employers that looks unprofessional, is full of typos and contains grammatical errors.  That’s because your resume directly represents you and your professionalism to prospective employers.  In that same way, a newsletter represents the atmosphere and professionalism of your FO to “prospective customers.” You’ll want to make sure it, at the very least, has polished writing and is free of typos and grammatical errors. Proofreading, revising and rewriting are the most tedious, mundane parts of putting together a newsletter — but they are absolutely necessary.  Spread out this duty among your fellow forecasters, etc.  5 Use front-page articles to draw in readers - It may be true that you can’t judge a book by its cover. But prospective readers do judge a newsletter by its cover.  6 Use at least one graphic per page - Graphics include photos, artwork, charts, or even a colored or shaded boxes behind a text article. Graphics are important for two reasons:  1. Because graphics, along with headlines, are the first things that readers’ eyes are drawn to when they turn to a new page. 2. Graphics within a story are important because they provide much-needed visual breaks from solid blocks of text.  7 Use image-editing software to sharpen and enhance your photos - This may sound silly, but few photos, digital or otherwise, are perfect (contrast, color, sharpness and brightness levels). 8 Use accent colors and tints to make your newsletter more eye-catching - Do your newsletter in full blazing color and let the customer chose how to print it (color, B&W, resolution).  If you are actually snail mailing any out there, do what you think best or what you can afford, but for most just publish it and let them print it.