I spent most of last week in Oklahoma City for the AMS (American Meteorological Society) Broadcast conference. I am fortunate to be serving on the broadcast board for the next 3 years, helping advance this wonderful organization that so many broadcasters are a part of. There is going to be an overhaul of the Doppler radar network across the United States, upgrading to Dual Polarimetric. This upgrade on the radar will allow us to understand what the radar beam is hitting (i.e. rain, hail, snowflakes, ice crystals, tornado debris, birds, insects) and it will also give us better estimation on rainfall amounts. There are so many cases where heavy rain and hail occur simultaneously, and the Doppler radar estimates are not accurate because of the large hailstones. I also had a chance to listen to some great case studies on different weather topics, including climate (seems to be a big topic these days) The next conference will be in Boston (a nice place to cool off next summer)
On the last day of the conference, I had another opportunity to tour the National Weather Center on the OU campus. It was interesting when we arrived at the top of the building, looking straight south, you could see where an EF4 tornado lifted before charging into Norman, OK on May 24th (this year). The tornado actually lifted near Goldsby, but there was a distinct clearing in the trees straight south of the weather center building. Some of the meteorologists on duty that night had already found shelter, while others were going to wait until the last minute. The image posted here is the track of the strong tornado that lifted just before going into Norman (Norman would be off the top of the map)
Get ready for the heat. July is about to start, and I feel like we've already had our fair share of 100s, but there will be many more to come based on the way things are looking.
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