Thjs is Day 2 of weather camp here in Jackson, Mississippi, and the weather has cooperated for the most part. It's been a little hot, but other than that, everything has been great.
Today, we visited the EOC (Ermergency Operations Center) in Brandon, MS. It is at the police station in Brandon, and the guy in charge, Alton Webb, is an avid storm chaser. Along with his son, he goes storm chasing in the Plains and other areas. The EOC watches the weather with a variety of software: GR2Analyst, two Baron Services radar products, and a few other products. Here is their web site: Brandon Storm Center
For your information, I'm updating from the Pizza Shack, because the hotel's internet is down, but also because I have to work on a presentation for the last day of weather camp, which I'll upload when I put the pictures on. The pizza is amazing! Actually, it was recently rated 5th Best Pizza In The U.S.!
We also watched a video about the "Storm Of The Century".
I'd say more but we need to get back to the hotel. :)
The weather the rest of the week will be warm, up to Sunday, when the cold front that is currently in the Midwest, will move through, giving us a slight chance for rain. The front, which is strong now, should be weaker and temperatures are currently expected to be only in the mid 60s during the day and high 30s that night.
Yesterday, I was given a tour of the NWS office in Ruskin by Meteorologist-in-Charge, Brian Lamarre.
It was an excellent tour and the operations area where everything goes on was amazing. I'll give a quick summary:
There are seventeen meteorologists that work at the office in Ruskin, a Meteorologist-in-Charge (MIC), , as you can probably tell by the
name, is the Chief Meteorologist; a Science and Operations Officer (SOO), who manages the training program; and a Warning Cooridination Meteorologist (WCM), who is in charge of a lot of the outreach and ensures that there is strong communication between the local WFO and local media and emergency response officials.
In addition, there
are senior forecasters and general forecasters, as well as meteorologist
interns, hydrometeorological technicians, electronics technicians and engineers,
a hydrologist and an administrative support assistant.
There are at least two meteorologists at the office at all times, and during severe weather, such as powerful hurricanes and tornadoes, they have a reinforced shelter, which can hold up to ten people (I would hate to be one of the other seven).
They launch weather balloons twice a day to measure wind speed, barometric pressure, temperature, and other parameters.
For More Info Click Here
Picture is below:
Yesterday, I got to tour Bay News 9 with Chief Meteorologist Mike Clay! It was really cool actually getting to see what goes on behind the scenes.
I also got to meet Josh Linker, another Bay News 9 meteorologist. It was amazing getting to watch a few live weather reports, and getting to see and talk to them for a few hours was cool.
Also while I was there, there was some nasty severe weather going on in Alabama/Georgia, which I'll be getting to later, but it was fun to track the storms with them between "Weather On The Nines", because I got some input/feedback on the storms that I normally wouldn't get by just watching it by myself on radar.
Something else I found out is that the NWS has a chatroom set up so they can communicate about any severe weather reports or events that occur, but unforunately only the NWS, media, and emergency management have access (NOT FAIR).
Now, moving on.
The storms were spread out all over the area, but there was one storm in particular, just southeast of Atlanta, that really stood out. We used a radar product called GR2Analyst, which is one of the best commercial radar products out right now, to track the storms, and before I saw it in person, I didn't know what to expect, because I've heard different things about it from people and reviews but getting to use it was cool, as it is easy to use. So, anyway, I'll start with the storm to the southwest of Atlanta. We started to watch it around 5:00, when it was just starting to get severe, and by about 5:45, it was approaching just southwest of Atlanta, we saw on the NWSChat system that one of the local forecasters had said he saw a hail spike on the radar that was the largest he'd ever seen, and as it turned out when we checked that report, it was 4.53 inches!
More about GR2Analyst
There are radar images of the storm and total storm reports below:
(Each image links to a larger picture)
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