Posts in the "Other" Category

• I Was Wrong!

  Other
  

  So guess what? My forecast for severe weather on Thursday night was wrong. Not only was it wrong; it was *completely* wrong! We didn’t see a single drop of rain. I wanted to take the time to acknowledge the fact that I was wrong, because it is important to not only own up to our [...]

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• The Dying Art of Hand Analysis

  Meteorological
  

  Hand map analysis is what meteorologists did not so long ago, before computers were awesome enough to compute everything for us in a flash. In fact, it was once the main method of developing a forecast. Someone at the National Weather Service was in charge of contouring the maps from the latest observations, and the [...]

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• AWIDS Pre-Alpha 1

  Other
  

  I am pleased to announce that AWIDS pre-alpha 1.0.0 has been released for public use! For those of you who are just joining, AWIDS is a program I have been building in Python to view meteorological data and plot it on a map. AWIDS stands for Advanced Weather Interactive Diagnostic System, a play on the [...]

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• The Current State of the Tornado Warning

  Other
  

  While I was at the American Meteorological Society conference, I had the unique opportunity to hear several speakers present on the tornado disasters of 2011. The April 27th tornado outbreak, the Joplin tornado, the May 24th Oklahoma outbreak, and the North Carolina tornadoes are just a few to name. Some of the talks discussed the [...]

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• American Meteorological Society

  Severe
  

  The last week has been active weather wise for much of the southeast, including a damaging wind event in Tennessee (with a reported funnel cloud) and the damaging tornado event in Alabama (6 tornadoes; 1 EF-3). As many of you may have noticed, I did not update the website or even twitter once during that [...]

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• Python Update #2: Perhaps It’s Time for a Name…

  Other
  

  A lot of progress has been made since the last post about my python program. And I mean a lot. For starters, the METAR decoder has completely changed structure/methods, grid plotting has been moved to a new and separate module called gridmaker, international stations in the Gulf of Mexico, Mexico, and Canada have been added, and lastly, a whole new approach to gridding the surface data. Intrigued? Read ahead.

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• Weather and Python – A “New” Frontier

  Other
  

  If you follow me on Twitter or are friends of mine on Facebook or Google+, you’ll have seen posts and photos about a program I have been building. Well, the time has come to discuss in full what this program is all about, what my intentions are, and how this all works. This post is [...]

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• Inside of the Vortex

  Awareness
  

  Yesterday evening, myself (Kelton), Vincent Webb of http://msstormchasing.com/mainpage.html and Greg Blumberg of http://tornadopix.com “intercepted” a tornado. Why the quotes? Well, it wasn’t quite a tornado. This is a tornado simulator built by Vincent, using a humidifier and fans to create a realistic vortex. After a while of being mesmerized, I had an idea; why not take [...]

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• Out Of Town – NCAS Weather Camp

  Site Updates
  I just wanted to give everyone a heads up that I will not be in town until this next Sunday. I will be attending the NCAS Weather Camp and Jackson State University in Jackson, MS, and I will not be able to cover any of the up-comming  severe weather events over the next week. What [...]

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• Storm Chase – May 2011

  Site Updates
  

  So, in the last post about the storm intercept in Cool Springs, TN, I hinted at some big news that would be announced soon. Well, this is it! Tempest Storm Chasing will be taking it’s first trip to Oklahoma for what could be a significant severe weather event at the beginning of next week. Hoping [...]

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