September 27, 2007 Meeting

The meeting was held at WLBT-TV in Jackson. Barbie Bassett and Eric Law of WLBT provided a tour of the WLBT studio and introduced the station’s new ESPLive system.

Meeting Minutes

The third meeting of Jackson Chapter’s NWA/AMS in 2007 was held on Thursday, September 27, 2007, at the WLBT studio in Jackson, MS. The meeting was opened by chapter President Eric Carpenter, with 12 people in attendance.

Discussion was initiated by Eric Carpenter in the opening session, concerning the chapter’s orders of business:

Eric Carpenter reported that the chapter’s treasury now sits at negative $64.00.
It was discussed to raise yearly membership dues to alleviate the treasury problem. Barbie Bassett made a first motion to raise dues to $20.00 a year for regular members, and $10.00 a year for students. The motion was seconded by Tony Mastro, and it was decided with a unanimous vote to raise the yearly dues, with the yearly term following along with the academic calendar.
Eric Carpenter suggested that the chapter needs to be more formal with membership dues and documentation. The chapter will begin to keep record of membership and dues beginning this academic year.
Eric Carpenter informed the chapter that short applications will be sent to all members to attain more formal documentation of chapter membership.
It was decided that Alton Webb will be the new chapter photographer.

Following the opening session, the floor was given to Barbie Bassett and Eric Law of WLBT to discuss their new ESPLive (Exclusive Storm Prediction Live) Radar.

The main topic discussed with this radar was the X-Vision 3D Radar. The radar is able to access level 2 sites from across the country. The staff is able to turn off and on each site from the station.

This program is very useful during severe weather. It can plot the projected hail size and path, as well as plotting signatures like a TVS. The program is able to show the probability of a tornado (or severe weather) based upon climatology and manually controlled criteria. It is also able to do a rainfall estimate with hail contamination removed.

Another interesting topic discussed was that this program can inform the operator when a tornado is 20 minutes away from touchdown. This worked one known time as of yet, when it correctly predicted a tornado touchdown in Holmes County.

Overall, the ESPLive Radar still has a few glitches to work out, but has already become very beneficial to the meteorologists at WLBT, as well as their viewers.

The meeting was adjourned by Eric Carpenter.