September 25, 2017 Meeting

The first meeting of the 2017-2018 year took place at the National Weather Service Jackson Weather Forecast Office.

Meeting Minutes

Call to Order
The first meeting of the 2017-2018 AMS/NWA chapter was called to order at 7:17pm by NWA President Eric Carpenter. The meeting was held at the National Weather Service operations floor in Flowood, MS.

Rolls
A sign in sheet was passed around and 24 people were present for the meeting.

Minutes Approval
Minutes were very briefly mentioned but not discussed at length since it was the first meeting of the year.

New Business
Treasurer David Cox gave a summary of the treasury. After the April 2017 meeting, there was $288.29 in the treasury. The chapter agreed upon sponsorship of our local NWS Jackson WiFi meeting at MEMA in June and contributed $70. One member paid dues over the summer. Therefore, we started with $238.29 in the treasury for the 2017-2018 chapter year. At the meeting, 3 members (1 student & 2 regular members) paid their dues & 5 new regular members joined. After this meeting, we have 20 total members: 18 regular members, 2 student members. We collected $170 in membership updates & new membership. Therefore, our total after our 1st meeting in the treasury for the 2017-2018 year is $408.29.

Eric Carpenter brought up officer nominations. No one nominated anyone, so Daniel Lamb suggested that nominations be made via email and that at the next meeting we can settle on new officers. Eric recapped who the officers are.

Thomas mentioned tentatively planning for the October meeting at the Jackson airport. He said he will work on it over the next few weeks.

The speakers for this meeting were Logan Poole and Gary Schmidt. Logan works for WeatherNation as a field meteorologist and is a University of South Alabama graduate. He used to work for Accuweather. Both live in the metro area. Gary runs the Golden Corral in Flowood. They both went to the Texas coast, around Fulton, for Hurricane Harvey’s landfall. They also were in Tampa for Hurricane Irma with another team in Marco Island. They showed video of Hurricane Harvey’s landfall. Logan talked about the prep work they do before going out on these assignments. They always carry two weeks worth of food and water and had about 40 gallons of fuel. They do a forecast of storm surge and make corrections for that to ensure they are not in an unsafe place. He indicated that as bad as Rockport was, Houston was so much worse. Logan indicated that he has to do more prep work for hurricanes than blizzards or severe storms when going out in the field, since there is more widespread impacts. With hurricanes, there are more evacuees than with a blizzard as more people tend to shelter in place. WeatherNation doesn’t ask or make them go to a certain place or put themselves in danger, but the field mets decide it amongst themselves where they will go. Not everyone gets the most desirable location.

Thomas Winesett then talked about his time on temporary duty to NWS Jacksonville during Irma. He worked mainly radar shifts and did some damage surveys, including for an EF2 tornado. He said there was a peak gust of 86mph at the office. Flooding was more of an impact than the office expected. The St. Johns River had an effect where the water piled up on one end and then came rushing back when the hurricane passed.

To end the meeting, Eric Carpenter showed model spread with Harvey and with Irma. The spread with Harvey was much more than with Irma, which had a tighter track. David Cox mentioned the service back-up challenges that existed with the NWS offices for Irma.

Adjournment
The meeting concluded at 8:40 pm, and it was adjourned.

Minutes were submitted by Joanne Culin, Recording Secretary.