The meeting was held at the National Weather Service Office in Jackson. The guest speaker was Mike Schichtel, forecaster at the Hydrometeorological Prediction Center in Camp Springs, Maryland.

Meeting Minutes

The 2 February 1999 meeting was held at the NWSFO in Jackson. Mike Schichtel, a forecaster at the Hydrometeorological Prediction Center (HPC) of the National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP), Camp Springs, Maryland, was the guest speaker. Schichtel gave a very interesting and informative talk on medium-range forecasting. The talk included insight into what models HPC uses when preparing their medium-range forecasts and the actual mechanics of forecast preparation and dissemination.

Minutes submitted by Alan Gerard.

The meeting was held at Mississippi College in Clinton. At this meeting there was a panel discussion with the topic “Women in Science.”

Meeting Minutes

The 17 November 1998 meeting was held at Mississippi College in Clinton. After a brief business meeting, the program for the afternoon began. The program consisted of a panel discussion with the topic “Women in Science.” Panelists included Reba Harrell, a biologist who works for the Jackson public school district; Barbara Powell, coordinator of the Center for Excellence in Research, Training, and Learning at Jackson State University; and Barbie Bassett, broadcast meteorologist. Each panelist provided background information and then the floor was opened for questions. Topics discussed included how to interest young children in science, the increasing number of women in the field of broadcast meteorology, sexual harrassment and discrimination, and salaries for women in science fields.

Minutes submitted by Brad Regan and Alan Gerard.

The meeting was held at the National Weather Service Office in Jackson. The guest speaker was David Biggar, NWS meteorologist and a captain in the United States Air Force Reserves.

Meeting Minutes

The first meeting of the 1998-99 academic year was held 29 September at the National Weather Service Forecast Office in Jackson. President Paul Croft called the meeting to order with 11 members present, including officers Barbie Bassett and Alan Gerard.

President Croft announced tentative chapter plans for the upcoming year, including the possibility of hosting a “Women in Science” forum sometime later this fall. Additionally, he announced that the chapter would once again be presenting a poster at the AMS Annual Meeting in January.

The program for the meeting was then introduced by Chapter Secretary Alan Gerard. The speaker was David Biggar, NWS meteorologist and a captain in the United States Air Force (USAF) Reserves. While on active USAF duty, Biggar was stationed at the 45th Weather Squadron at Patrick Air Force Base, Florida, where he worked in weather operations for spaceflight launches. He discussed the fact that the area surrounding Kennedy Space Center (KSC) contains the densest meteorological network in the world and that a team of military, federal, and private meteorologists use this data to provide support to spaceflight operations at KSC and Cape Canaveral Air Station. Some examples of the many types of sensors used by the 45th Weather Squadron include several different types of lightning sensors capable of detecting both in-cloud and cloud-to-ground discharges; weather radar, including a dedicated WSR-74C radar and the local National Weather Service WSR-88D; jimspheres and standard radiosonde balloons; weather reconnaissance aircraft; and meteorological instrumentation towers. Biggar discussed the very complex weather rules that meteorologists must determine to be satisfied before a launch can take place. He concluded by showing a portion of a NASA press briefing in which he participated as the squadron’s press officer.

Minutes submitted by Alan Gerard.

The meeting was held at the National Weather Service Office in Jackson. The guest speaker was Irv Watson, Science and Operations Officer at the National Weather Service in Tallahassee, Florida.

Meeting Minutes

The fourth regular meeting for the academic year 1997-98 was held 1 April at the NWSFO at Jackson International Airport. President Paul Croft called the meeting to order with 24 members present.

President Croft announced the meteorology category winners of the Mississippi Science and Engineering Fair Region II held 18-19 March at Jackson State. Kristen A. Ellis of South Park Elementary School, Vicksburg, was the elementary division winner with her project entitled “Tornado!” and Anne Marie Smith of Chastain Junior High School, Jackson, was the junior/senior high division winner with her project entitled “Mother Nature.” Jackson chapter members Lynn Burse, Paul Croft, Greg Garrett, and Rusty Pfost volunteered to be judges for the event. The local chapter awarded $20 to the elementary division winner and $25 to the junior/senior high division winner.

Nominations for next year’s officers were held, with elections to take place at next month’s meeting. A nomination was also made for the new Susan Oakley Public Service Award, which will be presented at the next meeting.

The program for the meeting was then presented by Irv Watson, science and operations officer at the National Weather Service in Tallahassee, Florida. For much of his career with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Watson has been involved with meteorological research and has participated in the VORTEX experiment conducted in 1994-96. Watson showed some of the findings of his participation in the VORTEX experiment, including vertical Doppler radar scans of tornadic supercells from the research aircraft and Doppler radar products from the Doppler on Wheels. He explained about the weak echo hole that is a signature of a developing tornado in high-resolution Doppler products and showed a number of tornado slides.

Minutes submitted by Rusty Pfost.

The meeting was held at Jackson State University. The guest speaker was Jay Grymes, climate operations manager for the Southern Region Center (SRCC) at Louisiana State University and state climatologist for Louisiana.

Meeting Minutes

The third regular meeting of the chapter was held on Wednesday, 28 January 1998 on the campus of Jackson State University. Chapter President Paul Croft called the meeting to order with 13 members present.

The brief business meeting included a unanimous vote to establish the Susan S. Oakley Public Service Award to be presented by the Jackson chapter membership semiannually for outstanding public service in the field of meteorology or a related field. The award was named for Susan S. Oakley, who was a teacher in antebellum Jackson, whose students took and recorded the first local weather observations from June 1849 to December 1855. A Jackson chapter local scholarship award proposal was tabled pending further information.

Brad Regan, lead forecaster at the NWS Jackson, volunteered and was unanimously approved to fill the vacant treasurer’s office.

Rusty Pfost, chapter secretary, gave a brief report on the local chapter poster at the 78th AMS Annual Meeting in Phoenix, Arizona. The poster consisted of brief summaries of four articles by chapter members in the southern region special issue of Weather and Forecasting, as well as a concise display about the recent 14 December surprise snowstorm in central Mississippi.

Croft called the membership’s attention to the upcoming Mississippi Science and Engineering Fair for Region II, to be held 18-19 March 1998 at Jackson State. Local chapter members were urged to volunteer to be judges. He also reported that the Jackson chapter is one of a few national sites chosen to review candidates for the AMS Minority Scholarships, and that one application had already been received.

Croft then introduced Jay Grymes as the speaker for the meeting. Grymes is the climate operations manager for the Southern Region Center (SRCC) at Louisiana State University (LSU) and also the state climatologist for Louisiana. Grymes presented information on the effect of El Niño so far this winter on the weather of the SRCC area. He noted that so far temperatures and rainfall have both been above normal (some of SRCCs findings are on the SRCC Web site at http://www.src.lsu.edu). Grymes then gave a summary of the SRCC mission and organizational structure, information services, costs, publications, and research areas. According to Grymes, the SRCC has available NWS products in the service area for the last four years, local severe weather reports and national severe weather summaries, historical climate data from primary and cooperative stations in the service area, and soon will have some WSR-88D data, profiler data, and upper air archives.

Minutes submitted by Rusty Pfost.

The meeting was held at the Jackson-Hinds Emergency Operations Center in downtown Jackson. Guest speakers were Jim Butch of the National Weather Service in Jackson, and Larry Fisher of the Jackson-Hinds EOC.

Meeting Minutes

The second regular meeting of the Jackson chapter was held on Thursday, 20 November 1997 at the Jackson-Hinds Emergency Operations Center in downtown Jackson.

After a short business meeting, Chapter President Paul Croft introduced Jim Butch, warnings and preparedness meteorologist at the NWSFO in Jackson, as the speaker. Butch spoke about the NOAA Weather Radio in Mississippi, including two new transmitters at Kosciusko and Cleveland. He also demonstrated the latest hardware, which can be programmed to alarm for a single county or parish. Larry Fisher, Jackson-Hinds Emergency Operations Center director, then spoke about the Candlestick Park tornado, which struck south Jackson on 4 March 1966.

Minutes submitted by Rusty Pfost.

The meeting was held at the National Weather Service Office in Jackson. Speakers at the meeting included Alan Gerard, Corey Mead, Pete Wolf, Paul Croft, and Rusty Pfost.

Meeting Minutes

The first meeting for the academic year 1997/98 was held on Tuesday, 23 September 1997 at the NWS Forecast Office at Jackson International Airport. Chapter President Paul Croft conducted the meeting, with 11 members attending. New business included a discussion on a local chapter poster presentation at the 78th AMS Annual Meeting in Phoenix, Arizona, in January 1998. The membership decided to create a poster based on four papers by local members in the September 1997 special issue of Weather and Forecasting (Wea. Forecasting, 12, 377-580) on the Southern Region. Members discussed a possible local chapter special service award of meteorology scholarship named in honor of Susan Oakley, a teacher at the antebellum Oakley Institute in Jackson who was responsible for having her female students take the first recorded weather observations for Jackson from 1849 to 1855.

Chapter Vice President Alan Gerard introduced the program for the meeting, which was devoted to the contributions from authors from the Jackson chapter to the Southern Region Special Issue of Weather and Forecasting. Corey Mead, author of “The Discrimination between Tornadic and Nontornadic Supercell Environments: A Forecasting Challenge in the Southern United States” (pp. 379-387), spoke on his research concerning good meteorological parameters that discriminate between supercells that produce tornadoes and those that do not. Pete Wolf, coauthor of “VIL Density as a Hail Indicator” (pp. 473-478), spoke on the use of VIL density, which he said is the vertically integrated liquid of a thunderstorm divided by the thunderstorm echo top, and its relationship to hail occurrence and size. Paul Croft, lead author of “Fog Forecasting for the Southern Region: A Conceptual Model Approach” (pp. 545-556), spoke on his research, showing typical soundings in the central Gulf Coast region for advection and radiation fog and his model for its operational forecasting. Finally, Rusty Pfost, coauthor of “Bookend Vortex Tornadoes Along the Natchez Trace” (pp. 572-580), which Alan Gerard, spoke on their radar study of a bow echo and associated “comma head” in west Mississippi that produced tornadoes.

Minutes submitted by Rusty Pfost.

The meeting was held at the Plaza Hotel in Jackson. The guest speaker was Steve Corfidi from the Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Oklahoma.

Meeting Minutes

The final meeting for the 1996/97 academic year was held Thursday evening, 12 June 1997, at the Plaza Hotel in North Jackson. Chapter President Paul Croft called the meeting to order with 16 members present. The annual election of members was held and with no opposition the same officers were reelected for a second term (with the exception of Pat Fitzpatrick, treasurer, who resigned due to scheduling conflicts). Paul Croft will again serve as president, Alan Gerard as vice-president and acting treasurer, and Rusty Pfost as secretary.

Croft introduced Steve Corfidi, of the National Weather Service Storms Prediction Center in Norman, Oklahoma, as the speaker for the meeting. Corfidi gave a presentation on the history of SELS/SPC, in light of its latest move to Norman from Kansas City.

He showed how technological advances have made severe storms forecasting better int he last few years and how additional improvements will be forthcoming. A discussion of the watch decentralization policy followed, and Corfidi also showed the latest trends in watch/warning verification statistics for different sections of the country.

Minutes submitted by Rusty Pfost.

The meeting was held at the Mississippi State University in Starkville. The guest speaker was Melvin Swartzberg, former pilot and engineer with The Thunderstorm Project. The group then took a tour of the Mississippi State University Broadcast Meteorology Program.

Meeting Minutes

The third regular meeting of the chapter was held on Tuesday, 9 April 1997 on the campus of Mississippi State University (MSU) in Starkville, Mississippi.

Chapter President Paul Croft conducted a short business meeting, including an announcement that he is accepting nominations for next year’s local chapter officers. He reminded chapter members that AMS Headquarters requires that the local chapter president must be an AMS member.

Melvin Swartzberg, former pilot and engineer with The Thunderstorm Project, which was conducted near Orlando, Florida, and in Ohio during 1946-47, presented the program for the evening. Swartzberg, a Starkville resident and a chapter member, presented an overview of what The Thunderstorm Project was and its goals. He began with a discussion of the sailplanes that were towed under developing cumulonimbus clouds and then allowed to ride the updrafts through the cloud to collect data on thunderstorms. He also mentioned some of the problems and dangers associated with the project, including snakes in the planes, lightning strikes, hail damage, and icing of the planes. Swartzberg explained that the project later used P61s with instructor pilots that would enter developing thunderstorms at 1000-ft intervals collecting data.

After Swartzberg’s presentation, the group viewed a videotape on the Broadcast Meteorology Program at MSU, which is headed by Mark Binkley. Binkley said that the program has both on-campus and off-campus capabilities for students and is specifically designed for broadcast media personnel. According to Binkley, a number of on-camera meteorologists at TV stations, radio stations, and cable channels across the country are graduates of the MSU Broadcast Meteorology Program.

Dave Arnold of the MSU facility, and Brent Neal, Jim Loznicka, and Ross Runner – all MSU students – gave a tour of the MSU facilities. The MSU meteorology program currently produces weather programs for a local cable channel and on-campus broadcasts using state-of-the-art technology.

Minutes submitted by Rusty Pfost.

The meeting was held at WAPT-TV in Jackson. David Hartman and Barbie Bassett, both TV meteorologists at WAPT, were the guest speakers.

Meeting Minutes

David Hartman and Barbie Bassett, television meteorologists with NEXRAD 16 Weather at WAPT-TV, were the hosts for the 23 January 1997 meeting. WAPT-TV is the ABC affiliate in Jackson. Fifteen people, including a number of meteorology students from Jackson State University, attended.

After a short business meeting, David Hartman explained to the group how he puts together his three daily weather shows, the importance of ratings and television research, and how nowcasting and being more specific in his forecasts have increased service to the viewing public. He also showed how the weather graphics are created and how special effects can add to the presentation. Hartman then showed several videotapes of promos for WAPT, including one that uses the base velocity product from the Jackson WSR-88D.

Bassett, who is responsible for the early morning broadcast on WAPT, then told how she approaches her shows. Since her shows are in the morning and last longer, they are geared more for the students and mothers in the viewing audience who need forecasts for the upcoming day.

Minutes submitted by Rusty Pfost.