News Briefs

Comings and goings

Linda Skaggs has replaced Jon Domstead as NSSL's Administrative Officer. Linda came to NSSL in 1996 and has held positions within the lab as a division secretary, Administrative Assistant for the Acting Director, and Senior Budget Analyst. Linda's new position became effective at the end of November, 2004. Deana Beneventi (Budget Analyst) has taken over as Senior Budget Analyst, and Sandra Allen (Secretary for the Forecast Research and Development Division) has accepted the Budget Analyst position.

Yusif Nava and Boris Hernandez, from the University of Veracruz in Xalapa, are working with NSSL's Mike Douglas studying how the intensity of the sea-land breeze circulation changes from June through September and how this may be related to the changing patterns of rainfall around the Gulf of California. Nava and Hernandez were part of the NAME data collection and are currently participating in the data processing and interpretation phase of the project.

NSSL welcomes Suzanne Van Cooten, Ph. D., in June from the NOAA/NWS National Data Buoy Center, Stennis Space Center, MS. Suzanne is a hydrometeorologist and will join NSSL's hydrometeorology program.

NSSL scientist awarded DOC's Gold Medal

NSSL's Vincent (Bim) Wood, along with NWS's Jim Purpura, were recently awarded the Department of Commerce's 2004 Gold Medal for "instituting a program of disseminating NWS hazardous weather warnings to the Oklahoma deaf and hard-of-hearing community through alphanumeric pagers." The award is the highest honorary award given by the DOC. Bim has been working on the paging system since his nine-month study that revealed 81 percent of deaf and hard-of-hearing people have experienced fear about being unprepared for weather emergencies.

Editorships

Mike Baldwin and Jack Kain have been selected to be associate editors for Monthly Weather Review to serve a three year term.

SPC/NSSL Spring Program

The fifth annual SPC/NSSL Spring Program operated from 8:00 a.m. - 4:00 p.m., Monday through Friday from April 25 through June 3, 2005. The program included daily weather briefings from 12:45-1:00 p.m. Forecasters and researchers worked together during this concentrated period to evaluate new products that have the potential to enhance severe storm forecasting operations.

"Category 6: Day of Destruction"

Producers of the CBS mini-series, "Category 6: Day of Destruction," consulted meteorologists from NOAA to ensure the accuracy of the program that aired last November. Harold Brooks, NOAA NSSL research meteorologist, and Joe Schaefer, Director of the Storm Prediction Center, reviewed scripts of the production and provided suggestions. "You have to consider the end result is entertainment, not necessarily realistic," said Keli Tarp, NOAA Weather Partners Public Affairs Specialist.