science_news

Student Volunteer Program (Summer 2014) - WFO St. Louis will be receiving a new student volunteer for the 2014 summer program.  Evan Kutta (Phd candidate from Saint Louis University) will be out student volunteer for the upcoming summer.  His tasks will include working with the Long and Short term forecasters, spend two days a week with Mr. Mark Fuch (Service Hydrologist - WFO St. Louis), spend one day a week with the SOO (Ron Przybylinski) on a reading course, assist in conducting damage assessments and more.  He will begin during the first week in June 2014.  

Good News (May 2014):  Two student volunteers who participated in the Student Volunteer program at WFO St. Louis  two to four years ago have recently received internships in the National Weather Service.  Ben Herzog (BS Missouri University and recently MS University of Oklahoma) has accepted an intern position at WFO Sullivan Wisconsin.  Matthew Stalley (BS from Saint Louis University) and recently (MS degree from the University of Oklahoma) have accepted a position at WFO Fort Worth Texas.  Congratulations to both Ben and Matt. Good Luck on your careers in the National Weather Service. 

National Weather Association Annual Meeting - Mr. Fred Glass, Lead Forecaster at WFO St. Louis will be attending the NWA Annual Meeting in Salt Lake City in October 2014.  More information will be forth coming.

AMS 27th Conference on Severe Local Storms - Mr. Ron Przybylinski (SOO at WFO St. Louis) will be attending the 27th Conf. on Severe Local Storms in Madison Wisconsin in early November 2014.  More information will be forth-coming.


08/05/2013 - NWA Annual Meeting at Charleston SC - Lead Forecaster Fred Glass at WFO St. Louis will be attending the 39th National Weather Association Annual Meetings in Charleston SC.  He will be giving an oral presentation entiled: Impact Based Warning Decisions and Broadcast Media responses for the St. Charles/St. Louis Tornado of 31 May 2013."   A Poster Presentation entitled "Temporal Superiority of the St. Louis Terminal Doppler Weather Radar in identifying Tornadic Mesovortices" by Lead Forecaster Jim Sieveking has been accepted for poster presentation.  Due to budget issues, Fred will be presenting the poster at the Annual Meeting. 

06/01-03/2013 - Tornadoes associated with the 05/31/2013 Quasi-Linear Convective System (QLCS).  A cluster of severe storms including hybrid supercells formed over parts of central Missouri and moved eastward to form QLCS with embedded bow echoes.  The most damaging tornadoes occurred over southern St. Charles county and parts of west-central Madison county Illinois.  Several staff members including our student volunteers participated in the damage assessment work.

05/25/2013 - Student Volunteer Program - Two new students will be participating in the 2013 Summer Student Volunteer Program at WFO St. Louis.  Sarah Granna from the Missouri University and Marcus Hustedde from Saint Louis University will be participating in the Summer Student Volunteer program.  Sarah will be working with Jim Sieveking on the climatology of major holidays for the cities of St. Louis, Columbia Missouri , and Quincy Illinois. Marcus will be working with Fred Glass on remnant lows associated with tropical cyclones.  They will also be participating in damage assessments, shadowing the long and short-term desk, traveling with the Service Hydrologists and the Warning Coordination Meteorologist.   


10/05/2012 - NWA Annual Meeting at Madison Wisconsin - (Lead Forecaster) Fred Glass at WFO St. Louis will be attending the 38th National Weather Association Annual Meetings in Madison Wisconsin.He is working with Kris Sanders (Intern) at WFO Topeka. The title of their presentation is:  Unwarned tornadoes within the National Weather Service St. Louis County Warning Area 1995-2011.  

AMS 26th Conference on Severe Local Storms.  Ron Przybylinski (SOO) at WFO St. Louis is a Lead Author of one paper and co-author of two other papers to be presented at the conference in Nashville Tennessee in mod November. Two papers are related to the 13 May 2010 tornadic Quasi-Linear Convective System (QLCS) over northeast Oklahoma. Ron is working with Brad McGorvak and Karen Hatfield at WFO Tulsa on this study. The third oaoer is a study of the 0-3 km Shear Vector aplication to convective lines. Jason Schaumann (Lead Forecaster at WFO Springfield is the lead author while Ron is assisting Jason with this study.  

Check on the Publications and Presentations page for additional information.   
 

03/09/2012 - Damage Assessment of the southern Indiana tornadoes on March 2, 2012. 
The WFO St. Louis (SOO) participated in the damage assessment of the southern Indiana tornadoes including the community of Henryville.  Indiana.  Ron Przybylinski worked with Joe Sullivan (WCM) at WFO Louisville and John Gordon (MIC) WFO Louisville on the damage assessment over parts of Washington, all of Clark, and Scott counties.  Preliminarty information from our assessment showed that the tornado which caused injurines and fatalities was rated EF4 at three differing locations in Clark county and one location in Scott county Indiana. The construction of housing varied considerably from well built home with poured cement basements.to houses on loose cement cinder blocks.  Several double wide house trailers were completely destroyed and debris from the house trailers were tossed from 500 yards to 1.0 mile east-northeast of the original site across Clark and Scott counties Friday afternoon.  The width of the damage area was 0.4 to 0.5 mile with the most concentrated damage between 100 and 150 yards wide.  More information including pictures on the damage assessment we traveled will be placed on a separate web site in Science News shortly.    

Impact Based Warnings (IBW) -  Five NWS offices including WFO St. Louis will be involved in an experiment to improve the tornado and severe thunderstorm warning process. The other four NWS offices participating in the IBW experiment include WFO Springfield, WFO Pleasant Hill (Kansas City), WFO Topeka KS, and WFO Witcha KS.  The experiment will begin on April 2, 2012 and continue into November 2012. We are developing WES cases for staff forecasters to become more proficient with the philosophy of IBW and the warning templates.  More information about the experiment can be found at the following website (will be up shortly). 
  

10/11/2011 - Four presentations (3 oral and 1 poster) will be given at the 36th National Weather Association Annual (NWA) Meeting in Birmingham Alabama during the week of October 17th 2011.  . Fred Glass (Lead Forecaster) will be giving an oral presentation on the radar and damage assessments of the Good Friday EF4 tornado event.  Laura Kanofsky (forecaster) will be giving an oral presentation on factors contributing to the Lack of Fatalities and Significant Injuries with the 22 April 2011 Good Friday tornado event.  JIm Sieveking (Lead Forecaster) will be giving an oral presentation on Warning Strategies and Operational Decisions on the December 31, 2010 New Year's Eve tornadic outbreak.  More detailed information can be found on the Publication page of the WFO St. Louis Science Page. .  

We have two new student volunteers from Saint Louis University for the Fall 2011 Student Volunteer program. They are seniors Stephen Morgan and Jeremy Scott.  They are working on two projects:  1) updating the storm base for WFO St. Louis and 2) working with Jim Kramper (WCM) on Warning Polygon Issues. They will be with us through early December 2011.


06/03/2011 - This has been one of the most busiest severe weather season since 2006 across the WFO St. Louis County Warning area. Tornado events that occurred 2011 over our area include the February 27th, April 15th, 19th and 22nd (St.Louis tornado) and the May 25, 2011 (many supercells with rotating updrafts but a few tornadoes.  Some of the more damaging tornadoes from the May 25 2011 case occurred over parts of southeast Missouri within the WFO Paducah County Warning Area (CWA).

Student Volunteers for summer 2011 at WFO St. Louis:  Two undergraduate and two graduate students have been selected for the summer student volunteer program. All four students are from Saint Lous University.  They are Matt Staley and Mike Synder (undergraduates) and Kelly Scott and Sabrina Litle (graduate level students). Matt and Kelly will be involved in GIS work while the other two will be working on case studies and other applied research work including WDSS-II work.

SCEP Student - WFO St. Louis was awarded a SCEP Student beginning this summer through next summer 2012.  Kris Sanders (SLU graduate student) our SCEP student will begin in July 2011.  He will be working on modules for the SCEP program and also a few applied research projects. 

WES case - December 31 2010 St. Louis tornadic event - Jim Sieveking, Mark Britt and Fred Glass has completed a WES case for the December 31, 2010 St. Louis tornado event which caused significant damage to the Sunset Hills Missouri area.  The case study can be obtained from Central Region SSD.  


01/23/2011 - Update on the Student Career Experience Program (SCEP)  - The 
Student Career Experience Program (SCEP) will continue for one more year (FY 2011 - 2011).  This is a change from the earlier note that the SCEP program was to be replaced by a new internship program under the Executive Order 13562 on December 27 2010.  The new internship program will likely be released later this year.  Students who are interested in the SCEP program need to visit your professor at your Meteorology Department for more details.  

Bow Echo Workshop to be held at Saint Louis University from March 8 - 9, 2011.  
A workshop on the topics of bow echoes and Quasi-linear Convective Systems will be held from Tuesday, March 8 through Wednesday March 9, 2011 at Monastero Hall on the Campus of Saint Louis University.  The Keynote speaker will be Dr. Morris Weisman from the National Center of Atmoshpheric Research (NCAR).  Dr. Weisman has been studying bow echoes and bow echo simulations since the early 1990s.  Invited speakers will include: Dr. Nolan Atkins from Lyndon State College, Lyndonville Vermont and Dr. Jeff Trapp from Purdue University.  Two mini-workshops including: 1) radar interpretation, 2) damage assessment due to downburst winds and non-supercell tornadoes.  Those interested on Tuesday evening, will have the opportunity to visit Favazza's restaurant on "The Hill." 

01/13/2011 - Student Volunteer Program at WFO St. Louis   New information on the WFO St. Louis Student Volunteer Program can be found at the following website: student volunteer  Students who have participated in the WFO LSX Student Volunteer program is shown on the  Collaborative Activities website   

10/23/2010 - Publications and Presentations given at the AMS 25th Conference on Severe Local Storms and Presentations given at the 35th National Weather Association Annual Meetings 

Mark Britt and Ron Przybylinski attended the AMS 25th Conference on Severe Local Storms in Denver Colorado during the week of October 12th 2010.  Fred Glass attended the 35th National Weather Association Annual Meetings in Tuscon Arizona during the week of October 6th 2010. Mark and Ron's oral presentations focused on the historic 8 May 2009 Derecho which moved across the southern third of Missouri. Ron worked with Jason Schumann and Doug Cramer from WFO Springfield Missouri and also with Dr. Nolan Atkins from Lyndon State College in Lyndonville Vermont. The paper focused on the bow echo evolution over southwest Missouri including an investigation on utilizing 0-3 km shear vectors and a survey of the first three strong mesovortices south of Sprinfield Missouri. One of the three mesovortices were responsible for spawning two tornadoes.  Mark's presentation covered the evolution of a supercell behind a elevated convective line (very interesting case). This supercell spawned a tornado which moved from eastern Shannon County into central Reynolds county Missouri.  Mark gave a poster presentation authored by Fred Glass and Mark Britt on convective mode and environment of thunderstorms producing significant cool season tornadoes.  All three papers (PDFs) will be located for review in the WFO St. Louis Publication and Presentations page on Monday. Oct 25 2010. 

Fred Glass attended the 35th National Weather Association Annual Meetings in Tucson Arizona  Fred oral presentation focused on a comparison study from the remnants of Hurricane Gustav and Hurricane Ike in the Mid-Mississippi Valley Region.   


06/24/2010 - Student Volunteer Program - alive and well at WFO St. Louis (LSX) 
We have two new students this year for the student volunteer program. Kris Sanders comes from Saint Louis University Meteorology Department here in St. Louis Missouri and Alexandria Karlin from Valpariso Univerisity Meteorology Department in Valpariso Indiana. Both students have several tasks to complete including 1) updating the storm spotter database at WFO St. Louis and working with our Service Hydrologist Mark Fuch on E-19 work and river gage work.  They have been introduced to the Long and Short-term forecast desk as well as learning severe weather operations including an overview of the pre or near storm environment and storm evolution.  They will be with us through early August 2010. 

Education - training activities: Four members of our staff have been very busy in giving severe weather seminars and local workshops to our staff. One of our workshops included an overview of 4 tornadic events (at close and distant ranges from our WSR-88D Doppler radar).  After each presentation we learned a lot and had some great discussions on way of improving our warning services to our partners and customers. .  

Abstracts submitted to the AMS 25th Conf. on Severe Local Storms - Three members from our forecast staff members have submitted abstracts for the upcoming AMS 25th Conf. on Severe Local Storms to be held during the second week in October 2010 in Denver Colorado.  One of our forecast staff members will be attending and presenting a paper at the National Weather Association (NWA) annual meetings in Tucson AZ during the first week in October 2010


07/27/2009 - SCEP student and Student Volunteer joins WFO St. Louis (LSX).  Ben Schwedler (SCEP student) from Iowa State University joined the forecast office in mid June 2009.  Ben Herzog from the University of Missouri is now a student volunteer at WFO St. Louis. Now we have four Ben's at WFO St. Louis (Ben Miller - Intern Ben1; Ben Sipprell - Intern Ben2; Ben Schwedler (Iowa State) Ben 3; and Ben Hezog (Missouri University) Ben 4. Both Ben 3 and Ben 4 will be staying through mid August at WFO St. Louis (LSX) working on a number of projects at the office  Check out the Collaboration page under Science News - Damaging Winds category. Mark Britt (Lead Forecaster at WFO LSX) has updated his tornado climatology page. Check out the Damaging Winds website - Classification of QLCSs. New information on the main page includes updated Group 1 and 4 cases - Linear convective line to Bow Echo and HP-Bow Echo evolution.

02/12/2009 - New information about the NWS SCEP and WFO St. Louis (LSX) Student Volunteer Program for 2009 are located under the category of Collaborative Activities Page under Science News at WFO LSX web site.  Announcements for the Student Volunteer Program will be sent to Saint Louis University and Missouri University during the week of February 17, 2009. Students who will continue their education at a University with an accredited program in Meteorology are also qualified for the student volunteer program. They will need to contact Ron Przybylinski (SOO WFO St. Louis). 

12/03/2008 - Another busy year over the Mid-Mississippi Valley Region.  We had a very active winter weather season during the first part of the year and a lot of flooding over this area throughout the year.  What have we done this year? Check out the Publications and Presentations Page on Science News.  We have presented four new papers at the AMS 24th Conf. on Severe Local Storms in Savannah Georga which was held in late October 2008. The first paper completed by Fred Glass focuses on the 11 March 2006 tornado event from south-central Missouri through southwest Illinois. Ron Przybylinski, Jim Sieveking, Ben Sipprell and Jared Guyer from the Storm Prediction Center (SPC) completed two papers on the historic 19 July and 21 July 2006 windstorm events over our region. On the last paper, Ron worked with Gino Izzi (Lead Forecaster at WFO Chicago) and Angie Lese from (Lead Forecaster - WFO Louisville KY) on the 23 August 2007 non-supercell tornado and windstorm which hit the Greater Chicago Metro area. 

We also have several new powerpoint presentations focusing on winter weather forecasting applications. Some of the papers are a result of collaborative efforts with Saint Louis University. You will also find these presentations also on the Publication and Presentation website on Science News.  Will be updating other web pages shortly.   

11/20/2007 - Most of the organized damaging winds events occurred during the month of  August 2007 across our region. However one dynamic event occurred on October 18, 2007 where a QLCS within embedded bow echoes occurred over parts of central and eastern Missouri.  One bow echo moved through Monroe County MO a spawned 3 non-supercell tornadoes. Two people were killed with one of the tornadoes. Another non-supercell tornado occurred over parts of northern Callaway County Missouri.  We plan to further look into this case during the next few months. The 2 April 2006 tornadic QLCS webpage has been further expanded to include the early evolution of the mesoscale Rear Inflow Jet.  Several WSR-88D images have been constructed through the Warning Decision Support System -II (WDSS-II) software system from the National Severe Storms Laboratory. (NSSL). This webpage is located in the "Classification of QLCSs" under Damaging Winds page.  This webpage will be further expanded with time. We plan to publish to papers in 2008: 1) Study of the 06 May 2003 HP - bow echo high end wind event (Sieveking and Przybylinski), and 2) Study of the 2 April 2006 tornadic QLCS system (Przybylinski, Sieveking, Schmocker and Dr. Nolan Atkins from Lyndon State College). Lead Forecasters Mark Britt and Fred Glass continues to work on environmental conditions associated with "Cool Season" tornado events. 

04/25/2007 - A few more new graphics have been included in the Classification of QLCSs page. One of the new graphics is a scatter plot of the magnitude of rotational velocities (Vr values) of non-supercell tornadic mesovoriticies and non-tornadic mesovortices. Eleven tornadic cases have been sampled at this time. Additional cases will be added. All mesovortices were sampled within 120 KM of the WSR-88D KLSX Doppler radar here in St. Louis.  The initial Vr threshold value for tornadogenesis within this range appeared to be 17 m s-1. However 3 mesovortices did not spawn a tornado when Vr values were between 17 and 19 m s-1.  When Vr values reached or exceeded 20 m s-1 tornadogenesis occurred.   

02/16/2007 - A number of graphs including Damage Wind Frequency and Tornado occurrence with Quasi-Linear Convective Systems have been updated to include the 2006 convective season.  You can find these graphs under Damaging Wind Studies -(Classification of QLCSs) and (MCS Monthly Distribution).  Additional graphs will continue to be updated. Jim Sieveking (Forecaster) and Ron Przybylinski (Science and Operations Officer will be giving presentations at the upcoming Bow Echo Workshop at WFO Louisville. These presentations will be placed under the Publications shortly.  

11/02/2006 - Under Damaging Winds, parts of the Classification of QLCSs website has been updated. Two new cases has been added to the stratification of cases.  A map showing the tornadic damage tracks across the WFO St. Louis (LSX) County Warning Area (CWA) is now on this page. More updates including QLCS cases from 2006 will be forth-coming on this page during the next few weeks.

09/20/2006 - American Meteorological Society - 23rd Conference on Severe Local Storms publications.  Four new preprints have been submitted to AMS Headquaters for the 23rd Conf. on Severe Local Storms. Topics presented in these papers range from 'Cool Season' Tornado Climatology to case study reviews to the test and evaluation of new algorithms and display systems (Warning Decision Display System - WDSS from the National Severe Storms Laboratory).  Case study reviews include an overview of the May 10, 2003 tornado outbreak over norhern Missouri, April 02, 2006 tornadic Quasi-Linear Convective System (QLCS) and the November 6, 2005 Evansville Tornado event. Since each paper is a pdf file, you can review or download these papers from the Science News Publication Page under 'Extended Abstracts presented at Severe Local Storms Conferences.  The 23rd Conf. on Severe Local Storms will be held in St. Louis Missouri at the Adams Mark Hotel during the week of November 6 - 10, 2006. WFO St. Louis will also be testing the WSR-88D Dual Polarization Product Evaluation data from the National Severe Storms Laboratory during the next few months. More information on this testing will be forth-coming. 

07/12/2006 - Publications in June 2006 Issue of AMS Weather Forecasting.  Two new publications are now available in the June 2006 Issues of AMS Weather Forecasting. The title of the first formal publication "The Role of Sublimational Cooling in a Late-Season Midwestern Snow Event" by Patrick Market, Ron Przybylinski, and Scott Rochette has been posted in the June 2006 issue of AMS Weather and Forecastiing. The second publication posted in the Forecaster Forum is entitled, "Buyer Beware Some Words of Caution on the Use of Severe Wind Reports in Post Event Assessment and Research." Authors include: Robert Trapp, Dustan Wheatley, Nolan Atkins, Ron Przybylinski, and Ray Wolf.  A number of the WFO LSX staff members have submitted abstracts for the upcoming AMS 23rd Conference on Severe Local Storms. These abstracts will be posted in the LSX publication page shortly. Abstracts for the 2006 NWA Annual Meeting has been posted in the Publications section under NWA Annual Meetings link. The May 24, 2004 tornadic QLCS WES case is available. Information on this case is located on the CR METdat server and on the Damaging Winds Webpage - Group 1 case examples.

02/24/2006 -  Dr. Lance Bosart will be visiting WFO St. Louis on Wednesday - March 15, 2006.  Dr. Lance Bosart, Professor from the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Albany /SUNY will be speaking at WFO St. Louis on Wednesday, March 15, 2006. The title of his presentation will be 'Strong Surface Fronts and Sloping Terrain and Coastal Plains.' He will also be giving a second presentation at the Greater St. Louis Chapter of the American Meteorological Society.  The title of his second talk is: "Modern Weather Forecasting: A Scientific and Operational Perspective."  Please contact Ron Przybylinski is you are interested in attending. The June 10, 2003 St. Louis Bow Echo case has also been updated and includes a matrix of WSR-88D reflectivity and storm-relative  velocity cross-sections for the period of 2245 through 2300 UTC.  The velocity cross-sections show the early stages of the mesoscale Rear Inflow Jet and Front-to-Rear flow. The May 25, 2006 QLCS page (Group 1 cases) is also being expanded and updated to include the evolution of the MARC velocity signature.

11/15/2005 - Pete Manousos from HPC visits WFO St. Louis.  Pete Manousos, the Science and Operations Officer from the Hydro Prediction Center (HPC) at NCEP visited the staff at WFO St. Louis on Monday, November 14, 2005.  He gave three presentations to the staff members at WFO St. Louis MO and Lincoln Illinois.  Two presentations, "NWS Winter Weather Desk and Experimental Winter Weather Impact Graphics" and "HPC Medium Range Grids" are located on the CR Metdat server (under LSX) or you can contact Ron for copies of these presentations.  On Monday, November 6, 2005 WFO St. Louis had their winter weather workshop. Presentations from this workshop can be obtained from Ron Przybylinski.  Dr. Lance Bosart, Professor from State University of New York, will be one of  our featured speakers for the upcoming 2006. More information on his visit will be forth-coming.

10/16/2005 - Dr. Louis Uccellini visits WFO St. Louis. Dr. Louis Uccellini, Director of National Center for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) visited the staff at WFO St. Louis on Wednesday, October 12, 2005. He gave a 2 hour presentation entitled: 'NCEP Updated.' If you wish to obtain a copy of his presentation, please contact Ron Przybylinski at WFO St. Louis. The National Weather Association 30th Annual Meeting will be held at the Adams Mark Hotel in downtown St. Louis during the week of October 18th. A number of our forecasters will be presenting oral and poster presentations at the Annual Meetings. More information about our presentations will be posted in the Publications section of Science News.

08/23/2005 - Publications - AMS MWR - A new formal publication entitled, "Damaging Surface Wind Mechanisms within the 10 June 2003 Saint Louis Bow Echo during BAMEX" has been posted in the August 2005 Issue of Monthly Weather Review.  This is the first of a series of BAMEX-related publications forth-coming. Worth checking out. A number of webpages continue to be updated on the Damaging Winds site (Science News). Dr. Louis Uccellini will be visiting WFO St. Louis in early November 2005. More information concerning the date of his visit will be posted shortly.

06/17/2005 - A number of webpages on the Damaging Winds site have been updated. Some of these webpages included updated monthly distribution of QLCS events, daily distribution of damaging wind and tornado events with QLCSs and pre-convective environmental parameters.  Additionally check out the webpage of the June 10, 2003 St. Louis Bow Echo case (first page on Classification of MCSs - top part). This case occurred during the early part of the BAMEX project. Additional updates will be forth-coming.

04/25/2005 - Abstracts of the presentations given at the April 11, 2005 BAMEX workshop are now listed on the Future BAMEX workshop webpage. There is a link from this page to the JOSS website showing slides of the individual presentations.

04/05/2005 - The agenda for the second BAMEX workshop has been finalized. This workshop will be held at the Sheraton Four Points Inn in Fairview Heights Illinois.  The workshop will begin at 9:00 am (April 11), Monday morning and conclude at 3:15 (April 12) Tuesday afternoon. Check out the LSX BAMEX webpage (Future Workshops) for more details including titles and abstracts of presentations. 

02/03/2005 - A second BAMEX Workshop will be held on Monday, April 11 and Tuesday, April 12, 2005.  The workshop will be held at the Sheraton Four Points Inn in Fairview Heights Illinois.  This is the same location where the first BAMEX workshop was held. All of the Principle Investigators (PIs) who participated in the project and who attended the first workshop will be giving updated presentations.  The workshop is scheduled to begin at 1:00 PM Monday afternoon and continue through early Tuesday afternoon.  The specific agenda has not been finalized at this time.  However, more details will be forth-coming on this page and the LSX BAMEX page.   

09/03/2004 - New damage assessments from July and August 2004 severe weather events across our region have been placed on the 'Storm Damage Survey Information' page.  Additionally, a new formal publication entitled,"Vortex Structure and Evolution within Bow Echoes, Part 1: Single-Doppler and Damage Analysis of the 29 June 1998 Derecho" has been posted in the September 2004 Issue of the AMS Monthly Weather Review.  There are several new findings in this paper concerning overall bow echo and mesovortex structure compared to earlier observations and recent numerical simulations.  Worth checking out.

08/18/2004 - Several new extended abstracts submitted to the upcoming AMS 22nd Conference on Severe Local Storms has been posted on the Science News - Publications Website.  Three of the four papers focus on preliminary results from the Bow Echo and MCV Experiment.  In addition to these papers, a paper entitled, "The Bow Echo and MCV Experiment - Observations and Opportunities" has been published in the August 2004 Issue of the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society.    

06/03/2004 - Storm Survey Information from events which occurred during the week of May 27th and Sunday May 30th are posted on the Storm Damage Survey Information page.  Worth checking out.

02/03/2004 - A POST BAMEX Workshop will be held at the Sheraton Four Points Inn in Fairview Heights Illinois from Monday March 1 through Wednesday March 3, 2004. The meetings will begin around 1:00 pm on Monday and continue through noon on Wednesday.   Check the BAMEX (Future Meetings) page for more information about this meeting.

11/17/2003 - The WFO LSX Winter Weather Workshop was held at WFO St. Louis on Monday, November 17, 2003. Speakers for this workshop included Dr. Pat Market from the University of Missouri (presentations on thundersnow), Dr. Jim Moore from Saint Louis University (presentations on the formation of mesoscale snowbands) and Marcia Estrem and Mike Cellitte from the University of Illinois - Urbana Champaign.  Marcia's presentation focused on the use of the MIPS instrumentation in winter storm events while Mike's presentation keyed upon ranking extreme cold waves and their relationship with the Polar Vortex.  Check out the CIPS Winter Weather Studies page for all of the presentations.

11/13/2003 - The Media Winter Weather Workshop was held on the campus of Saint Louis University on Saturday, November 8, 2003.  A number of presentations were given from staff and students at Saint Louis University and NWS staff members.  Check out the CIPS Winter Weather Studies link.  A Winter Weather Workshop will be held at WFO St. Louis on Monday, November 17, 2003.  

11/02/2003 -New publication was released in the October Issue of AMS Weather Forecasting.  Title of publication: The Environment of Warm-Season Elevated Thunderstorms Associated with Heavy Rainfall over the Central United States.   Authors: J.T.Moore, F.H. Glass, C.E. Graves, S.M. Rochette, and M.J. Singer. Pages 861-878.  This paper focuses on results from the CIPS applied research work at Saint Louis University.   Worth checking out.

09/09/2003 - The BAMEX Field Experiment ended on July 6, 2003.  Eigthteen missions were completed during the seven week field study. A lot of data were collected from airborne and groundbased sensors.  NWS SOOs and forecasters from WFO LSX and surrounding sites played important roles in the forecasting and nowcasting components of the project.  A big kudos to all for a successful project.  Check the LSX BAMEX website for numerous pictures taken at the BAMEX Operations Center at Mid America airport during the project. Also check out the JOSS Website for examples of the airborne Doppler radar data, mobile sounding, and other types of information generated during the project.  A future BAMEX workshop is planned for early 2004.  More details will be forth-coming. 

We are updating the Publication and Presentations page on the LSX Science News by adding a number of our presentations (ppt) given at past AMS - NWA conferences and in-house seminars.  Examples of tornadogenesis associated with convective lines / supercells and the MARC velocity signature are shown in these presentations.

Winter Weather Workshop for the local and regional Broadcast media is scheduled for Saturday November 8, 2003 at Saint Louis University. More details about this workshop will be forth-coming.
 
06/06/2003 - BAMEX Field Study Underway.   Over 50 scientists from NCAR, NOAA, National Weather Service, and many Universities are stationed at Mid-America Airport for the BAMEX Field Study.  Thus far six missions have been completed.  Mark Ratzer (WFO Chicago),  Dan Baumgardt (SOO - WFO ARX) and Fred Glass (WFO LSX) have completed their tours.  Jason Puma (WFO IND) and Gary Schmocker (WFO LSX) are currently participating in the nowcasting activities at the BAMEX Operations Center. Check on the latest info of past missions, forecasts, nowcasts and much more.  Check also the LSX BAMEX page - BAMEX Scientific Links.  Bob Johns, MIke Conligo, Ron Przybylinski and Gary Schmocker's presentations are now available.   We also have a link to the BAMEX 4km WRF model on this page. Worth checking out.

04/29/2003 - BAMEX NWS Participants Schedule has been updated.  Ron Przybylinski and Gary Schmocker's presentation
given at the BAMEX workshop is available on the BAMEX presentation section (BAMEX page).

04/08/2003 - BAMEX NWS Participants Schedule, Mike Conligo's homepage on Derecho-producing Convective Systems and his presentation given at the BAMEX workshop is available on the BAMEX presentation section (BAMEX page).  Also - the April 4, 2004 Bartelso Illinois tornado event over south-central Clinton County is on the Damage Survey Page. 

03/05/2003 -  BAMEX Planning / Workshop meeting for National Weather Service Forecasters is scheduled for Tuesday - Wednesday March 18 - 19, 2003 in Fairview Heights Illinois.  See the BAMEX page for more details.

03/05/2003 - Information on the topic of Classification of MCSs has updated. Several new tables have been added to show the characterisitics between tornadic and non-tornadic vortices (Group 1 cases).   Tables for Group 2 cases are under construction at this time.

02/17/2003 - Mark Britt (Forecaster at WFO LSX) has updated the Tornado Climatology page.  Worth checking out.

11/12/2002 -   BAMEX meetings will be held on Thursday (November 14) and Friday (November 15) at the Dept. of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences (Saint Louis University). Over 30 scientists from NCAR, NOAA and several universities will be participating at the meetings during the next two days.  A summary of meeting highlights will be presented next week. Check out the BAMEX Website for the agenda of the meeting. 

Updated information on the topic Classification of QLCSs will be presented during the next several weeks.  Three new MCS events from the Spring 2002 severe weather season have been investigated.   All three events spawned non-supercell tornadoes and caused damaging winds.   Look for updated info on Groups 1 and 2 events. 

08/30/2002 - The Publication Page has been updated including papers from the 21st Conf. on Severe Local Storms.  A new Webpage called BAMEX has been activated. This page will outline the BAMEX project and will be frequently updated.

06/15/2002 - The June 11, 2002 bowing MCS event produced a few weak tornadoes and a numerous damaging winds reports over parts of west central through south-central Illinois. We conducted a damage survey over this area. Tornadoes (F0 damage) occurred over Rockport Illinois (western Pike county IL) damaging the town's Post Office and 4-5 miles northwest of Vandalia and 2 miles east of Vandalia Illinois in Fayette county.  The Damage Survey Page will be updated shortly with this latest info. 

Our staff completed a number of preprints for the 21st Conf. on Severe Local Storms. Check below (Recent publications) for the latest papers produced by Fred Glass, Ron Przybylinski, Gary Schmocker, and Mark Britt from WFO St. Louis.  Ron also worked with Brad Ketcham at WFO Lincoln IL on the 29 June 1998 Quasi-Linear Convective System (QLCS) event across north-central and central Illinois and also with Dr. Nolan Atkins at Lyndon State College in Vermont with the 27 May 2000 QLCS over the Mid-Mississippi Valley Region.

05/17/2002 - Since April 21, 2002 WFO St. Louis county warning area has experienced three supercell tornadic events and four non-supercell tornadic events. Except for one supercell episode, all of the events have spawned weak tornadoes, hail of various sizes (up to 2 inches) and damaging winds. We have conducted field damage surveys in six of the seven events.  In one of the supercell cases, 6 tornadoes appeared to form along the leading edge of the storm's southern flank (rear flank downdraft).  In two of the four non-supercell cases, a low-level boundary appeared to have intersected the developing bow echo.  Strong circulations occurred at or near this intersection spawning tornadoes.  The other two non-supercell cases were very challenging where tornadoes occurred at or just north of the apex of the developing bow.  Check out Storm Damage Survey or Recent Events links for damage survey information.  More information on these recent events will be shown on these web pages in Science News.

03/14/2002 - Presentations on Convective Mode / Convective Indicies.    These presentations were prepared by Mark Britt (forecaster WFO St. Louis). Check it out:
    Convective Mode    /   Convective Indices
   
02/12/2002 - Bow Echo and MCV Experiment (BAMEX). St. Louis based operations (15 May - 15 July 2003 / 2004). Project Objectives and Field Project   Overview are located at the following website (BAMEX) and in the 'What's New' section of the COMET Damaging Winds Page.  Over 40 scientists from around the United States plan to participate in this field project.  Future planning meetings will be announced at the following   website (BAMEX meetings).

02/12/2002 -Mid-Altitude Radial Convergence (MARC) has been updated. Updated information and new case examples are shown.  Check us out - Damaging Winds Page (Mid-Altitude Radial Convergence).   Also check out latest work on vortex evolution associated with convective lines completed by Ron Przybylinski and Gary Schmocker.  Ron and Gary are working Nolan Atkins (Lyndon State College) and Brad Ketcham (WFO Lincoln) on a number of papers for the upcoming 21st Conf. on Severe Local Storms.
 
02/12/2002 - Winter Weather Applied Research at WFO LSX  / CIPS (St. Louis Univ) - Latest     information on winter weather applied research activities and related forecasting problems are shown on this page.  Mike Fries (Student Volunteer) from Saint Louis University,  Tom Spriggs (Forecaster) and Gary Schmocker (Forecaster) continue to work on a number of winter weather cases.  A link to Marc Singer's Master Thesis (CIPS / SLU) on the TROWAL, and presentations given at the Media Winter Weather Workshop (held on December 3, 2000 at Saint Louis University) are also highlighted on this page.   Check out   'Winter Weather.'
   
02/12/2002 - Fred, Ron and Gary and working on presentations for the upcoming CIPS Workshop to be held on March 19-21, 2002 at Saint Louis University.  Check out CIPS Workshop for more details. 

02/12/2002 - Student Volunteer Program page has been updated.

06/17/2001 - May 7, 2000 Franklin County Missouri Flash Flood Preprint.  Fred Glass's paper on this historic flash flood is located in "Recent Publications" and in the COMET Heavy Rainfall Studies.

06/17/2001 - Tornado Climatology of the St. Louis NWS County Warning Area.  This interactive presentation can be found under "Local Studies".  Also Fred Glass and Mark Britt are currently working on a paper showing the evolution of the historic April 10, 2001 High Precipitation (HP) Supercell event for the upcoming 21st Conf. on Severe Local storms.  The paper will be located in the 'Local Studies' section when completed.

04/17/2001 - Spring 2001 Media Severe Weather Workshop -  A number of presentations were given by WFO St. Louis staff members at this workshop for the media.  The workshop was held at Saint Louis University on March 24, 2001. Check out Media Severe Weather Workshop.