I would love to hear anyone's impressions of this year's seminar especially since it is the 30th year this program has been produced.
Excellent presentations by all the speakers.
I especially liked Gino Izzi's reassessment of the Plainfield, IL F5 event using the WRF model. He used the observations from day 3, day 2, and day 1 (morning of) before the event and input them into the model to see if it would give better indications of the tornado threat. Analyzing the model output led him to a similar forecast as what was originally forecasted. Northwest flow aloft with strong instability yet weak low level shear indicated mainly a linear event. The model's simulated reflectivity seemed to agree, consistently creating bow echo like returns in southern MI or northern IN that moved SSE with nothing that resembled a more classic supercell or over the SE WI/NE IL area where the storm actually tracked. The difference between then and now, Izzi concluded, is that the 88D and better reporting networks would have led to better warnings on that storm if it occurred today, even if the models didn't forecast it.
Ed Fenelon's talk on the dual-polarization of the 88D network was also extremely interesting. He had some great examples of how that's going to directly aid chasers with the radar's ability to pick out hail cores and sort precip returns from non-precip returns.
Dr. Louis Uccellini from NCEP had some interesting points about the climate and you could read into it a bit to see how the Plains tornado season might be effected. He and Skilling didn't hold back during the questions, as they were pressed on global warming and conspiracy theories.
Dr. Mary Ann Cooper is also going to make me think twice about getting out of the car while I'm under the storm. Her talk on lightning injuries was pretty interesting.
Those were the highlights for me, but everyone did a great job. I'd say the material presented was even better than previous years that I had attended. I was a little disappointed to see less tables/booths outside the lecture hall though. I'll definitely be back next year.
