2018 TESSA National Storms Conference

[Randy Jennings]

TESSA (Texas Severe Storms Association) has announced the agenda and speakers for their free 20018 National Storms Conference to be held Saturday March 3rd from 9 AM to 5 PM in Colleyville, TX (near DFW airport). Speakers include:

Dr. Charles Doswell III, retired meteorologist, scientific consultant
"Abstract" A storm chasing career that began in 1972 and continues today is reviewed

Roger Edwards, Lead Forecaster, National Weather Service Storm Prediction Center, Editor of Electronic Journal of Severe Storms Meteorology
"Tropical Cyclone Tornado Concepts: Harvey as an Example"

Gary Woodall, WCM, National Weather Service, Memphis
10th Super Storm Spotter Training Session: "Structure and Behavior of Severe Storms: A Storm Spotter's Toolkit"

Mark Fox, WCM, National Weather Service, Ft. Worth
"An Operational Look at the Canton, Texas Tornado Outbreak"

Lance Woods, Science Operations Officer NWS Houston/Galveston, TX
"Harvey: Warning and Messaging Challenges during an Extended Tornado Threat"

Nestor Flecha, MIC Telemundo 39
"Hurricane Harvey: First hand experience from Rockport, combining science and TV"

They also are raffling off some great prizes. Full conference details at their website: http://www.tessa.org/ . If there is enough interested, maybe we can have a Stormtrack happy hour after the conference.

 

[Randy Jennings]

TESSA is today. Hope to see you there. I have a maroon short sleeve polo shirt on. Come say hello if you are there.

 

[Drew Terril]

Wish I could have made it. Didn't get back into OKC from my last run till a couple hours ago.

 

[David Williams]

Randy, were any of the presentations recorded and uploaded to youtube?

Sent from my SM-G955U using Tapatalk

 

[Randy Jennings]

Several folks where recording, but I have not seen any posts yet. TESSA has historically videoed Gary Woodall''s Super Spotter training and sold DVDs of it online at tessa.org.This year's is not for sale yet but the last one (2016) is. I don't know if they plan to sell it this year or not.

I enjoyed the conferance. Chuck Doswell''s talk was something I think every chaser needs to hear. I hope someone posts it. Gary''s Super Spotter talk was great as always. It was more advanced than Advanced Spotter training. His big point was to pay attention to low level shear as it is a bigger indicator than CAPE.

Mark's presention on the Canton tornados was funny and informative.I chased that event and seeing why it happened (an outflow boundary hitting a cold front) was eye pening, as i had never gone back and studied it and i think a lot of us missed that subtle outflow boundary. He also expressed thanks to all the chasers and spotters who made reports as it helped them out operationally (in spite of poor cell coverage).

Having never chased a tropical event, I found the afteroon''s tropical focused sessions interesting. I learned a lot about tropical cyclone tornados. It was interesting to hear about the operations at the Houston/Galveston WFO during Harvey (where the even started answering 911 calls when Galveston OEM next door became overloaed). Nester told us they just got a new and improved "Storm Ranger" X band DOW. Their orginal one has been sent to Chicsgo. Evedently the first one required cell connection to send data back to the station where most of the processing was done. That did not work well and the new one uses satellite to send the data.