Forecast School sessions in Norman, Oklahoma

[Tim Vasquez]

Forecast School courses in Norman, Oklahoma are in full swing for 2012. I will be hosting about 15 classes on Saturdays here in Norman, Oklahoma in a newly-built classroom, located in my Weather Graphics office building on our rural property. There are basic severe weather forecasting courses, GRLevel2/GRLevel3 training, mesoscale analysis workshops, and even laboratory sessions in May where we go over tons of analysis and radar/satellite data as a real weather event unfolds.

You can find out more about Forecast School at:
http://www.forecastschool.com

Shown below is a photo from our class last Saturday. At this particular moment we were doing a mesoanalysis exercise, looking at conditions about 4 hours prior to the May 10, 2010 outbreak.

 

[M. Honcho]

This looks great Tim. I think I subscribed to be notified when the online classes are available. Do you have an estimated time frame when the online classes will be up? For example during the season or after the season? I know your site said "sometime in the next year" just wanted to narrow the time frame down if possible. Thanks for providing this service.

 

[Tim Vasquez]

As far as my work priorities, the online classes have finally ascended to top, so these will almost certainly be rolled out by late spring or early summer. I have been brainstorming over the past year trying to figure out an ideal format, and that's really a critical component since you can't convey radar data in a workbook, nor teach rock solid fundamentals in a series of videos. Thankfully I've just about got all this ironed out, and more details will be forthcoming later in the spring. Most likely it will start with introductory modules, and others will be developed later in the summer. It will also be based largely on 2012 data going forward.

For those who can travel, though, I do recommend the classes as we can cover exactly which topics you want to cover. The classes tend to be geared to the experience level of those attending and can be rather unstructured... in fact last Saturday with all the weather going on, we only opened one single Powerpoint slide during the whole 4 hours... everything was taught with a whole range of realtime products from UCAR, FSL, NCEP, CMC, and a bunch of other places.

Tim

 

[M. Honcho]

Yes I would obviously recommend in-person classes for such topics as well however, my current personal situation I don't think will allow me to travel for your classes. I would definitely love to come to the classes in person. This is great news for people in my position who may not be able to travel quite yet. I also think it's great you're going to use data from 2012 as it will allow some of us to connect more with the data.

Thank you for your quick and thorough response Tim.

 

[Greg Higgins]

Any word about an update to DA?

 

[Tim Vasquez]

We're getting off topic... maybe we need a DA thread, but that's also a very high priority since I use the tool all the time and it needs to be brought up to date. The problem is that the compiler I develop under was bought out by Embarcadero, which stripped out the good stuff and tripled the prices, without writing in any MacOS/iOS/Linux support... so that left me with 250,000 lines of source code and kind of a conundrum. We will get this going again, though, probably continuing under the old compiler since there's still a huge following for it.

Tim

 

[Drew.Gardonia]

this looks like a good thing. I've got your books, but I usually learn a little bit better if I have someone talking and demonstrating how things work, so if you're planning on doing this next year, I would definitely be interested, just have too much going on right now with school and work/internship to make it this year.

 

[Timothy Finn]

I'm just up in Wichita, and interested in coming down to do this. Let me scope out how things go, and I will keep an eye on your scheduling, and see if I can make something come together.

Tim

EDIT: Oh, what the hell. I have nothing going on this weekend. I signed up for Saturday's class.

 

[Tim Vasquez]

For this weekend (April 21) we have 2 back-to-back classes. The Mesoscale Analysis class is sold out, but I can fit one extra seat in there; if you wish to attend, please contact me privately and I will arrange to fit you in. In the afternoon we have a GRLevel2/GRLevel3 class, one of only 2 I will be offering this spring. So if you want to get fully up to speed on radar interrogation (using actual data volumes from DFW April 3 and Kansas April 14) and talk about storm structure, this will be a perfect training session.

Tim

 

[STexan]

Are there any pre-requisites to either the Meso Analysis and/or GRLevel classes?

 

[Tim Vasquez]

Not at all. Generally when I start the classes I ask around to try to get a feel for what everyone's experience levels are. Sometimes there are a few complete beginners; other times everyone has solid intermediate knowledge. We just roll with the skill level everyone's at and I sometimes pad out the definitions & concepts a little better for those who might be getting lost.

As far as prerequisites, any of my forecasting books at www.weathergraphics.com are ideal but not necessary.

Tim

 

[Bill Hark]

I did one of Tim's classes several years ago and I am very impressed with his forecast ability. I learned alot and I highly recommend them for new chasers or those who want to refresh their forecasting knowledge. Although one can learn a lot with the internet and selected texts, nothing beats sitting down with an instructor.

Bill Hark