Trip to San Antonio

Glad to say these travels were less eventful than last work trip. Went to the American Meteorological Society annual meeting. Didn’t do any blogging as the wireless internet at the hotel was $16/day & was relatively busy rest of the time. Will spare all the details & hit the highlights (though it’ll still be in the characteristically tedious style that DCV readers expect, nay demand).

Weather: Had to leave 73 sunny degrees in Raleigh on Sunday afternoon to go to 31 wet degrees in San Antonio. The cold rain and freezing rain started on Monday & didn’t let up until Wed. afternoon. Flights were fine today (Thurs). The roads seemed fine to me, but all the trees, traffic lights, & basically anything elevated had a nice glaze on them. The only real impact on the conference was that lots of restaurants (including most on Riverwalk) were closed. The humorous thing was that from the baggage carousel on Sunday to every TV broadcast during the “storm”, the inclement weather was blamed on the “convention of meteorologists” in town.

Conference: I saw several interesting presentations over a broad range of subjects (climate change, TV meteorologists & blogging, developing meteorological material for K-12 instruction, & of course a lot of air quality stuff). My two posters seemed to be well received. Spent most of those 90 minutes sessions talking w/ random inquisitors. Also manned the EPA AirNow booth periodically … dispensing free pens, touting the merits of our products, & talking w/ students looking for jobs. My feet were sore from the standing & my brain is tired from all the conversations. That said, these conferences really fire me up again about my job. There were over 2000 attendees.

Old friends: Saw three fellow students & a teacher from the U. of Chicago days. We had lunch one day & talked thru all the old memories. Thankfully, I’ve repressed many of them & believe I’ll be able to repress them again. Many laughs … in the end the consensus agreement was that it was not the best of times for anyone & we were all glad to be gone, but that there was no permanent damage & that the experience had probably left us for the better. One is a fire weather expert at NCAR. Another is a TV meteorologist for the ABC affiliate in Detroit. Another works for the IL State Water Survey & teaches at Ill. St. The main feeling I always associate w/ U of C is failure, but the past few days have made me feel better about it though … feel good about my place in the met world. Also got a chance to talk w/ one of my old professors, Dr. Roscoe Braham. He is/was an expert in cloud physics … one of the first to understand the dynamics of thunderstorms. It was really gratifying to get to talk w/ him & thank him for his teaching me cloud physics. (It was one of the few classes I really got into & aced.) He was elected to the AMS Hall of Fame this year. Ironically, my advisor, Dr. Ramesh Srivastava won the award for Teacher of the Year for his “patient mentoring”. He was always nice to me, though I’ve seen more effective mentors. Unfortunately, he wasn’t there to achieve the award.

Other than that, got to hobnob w/ a few cool meteorologists at a few dinners & during hallway conversations. There was a crazy party we crashed run by Harris Corp. where they gave out cowboy hats at the door, had a mariachi (sp?) band, & offer line dancing opportunities (passed). The main attraction to most may have been the open bar. Ethics rules prohibit us from accepting gifts/services of any sort exceeding some de minimis level (disagreement whether it was $15 or $25.) I think I stayed under the $15 limit as long as the going rate for shrimp is $0.15 per pound. The head of NOAA & frequent DCV nemesis, Vice Admiral, Baron von Lautenbacher VII was there gorging himself at the corporate trough (allegedly). I was going to interview/grill him for the blog, but the stuffed mushroom table impenetrably separated the Admiral from the Dolberry. And to think I questioned his skill as a military tactician. Another cool thing was I got to stand in a hurricane wind tunnel w/ winds up to 78 mph. A colleague got a video of it … will try to post on blog sometime. It didn’t really seem all that windy, but w/o the blowing debris (e.g. sand, tree limbs) I imagine some of the impact is muted. I did pantomime the Stormtracker pretending to broadcast live from the teeth of the storm, like ~97% of everyone else I saw in the exhibit the rest of the week.

Anyway, I’ll start blogging more again. Looking forward to a 3-day weekend.