SATURDAY, APRIL 5th, 2014 FERMILAB/WGN TORNADO AND SEVERE STORMS SEMINAR SPEAKERS RUNDOWN
Here’s a very preliminary rundown of our speakers and synopses of their talks which we’re going to start running on our WGN Chicago Weather Center blog and on my Facebook page to promote our upcoming Fermilab seminars. I’ve put synopses together of several talks in cases I’ve not been provided information and hope this meets with your approval. I’m awaiting talk titles and brief synopses from Brian Smith, Matt Friedlein and Donna Cox will substitute those for the ones I’ve put together here in order to get a start on promoting our Saturday, April 5, 2014 Fermilab/WGN Tornado and Severe Storms seminars in the days ahead. We still have plenty of time and I’ll get those abstracts and titles onto the rundown when they arrive.
We’re (my WGN news management team and I) are meeting with the Midland Radio and Walgreens folks later this week and I am hopeful we’ll have a supply of Midland NOAA Weather Radios again this year to make available to some of those attending this year’s seminars, much as we’ve done in past years. The good folks at Lake County, IL Skywarn have already e-mailed and volunteered to conduct a sign-up for the radios in the lobby of the Ramsey Auditorium the day of our seminars (Saturday, April 5).
We have a spectacular program coming together and I can’t begin to adequately thank each of you for lending us your time, energy and expertise. When you see what happened in last November’s tornado outbreak, it’s a real wake-up call that bad things can happen here and that the greater the focus we put on this, the more likely it is folks may give some advance thought to what they should do if and when severe weather approaches.
Brian Smith is assisting me in developing a speaking order this year–familiar ground for Brian who for so many years helped out in that way. He’s also acting as liaison with the Fermilab Media Services folks who will want out graphics and videos in advance in order to get them in their system for use on Saturday April 5.
Best wishes all,
Tom
P.S. Hotel accommodations are in the works for those coming in from out of town and I’ll have those to you in short order.
FERMILAB 2014
Hi everyone–It’s that time again! We’re fast approaching our 34th annual Fermilab/WGN Tornado and Severe Storms Seminars to be held at Noon and repeated in its entirety at 6pm on Saturday, April 5th. You’re invited to join us–it’s FREE as always with seating on a first-come, first-served basis! Plan to get there early.
Our seminars are being held at the Ramsey Auditorium on the grounds of the Fermilab National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Illinois. We’ll be posting maps to the facility in the days and weeks ahead, but I wanted to give you an early rundown of what is going to be a spectacular program–one of our best yet!
We will be covering this past November’s 7-state Midwest tornado outbreak–including a detailed look at the devastating and deadly Washington, Illinois twister and the other area tornadoes which were part of that siege of severe weather which produced damage in Coal City and so many other areas.
National Weather Service Director Dr. Louis Uccellini will be joining us and looking at efforts underway in modeling and communications to make this a Weather Ready Nation including an increase in computing speed which in the next 2 years will take NWS supercomputers to speeds exceeding those currently enjoyed by the European Center allowing computer model resolution and physics improvements. Storm Prediction Center Director Dr. Russ Schneider from Norman, Oklahoma is to provide us a look at his life-saving staff’s work to warn us of impending severe weather well in advance–and with stunning results. Joining us with a thorough look at the November tornado outbreak in this area will be National Weather Service-Chicago Meteorologist in Charge Ed Fenelon and meteorologist and storm surveyor Matt Friedlein. Their up-close look at the Washington/Coal City twister and Nov 17, 2013 tornado outbreak promises insight into this state’s 4th largest tornado outbreak on the books.
Nobel-prize winning climate scientist Dr. Don Wuebbles will look at how these severe weather outbreaks fit into our planet’s changing climate and what they may tell us of the future and I’ll offer a look back at this cold season’s wacky weather here and globally and what it may say about the spring and summer ahead
And I think you’re going to find a presentation on the ground-breaking supercomputer visualization work on severe weather underway by Dr. Donna Cox and her team at the the University of Illinois’s National Center for Supercomputing Applications in Champaign, (home of the world’s fastest university supercomputer in the world–the Blue Waters computer) absolutely fascinating, much as we did during a September visit to the campus there. The supercomputer on which Dr. Cox and her associates work is capable of performing a quadrillion mathematical calculations per second. That machine is the 10th fastest supercomputer in the world and will soon run the world’s highest resolution climate forecast model. Its animations have been used in IMAX presentations on the weather and our universe.
Building a Weather Ready Nation
Dr. Louis Uccellini, Director, National Weather Service Headquarters, Silver Spring, Maryland
The United States is home to the planet’s most extreme weather–and these extreme weather events are on the increase. Their numbers have expanded exponentially since 1980.
The growth in severe weather occurrence has been far from linear. It’s occurred in fits and starts—some years have proven exceptionally active–others much less so.
Last year’s an example. 2013 had opened incredibly quiet in terms of severe weather—but that wasn’t to last. November hit hard. The loss of life and heart-wrenching scenes of devastation in Washington, IL and elsewhere across the Midwest underscored the speed with which weather can turn on us.
It used to be weather disasters in this country and around the world hit without warning. This country’s most deadly natural disaster–the Great Galveston Hurricane of September 1900–swept off bathtub-warm Gulf of Mexico waters killing at least 6,000. Accounts of Galveston meteorologist Isaac Kline traveling the beaches warning of the potential for an impending storm are legendary. But the fact is, there was no organized advance warning. Forecasters at the time lacked the tools available today to monitor the weather–no satellites to peer over the poorly observed expanses of ocean, and computer models–even the simple ones which emerged in the 1950s and would have performed poorly in handling a hurricane–were a half century away.
It had been known what was identified as a “tropical storm” had crossed Cuba. But forecasters presumed it was northbound, traveling the open waters of the Atlantic. By the time strengthening northeast winds and a building surf announced the storm’s arrival on the vulnerable Texas coastline– with elevations no higher than 8 ft. above sea level—-there was no escape.
The Great Galveston Hurricane of 1900 is hardly the lone example of an unpredicted meteorological catastrophe. A January 1888 Blizzard, which has been called the School Children’s Blizzard because 235 of its victims included children trapped in one room schoolhouses, struck the U.S. Plains on what had started out as a warm day. It was to drop as much as 50″ of snow as temps plunged.
Joining us Saturday, April 5 at our 34th Annual Fermilab Tornado and Severe Storms Seminar is a scientist who has devoted a career to preventing such deadly weather events from striking with so little warning. Dr. Louis Uccellini heads the National Weather Service–an agency charged with the daunting mission of monitoring this country’s weather identifying life-threatening extreme weather events before they hit.
Louis is no stranger to our Fermilab seminar audiences if you’ve joined us in years past.
He’s remarkable scientist with a storied career which has put him on the front lines and, indeed, in a position as architect and director of some of operational meteorology’s most noteworthy advances. I first met Louis at the University of Wisconsin in Madison in the 1970s. On the 14th floor of the Space Science and Engineering Building on campus, birthplace of satellite meteorology under direction of Dr. Verner Suomi, undergrads such as myself would gather amid clacking teletypes and map-lined walls and marvel at the observations of graduate students like Louis, who was working on his doctorate. Louis, always the teacher, took the time and patience to counsel the wide-eyed, inexperienced novices in his midst, on the ways of the atmosphere. I marvel thinking back on the things I learned during those map room gatherings from Louis!
His career was to take off after leaving UW-Madison on the shores of Lake Mendota. Upon completion of his studies, where he earned bachelor, masters and PhD degrees, Louis, who has authored or co-authored 60 scientific papers on subjects as varied as jet stream structure to gravity waves and the genesis of severe thunderstorms and winter storms, joined NASA as Section Head of the agency’s Mesoscale Analysis and Modeling Section at their Goddard Space Flight Center’s Laboratory for the Atmospheres, a position he held through 1989. While there, he authored a seminal paper on the weather’s involvement with the Space Shuttle Challenger.
He moved to the National Weather Service in 1989 as Chief of the Meteorological Operations Division until 1994 when he was named Director of the National Weather Service’s Office of Meteorology. It was from that position he became Director of the Weather Service’s National Centers for Environmental Prediction. He served there for 13 years and directed the operation of nine National Weather Service Centers—among them, the National Hurricane Center, Storm Prediction Center, Hydrological Prediction Center, Climate Prediction Center, Environmental Modeling Center, Aviation Forecast Center, Space Weather Center and Ocean Prediction Center. He served as American Meteorological Society President in 2012 and ascended to the top position at the National Weather Service last year.
Louis makes no secret of the fact he considers the computer modeling of the atmosphere you hear so much about as one of the greatest scientific advances of the 20th century. The facts bear him out. The reduction in loss of life as a result of forecast improvements aided by ever more sophisticated simulations of the atmosphere produced by these models, has been impressive. Weather forecasts continue to improve at longer time ranges. Two week predictions from this past winter are examples. But, the fact is, too many continue to perish in weather disasters for which warnings are being issued in an accurate and timely manner. Changing this—-reducing the loss of life in catastrophic weather events– has become one of Louis’ missions as Director of the National Weather Service.
More and more forecasts are identifying the potential for serious weather trouble as much as four to 8 days ahead. Examples of weather events accurately predicted but still deadly and disruptive, include Hurricanes Katrina and Sandy, the Tuscaloosa, Alabama and Joplin, Missouri tornado outbreak, even our Ground Hog’s Day Blizzard of February, 2011.
A major program to produce what Louis and his colleagues at NOAA refer to as a “Weather Ready Nation” is underway. This effort unites the efforts of talented human forecasters from the Weather Service’s 122 local forecast offices across the U.S. and its territories with the modelers who work to improve supercomputer projections, social scientists, who probe how forecasts are being interpreted by those who receive and use them, and the conventional and new communication technologies with which we’re all familiar—cell phone and mobile platforms among them, which get warnings and advisories out to more people more quickly–with a single, important goal in mind: to cut injury and the loss of life.
Last November’s Super Typhoon Haiyan decimated portions of the Philippines a little over a week before a swarm of tornadoes half a world away carved paths across Illinois and the Midwest. Haiyan swept ashore November 8th with near 200 mph winds. Their almost unimaginable fury–the equivalent of an EF3 tornado which, rather than passing in minutes, roared on for hours on end, at the same time pushing an immense, terrifying dome of water–a catastrophic “storm surge”– onto the shoreline with the force of a watery bulldozer. More than 6,000 perished in the Philippines in that single storm believed to have been the strongest land falling tropical cyclone to reach a coastline anywhere in the world. Like Katrina and Sandy before it in this country–Super Typhoon Haiyan’s onslaught brought total devastation.
Storms of that ferocity aren’t impossible here. Ongoing hurricane model improvements have been underway for year–part of a 10 year program within the National Weather Service, made possible by the exponential increase in computational speed which is coming online. This is yet another component of the National Weather Service’s Weather Ready effort about which Dr. Uccellini will talk.
Tracking the country’s severe weather 24/7: It’s Job #1 at the National Weather Service’s Storm Prediction Center
Dr. Russell Schneider, Director, Storm Prediction Center, Norman, Oklahoma
A war zone would have looked no more devastated. A huge swath of Washington, Illinois had, in less than a minute’s time, been reduced to piles of debris before midday on Sunday, Nov. 17 by one of 71 tornadoes which touched down over a span of less than 11 hours across 7 states from Missouri to Ohio. The abnormally powerful late season tornado which leveled block after block of homes in Washington was among the only EF4 intensity twisters ever to touch down in Illinois in the month of November and was part of the most sweeping November tornado outbreak ever recorded in the state. It remained on the ground for 46.2 miles.
The twister was so powerful and had a circulation so long-lasting that documents ripped from homes and businesses in Washington and surrounding communities were found 100 miles to the northeast all across the Chicago area. That single tornado obliterated 633 homes, 7 business and apartment buildings in Washington, IL alone while tossing 2,500 vehicles around like toys. Another 200 homes and 2 businesses were seriously damaged.
WGN-TV reporter Sean Lewis, among the first on the scene from Chicago, reported it was nothing short of miraculous, given the severity of the damage, that there hadn’t been more deaths–a sentiment which was to be often repeated in the days which followed as the search for victims proceeded.
The country’s elite severe storm forecasting unit within the National Weather Service–the Norman, Oklahoma-based Storm Prediction Center (SPC), had been tracking the November 17 severe weather threat for days, steadily increasing the predicted level of risk as November 17 approached. A large swath of Illinois and Indiana had been placed within the region the Storm Prediction Center had designated as being at “high risk” the morning of the November 17 disaster.
It’s a trend which is being repeated with regularity in the 21st century world of weather forecasting. Advance warning of the general area at risk for a devastating severe weather outbreak has become the norm rather than the exception as highly accomplished meteorologists harness the power of stunning improvements in both the physics and resolution of numerical models of the atmosphere. That was the case in the catastrophic Tuscaloosa, Alabama tornado and the Joplin, Missouri twister which followed.
We are honored to welcome again to our 34th annual Fermilab/WGN Tornado/Severe Storms seminars Chicago-native Dr. Russell Schneider, Director of the National Weather Service’s Storm Prediction Center. Charged with the responsibility of monitoring the vast U.S. airspace for severe weather development 24/7, the Storm Prediction Center is on the frontline of the National Weather Service’s life-saving Weather Ready Nation program. Russ is here to describe the remarkable work of the Storm Prediction Center and to recap the 2013 season–with its abnormally quiet open and middle turning violent in its final days.
Climate Change is Happening and It’s Affecting Severe Weather
Donald J. Wuebbles–The Harry E. Preble Professor of Atmospheric Sciences Department of Atmospheric Sciences, University of Illinois, Urbana
The science is clear and convincing that climate change is happening, happening rapidly, and happening primarily because of human activities. Every weather event that happens nowadays takes place in the context of the changes in the background climate system. Therefore it is not surprising that there are significant trends occurring in some types of severe events. In general, the temperatures are higher, the sea level is higher, and there is more water vapor in the atmosphere, which energizes storms. The drying of the subtropics and wetter conditions at more northern latitudes means that both droughts and floods are likely to be increasing issues in various parts of the U.S. As one of the leaders of the U.S. National Climate Assessment being conducted for Congress under the auspices of the Global Change Research Act of 1990, I will summarize the current understanding of the science of climate change, with a special emphasis on severe weather and on some of the issues facing the Midwest.
A look at the role of the communications revolution and community preparedness in this past November’s seven state tornado outbreak, the country’s 4th largest for the month, and Illinois’ 4th largest of any month
Ed Fenelon, Meteorologist in Charge, National Weather Service Forecast Office and Matt Friedlein, National Weather Service meteorologist and forecaster-Romeoville, IL
The devastating November 17, 2013 tornado outbreak was the 4th largest nationally for the month of November, and the 4th largest in Illinois for any month. The fact only 8 fatalities were associated with the 71 tornadoes on this day across 7 states may have been due to at least three revolutions associated with the messaging of weather warnings: 1) greater collaborations among the weather enterprise, emergency managers, and the general public have enhanced communications and community preparedness; 2) Wireless Emergency Alerts and social media helped broaden the warning messaging and expanded its reach; and 3) impact based warnings allowed some level of expected magnitude of the hazards to be passed along to those in harm’s way. We’ll look at how these initiatives made a difference on November 17, and what they mean for the future of weather hazards messaging.
Visualizing nature’s most extreme storms on one of the world’s fastest supercomputers; looks inside Hurricane Katrina and tornado-bearing thunderstorms and at climate change
Dr. Donna Cox, National Center for Supercomputer Applications-University of Illinois, Champaign, IL
What you are to see in this presentation by Dr. Donna Cox of the University of Illinois-Champaign is nothing short of breathtaking! Join us for a look at the groundbreaking scientific visualization which is underway on the fastest university supercomputer anywhere in the world–the mammoth Blue Waters supercomputer on University of Illinois campus in Champaign. It’s used by the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) for their work which has included stunning computer simulations of Hurricane Katrina churning across the Gulf of Mexico, the planet’s climate warming and the changes this is to bring in temperature and precipitation distribution and of tornado-bearing thunderstorms, not unlike those which swept the Midwest this past November. The animations put together by Dr. Cox and her colleagues have been featured in IMAX films which have taken viewers out into the Universe using computer enhanced Hubble space telescope imagery.
November 17th, 2013 Tornado Outbreak: Science into Service
Matthew T. Friedlein, Lead Forecaster, NOAA/NWS Chicago, IL
The nation’s largest tornado outbreak in 2013 occurred outside of the climatologically favored season, with over 70 tornadoes on November 17th devastating parts of the Great Lakes and Ohio Valley regions. Prior to and during this anomalous event, it was essential for the science of severe weather to remain the foundation to NWS forecasts, warnings, and decision support. The indication of a widespread severe weather episode with a conditionally higher threat of significant tornadoes became increasingly evident days in advance. As the event unfolded, the synoptic to storm scale environments that favored long-lived supercells and tornadogenesis were continuously analyzed and integrated into decisions made. This high impact and dynamic event serves as a paramount example of how science must continue to be integrated into the NWS efforts to protect life and property.
November 17th, 2013 Tornado Outbreak: Science into Service
Matthew T. Friedlein, Lead Forecaster, NOAA/NWS Chicago, IL
The nation’s largest tornado outbreak in 2013 occurred outside of the climatologically favored season, with over 70 tornadoes on November 17th devastating parts of the Great Lakes and Ohio Valley regions. Prior to and during this anomalous event, it was essential for the science of severe weather to remain the foundation to NWS forecasts, warnings, and decision support. The indication of a widespread severe weather episode with a conditionally higher threat of significant tornadoes became increasingly evident days in advance. As the event unfolded, the synoptic to storm scale environments that favored long-lived supercells and tornadogenesis were continuously analyzed and integrated into decisions made. This high impact and dynamic event serves as a paramount example of how science must continue to be integrated into the NWS efforts to protect life and property.
The Tornado- A Complex Weather Phenomenon
Brian E. Smith, Warning Coordination Meteorologist, National Weather Service Omaha/Valley, NE
The tornado is a dangerous weather bi-product of a thunderstorm. But there are many misconceptions and myths about nature’s most devastating phenomenon. We will explore what is really meant by rating a tornado using the Enhanced Fujita (EF) scale. Is an EF 5 tornado mean the entire tornado had EF5 scale winds? We will show that tornadoes are very changeable in structure and can change from a single vortex to a multiple vortex storm in a matter of seconds. We will also explore how a tornado looks visually different from various directions and how this can lead to problems getting people to take cover in a warning.We will use the recent Wayne, Nebraska EF-4 tornado as an example.
What’s been going on with our crazy winter weather here and globally
Tom Skilling, Chief Meteorologist, WGN-TV and Radio and the Chicago Tribune
Chicagoans know all too well just how unusual the weather’s been. The just completed December through February meteorological winter season finished 3rd coldest and 3rd snowiest on record here. The past winter finished coldest on the books in Marquette, Michigan, while Las Vegas, NV and Tucson, AZ recorded their warmest winter with meteorological winter 2013-14 finishing third warmest in Miami, Florida. A drought of record proportions is underway in California threatening water supplies and a potentially horrific wildfire season while avalanches in Alaska due to mild winter weather have ranked among the largest recorded and arctic sea ice in February dropped to its 4th lowest of the satellite record with temps there having averaged 7 to 14-degrees above normal. Illinois recorded its first November EF4 (166-200 mph) tornadoes late last fall while in Europe, winter temps were so mild, bears came out of hibernation early in Scandinavia while storm after vicious storm has swept the UK with hurricane force gusts and 50 ft waves plus rainfall that’s the heaviest recorded in the island nation in 248 years. The Thames River has been flooding with water levels running at 60 year highs. And the strongest tropical cyclone ever to make landfall in the world–Super Typhoon Haiyan– devastated the Philippines in November with near 200 mph sustained winds and a devastating 20 ft. storm surge. We’ll look at how such extremes have been occurring.
