THANKS to each of you who joined us at Fermilab Saturday!! It was SO GOOD having you with us! And thanks too for the nice comments from so may of you who were there. I gather there was some trouble with the live stream and will check into that. I apologize for that. The entire program will be posted in several days at wgntv.com and I'll let you know when it's up and available. Hope everyone has had a great weekend!

4/5 from Tom: "The folks at Midland Weather Radios are making 20 NOAA Weather Radios available for us to give away at this Saturday’s Fermilab Tornado and Severe Storms Seminars. Our friends and colleagues at Lake County Skywarn will choose the winners and we’ll announce them after each session’s mid-break. Don’t forget to sign up at the Lake County Skywarn desk in the lobby of the Ramsey Auditorium Saturday morning to have a chance to win a Midland NOAA Weather Radio. Also, check with your Walgreen’s store to purchase a Midland NOAA Radio at reduced cost!"
    Also updated the title of Brian Smith's presentation.

 4/4: Added full details on this weekend's guests and their topics.

 3/31: Added preliminary the list of speakers; more details on their topics coming soon.

 2/20: First announcement of seminar date.

• Dr. Louis Uccellini, Director of the National Weather Service, National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP)

  • "Revolutionary advances in computer modeling offer much earlier warning of nature's most extreme severe weather outbreaks."

    • Extreme weather, including tornado and severe thunderstorm outbreaks, are being predicted with greater accuracy and days in advance of their onset with greater accuracy than ever before. This past winter's record-breaking snowstorms in the South and East are perfect examples--as was the the Super Outbreak of tornadoes and severe thunderstorms of February 2008. Residents of the affected regions received the heads up not only that these storms were on the way but also that they would hit with an intensity, in some cases, greater than any on record. The ability of this country's weather forecast system to do this has been decades in the making and is the product of a revolution in the ability to observe the atmosphere better than ever before--but also in stunning increases in the sophistication of computer models which assist human forecasters in anticipating storm outbreaks. Today's weather forecast models run on supercomputers which are able to perform 70 trillion mathematical calculations per second--a speed, according to computer scientists, likely to double or triple in the next few years---have played a huge role. There may be no one who's observed or played an active role in directing this revolution in weather forecasting than Dr. Louis Uccellini who, as director of the National Weather Service's National Centers of Environment Prediction--or NCEP, as it is known in the meteorological profession, oversees the operation of NOAA's Storm Prediction Center, the National Hurricane Center, the Environmental Modeling Center (which plays a key role in developing National Weather Service computer models), the Climate Prediction Center and NOAA operations--the agency charged with the actual production of the U.S. government's computer model forecasts. Dr. Uccellini will discuss and take questions covering the remarkable advances in our ability to predict and anticipate extreme weather in all its forms.

• Dr. Mary Ann Cooper, University of Illinois – Chicago

  • "Lightning: Take it seriously!"

    • There is no one who has see the devastating effects of lightning on the human body more clearly than Dr. Mary Ann Cooper, MD. As a practicing physician and one who has treated and worked with lightning strike victims for years while authoring numerous papers outlining the hazard posed in this country and elsewhere by lightning, Dr. Cooper says there is simply no question that being stuck by lightning is a life-altering event and one to be avoided at all costs. She has joined us on the Fermilab stage for more than a decade to talk about lightning and has appeared on programs focusing on lightning which have aired on WGN, the Discovery Channel, The Weather Channel and many others while authoring scores of papers and articles on the subject. Her website offers a wealth of information on the subject of lightning strike injuries: http://www.uic.edu/labs/lightninginjury/

• Brian Smith, National Weather Service, Omaha

  • "The Tornado: A Powerful and Unusual Phenomenon."

    • Our annual Tornado and Severe Weather programs began 30 years ago and Brian Smith is perhaps the biggest reason why. Brian approached me while a student at Northern Illinois University proposing we begin a public education program on tornadoes and severe weather. The program began in the auditorium of Geneva High School in the Fox Valley and moved a year later to Fermilab in Batavia where it has occurred in the 29 years since. Upon graduation with a degree in meteorology from NIU, Brian joined famed tornado researcher Dr. Theodore Fujita's team at the University of Chicago where he pursued graduate studies in meteorology as a member of Dr. Fujita's team in their groundbreaking research work on tornadoes, downbursts and microbursts. It's work which helped revolutionized the understanding of these storms. Brian, now Warning Coordination Meteorologist at the National Weather Service Forecast Office in Omaha Nebraska, joins us again this year with reflections on our seminar as it reaches its unprecedented 30th year and insights in the severe weather which sweeps this country each year.

• Dr. Jim Angel, Midwestern Regional Climate Center

  • 4/5: "Science and Serendipity – Illinois is home to the first recorded radar hook echo of an actual tornado."

    • While weather radar is now a common feature in the warning and tracking of tornadoes, that wasn’t always the case. In the early 1950s, radar was being used in experiments to measure rainfall. It’s potential for a detecting tornado was not realized until April 9, 1953 when the first confirmed tornado was observed on radar – right here in Illinois. Scientists at the Illinois State Water Survey observed the classic hook echo feature and recorded it on film. The photographs were later matched with the damage reports for confirmation. A 1954 report on the hook echo concludes that “it may be possible to establish radar storm warning systems in tornado areas to reduce loss of lives.”

• Gino Izzi, National Weather Service, Chicago

  • "A Look at the Forecastibility of the F-5 August 1990 Plainfield, IL Tornado Using the today's most sophisticated short term computer forecast model (the "WRF") which wasn't available in 1990."

    • During the afternoon of 28 August 1990 a particularly violent tornado tracked across the southwestern suburbs of Chicago, IL killing 29 people, injuring over 300, and producing an incredible path of destruction. While forecasts leading up to the event correctly identified a potential for severe thunderstorms, forecasts did not include a substantial tornado threat. This talk will look at the results of re-modeling the data from this event using the WRF to determine the forecastibility of the event.

• Ed Fenelon, National Weather Service, Chicago

  • "Dual-Polarization Doppler Radar - Coming Soon to the NWS-Chicago!"

    • Dual Polarization Doppler radar, utilized in a continuous 3-D volumetric scanning, offers significant improvements in rainfall estimation, precipitation classification, data quality and weather hazard detection. Many believe the impacts of polarimetric radar could be as significant as the nationwide upgrade to Doppler radar done in the late 1980s and early 1990s. "Dual-Pol" radar will provide measurable benefits to meteorologists, hydrologists, aviation users, and society as a whole as a result of the improved weather predictions that will be possible.

• Jim Allsopp, National Weather Service, Chicago

  • "Severe Weather Myths and Facts"

    • Does a green sky mean a tornado is imminent? Do the tall buildings, the urban heat island, or the cool waters of Lake Michigan prevent tornadoes from striking Chicago? Is there a tornado alley in the southwest suburbs? Sort out the facts and fiction of severe weather and tornadoes, and be better educated and better prepared to survive a severe weather disaster.

• Tom Skilling - WGN TV and the Chicago Tribune

  • We are in the process of putting together a series of reports and a special for WGN on the revolution which has been underway in weather forecasting across this country. It's led to the best, most accurate weather forecasts ever produced. Though our atmosphere is stunningly complex--one of the most complicated natural systems known--severe weather is being more accurately predicted farther into the future is a result of the work of amazing research teams and the meteorologists who transfer this research knowledge to the world of weather forecasting. My WGN team and I been traveling the country to bring this story to you (it will air in May)--from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, home of the 'Father of Satellite Meteorology" where Dr. Verner Suomi developed in 1959 the first instrument payload installed on a satellite which was designed to scan and measure the planet's atmosphere, to the "spin-scan" technology which enabled round-the-clock surveillance and visualization of earth's weather from 22,000 miles over the equator. Suomi's work included the development of amazing instruments which could infer temperatures, winds and moisture in the atmosphere over the entire planet from space--including the first measurements of the more than 70% of its surface covered by oceans and once poorly observed. We've also traveled to this country's central meteorological data clearinghouse operated by NOAA and the National Weather Service outside Washington DC and to the remarkable supercomputing center there which runs today's mindbogglingly-complex weather forecast models as well as to Oklahoma where Doppler radar technology was first applied to tracking severe storms and the next generation "Phased Array" radar is being developed and perfected. I'll give you a brief first look at what we've found from some of our travels as it applies to severe weather forecasting in my Fermilab presentation.

This Severe Weather Seminar is open to the public and includes multimedia presentations from many forecasters, researchers, and noted personalities from the meteorological world.

We suggest arriving early!  Enter the Fermlab grounds via the west entrance off Kirk Road!  Hope to see you there!

Everyone with an interest in understanding severe weather should come to this year's seminar and take part in this wonderful learning experience!

See Tom's complete bio here.