Articles

Join the AMS Weather Band for a webinar series on weather related careers! We are learning from a variety of professionals how they use meteorology in their jobs, and what type of weather knowledge matters most for them. 

This webinar features Ryan Bennett, who is the Data Manager at NASA's National Suborbital Research Center, Bay Area Environmental Research Institute. 

Learn more about PASCO's award-winning, hands-on science tools and datalogging solutions in this quick webinar. They connect students directly to science and STEM concepts with classroom technology such as sensors, interfaces, and data collection and analysis software. They also design and manufacture high quality lab equipment for physics and engineering and offer curriculum solutions for physics, chemistry, biology, environmental science, and K-8 Science

Explore Maximum Weather Instrument’s array of beautiful, handcrafted weather instruments and preconfigured weather stations for your home or business. Learn more about the history of the company, how their instruments work in different packages, and what new products are being released soon. The discussion walks through how the Maximum instruments are used, how to site your instruments, and what observation and data collection partnerships Maximum is prioritizing for reporting and analysis.

Take an in depth look at the Tempest system, including its unique weather station hardware design and associated applications for amateur observers, in this presentation from WeatherFlow.

You'll also learn about the wide range of applications for the WeatherFlow systems:  from leveraging data science to inspect, curate, enhance, calibrate and qualify dependable data from the network; assimilating qualified data into hi-res modeling to improve performance with ground truth data; applying machine learning to post process model output and improve accurate for site specific forecasting; to delivery of real-time, historical, and forecasted weather data via API.

Learn more about Davis Instruments and the materials they have for beginning weather observers as well as advanced practitioners. This session covers the Vantage Vue (as an entry level station), Vantage Pro2 (for the more serious), WeatherLink Live (getting your data to the Cloud) and the WeatherLink (app/web for viewing data) and also introduces AirLink (their new air quality sensor).

Featuring Jeremy Bower of JRBStorm Photography and Paul Smith of Paul M. Smith Photography, it covers tips and tricks for thunderstorm photography as well as the larger role that photography plays in education and safety messaging. 

Lt. Col. Nicole Mitchell takes the AMS Weather Band inside the missions and experiences of the renowned Hurricane Hunters! This special event also features discussion with Bryan Norcross as moderator.

Distinguished Professor of Meteorology Paul Markowski of Penn State University provides a special inside look and first hand stories about how scientific “storm chasing” and state-of-the-art computer simulations have helped us better understand and predict tornadoes. 

AMS Councilmember, Policy Fellow, and Certified Broadcast Meteorologist Erica Grow leads the conversation following Professor Markowski's presentation. 

This is part of a webinar collaboration with the Blue Hill Observatory!

In this webinar the speakers look back at the impacts and effects of the storms of 1978 in the Ohio Valley, and especially on the east coast of the United States. 

During Bob Henson’s recent Weather Band webinar looking at the August 10, 2020 derecho event that tore through the midwest of the United States, one of the questions that came up was “how is climate change impacting wind events?” As Mr. Henson explained, not only are derecho events hard to predict, but based on current research it is impossible to answer how they are being altered by climate change.

Join Warning Coordination Meteorologist Erik Heden as he covers the processes behind lake effect snow, how to forecast lake effect snow, and some historical lake effect storms that have occurred.

How do we predict the size of hail? What environmental parameters should forecasters be looking at in order to predict hail? These are just some of the questions driving the meteorological research of Professor John Allen and his team at Central Michigan University (CMU).

Explore the meteorology behind the most destructive thunderstorm complex in U.S. history in this exciting webinar with renowned meteorologist and science writer Bob Henson. 

Erik Salna, M.S., Associate Director of Education and Outreach, Extreme Events Institute (EEI) and International Hurricane Research Center (IHRC), Florida International University (FIU), Miami, Florida presents on hurricane safety research and innovation at FIU's Wall of Wind

Join us for a variety of events throughout May. We've got an amazing conversation with Lt. Col. Nicole Mitchell, formerly of the Hurricane Hunters, to celebrate Hurricane Preparedness Week, and the Weather Band will be hosting instrument companies for Q&A sessions beginning May 19th and continuing into June. 

The AMS Weather Band is taking a deep dive on weather instruments with the experts themselves! Join us and take your weather observing to the next level. 

Through May, June, and July 2021, Davis, WeatherFlow, Maximum, Pasco and Ambient will offer a series of live webinars and Q&A sessions in the online Weather Band community. They will provide overviews of their products and discuss which instruments are best for different purposes, from beginning weather observers to advanced users. 

Webinars require advance registration, but are open to everyone. The Q&A sessions in the community are available to Weather Band members only. Replays of the live webinars will be posted for all Weather Band members to watch on demand. Replays of the live webinars will be posted for all Weather Band members to watch on demand.

Learn all about the history of CoCoRaHS, how it grew to be the dominant network of weather observers, the impact of all this data collection, and how you can get involved yourself! Noah Newman takes the audience through this important citizen science initiative in this presentation from the 2022 AMS Community and Citizen Science Symposium.

Hailstones are a rare sight in Hawaii due to the high temperatures (averaging 22°C near the coast in February) and a steady trade wind layer shallower than 3 km. However, in winter, midlatitude fronts hit the islands and cumulonimbus associated with them often produce snow at the tops of Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa (4202 km and 4172 km in height, respectively). The combination of well-developed cumulonimbus and low temperatures at the surface sometimes leads to the observation of hailstones at ground level even in Hawaii. 

Deep hail accumulations, sometimes up to 50 cm in depth, have occurred frequently enough to catch the attention of the National Weather Service (NWS), the general public, and social/digital media outlets.

Despite the extreme nature of these storms, adequate reports or measurements of accumulated hail depth are currently not collected or archived, and products to track or forecast these events do not exist, preventing guidance from being issued to emergency responders, transportation departments, and the general public.

In this talk presented at the 2022 AMS Community and Citizen Science Symposium, Dr. Lam introduces a Hong Kong based Community Weather Information Network (Co-WIN) which provides local meteorological information from the rooftops of primary and secondary schools (and has over 170 members). He provides a comprehensive overview of network operations including sensor development, data quality assurance, public engagement and scientific investigation. The talk also includes examples of using the network data for various applications such as numerical downscaling for high-resolution forecast and extreme heat warning signal system for heat stress-related health threats will be covered, illustrating the importance and the contribution of citizen science to  traditional scientific studies.