Polar Vortex, Redux

Lee Grenci has a lot to say about the polar vortex and its abuse in the media. https://www.e-education.psu.edu/worldofweather/node/2103

Lee Grenci is mad as hell about the use of “polar vortex” in the media.

He’s not taking it anymore. https://www.e-education.psu.edu/worldofweather/node/2098

Storm chaser, no. Meteorologist, yes.

The death of four storm chasers in the recent Oklahoma tornado raises issues about the safety of stormchasing, but also how stormchasing is marketed to the public and students. For example, some undergraduate meteorology, environmental science, and geography programs use storm chasing as a tool to market their programs. Even MyMajors.com lists stormchaser as a […]

Accepted at Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics after nearly two and half years

On 25 January 2013, 904 days from the date it was submitted (5 August 2010), a manuscript was finally published at Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics. Not only was this manuscript noteworthy for how long it remained in limbo before a final thumbs up or thumbs down from the Editor, but it was noteworthy for other […]

“Cold” equivalent potential temperature?

As scientists, we need to be precise in our writing. Evgeni Fedorovich at the University of Oklahoma has tried to keep me honest about writing about “cold temperatures”. Know that the air can be “cold” or “warm”, but temperatures are “high” or “low.” I want to take this argument one step further. It makes no […]

Case studies: Do I need multiple cases to make my point?

My colleague Russ Schumacher and I have been discussing a paper that we want to write about banded precipitation along the Front Range of the Rockies. Russ has seen multiple events each winter, and the processes that produce these bands are not well understood, even though we have already written a couple of papers on […]

Best Practices for Numerical Weather Prediction Studies

The late Tom Warner of the National Center for Atmospheric Research just published an article entitled “Quality Assurance in Atmospheric Modeling”. You may not get it from the title, but this is a powerful paper that lays out 14 steps for improving modeling practices. All students and users of models need to read this paper […]

Plain English Campaign gets it wrong

In almost all cases, I support the Plain English Campaign, who aim to improve the readability of government documents, corporate letters, web sites, and other forms of communication. In their 2011 Golden Bull Awards, however, the Plain English Campaign got it dead wrong. The UK Met Office won an award for ‘empowering people to make […]

Petterssen, Palmén and Newton, Carlson, and Lackmann

I am honored to have seen page proofs of Gary Lackmann’s new book Midlatitude Synoptic Meteorology: Dynamics, Analysis, and Forecasting to be published later this year by the American Meteorological Society. For this book, Gary goes back to the original meaning of the word synoptic (“forming a summary or synopsis”). Twelve chapters summarize and synthesize […]

Problems with the term “overrunning”

Several authors have criticized the use of the term overrunning to represent warm-frontal lifting here and here. I don’t need to add anything to those Web pages, but I do want to point out that the definition provided in the American Meteorological Society’s Glossary of Meteorology is wrong and ambiguous. overrunning—A condition existing when an […]

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