HP Chapter Meeting on 19 April 2019
Notes from the Secretary
The NWA/AMS High Plains Chapter held an in person meeting at the Norton Library on Monday, April 15th and began around 1130am.
There were only a total of 15 chapter members that were able to attend.
The first topic discussed was about the election of chapter officers. An e-mail was sent out a few weeks prior to the meeting
if anyone was interested in becoming an officer. If so, please contact Jeremy Martin to nominate someone or self. If possible, the
treasure would like to be relieved of his duty since he has been in this position for the last 5 years. The next topic was about the
redesign of the High Plains website. Elizabeth Vickery has taken over the duties of Webmaster for the website and has modernized the
design. The current High Plains Chapter logo isn’t working properly on the new webpage, so ideas for a new logo will be coming soon.
In addition, an e-mail will be sent out when the new website is about to go live.
A general overview of the High Plains Conference was discussed next. As of now, keynote speakers for the conference look to be Dr.
Steve Smith (director of VLAB), Dr James Marquez (Center of Severe Weather Research), and Scott Mentzer (retired Meteorologist in Charge
of the Goodland, KS NWS office). Scott Mentzer will be the main speaker at the Banquet. There is also a chance that Chris Strager (Director
of Central Region NWS) and Dr. Louis Uccellini (Director of the NWS) will be able to attend the conference.
An idea was then brought up to have an award given out each year for leadership. It was suggested that it be called the Mentzer Award
of Leadership and given out each year at the conference. If implemented, the first award will be given to Scott Mentzer since he was
a founding member of the High Plains Chapter. More details and a vote will be sent out shortly to see if members would be interested
in implementing this award yearly. This concluded the business portion of the meeting and continued on to the presentations.
The presenter at this meeting was John Gordon (Meteorologist in Charge of the Louisville, KY NWS office). He did two presentations
with the first one dealing with how he was able to change the intensity and damage points on a tornado that went through portions of
Kentucky on May 18th 1995. Previously the damage caused by this storm was reported as straight line wind damage. His second presentation
was on weather history where he asked us 10 questions about previous weather phenomenon. After the presentations, the meeting then came
to a close around 1230pm. The next High Plains Chapter meeting is expected to be in a couple of months.
~Wesley Hovorka (HPC Secretary)
Presentations: