The main focus of Whatever-Weather is to help meteorologists and employers find each other by providing a free job board.  A secondary, but just as important, focus is sharing helpful information with our readers.  Today, I just want to spend a little time discussing what employers look for in a job candidate.  For you job seekers, take this as advice on how to present yourself.  You want to give the employer a chance to see who you are and how you will fit into his/her organization.  Employers reading this, we welcome your thoughts in the “comments” section below.

There are basically three categories of things that an employer wants in a job candidate.  The first category is the “obvious.”  This category includes talent, experience, and work ethic among other things.  Often, you’ll find these attributes listed in the job posting.  The second category is “not-so-obvious.”  In this one you will find temperament, loyalty, and experience.  The third is the “more subtle” category, which includes interpersonal communication skills, confidence/arrogance, and flexibility.

OBVIOUS

Talent: Everyone has some level of talent.  The question here is whether your talent fits the niche that the company is trying to fill.  For example, you may be great at database management, but horrible at public speaking.  If you are applying to a broadcast meteorology position, your talent will not likely be what the company needs.  You won’t fit the niche.

Experience: In most cases, an employer is looking for a person whose experience at least matches the minimum requirements listed on the job posting.  A recent graduate is not likely to land a management position in a multi-national energy corporation.  In today’s tight job market, there is another angle to the question of experience.  Does the person have too much?  An employer will be understandably leery of an applicant with a PhD or decades of experience applying for an entry-level position.  The concern is what will happen with the person when the economy turns around and a job that suits him better appears.  As I said, the concern is understandable.  As a job applicant, you have to understand and address this concern.

Work Ethic: Most meteorology jobs are in the type of business that run 24 hours per day every day of the year.  It can be a tough life when you add shift work and extended workweeks into the mix.  A meteorologist in that situation must have a strong work ethic.  How does an employer gauge this?  For candidates with experience, he might contact your previous employers.  For recent graduates, a conversation with a professor gives a good idea.  Something that might be considered is whether this person missed class without an excuse the first week of warm weather last spring.  If a grad noticeably missed every afternoon class when the temperature was above 80 degrees, then that might be a clue to a weak work ethic.  Of course, transcripts and grades can provide just as much insight.

NOT-SO-OBVIOUS

Temperament: Temperament is the combination of physical, emotional, and mental traits according to dictionary.com.  When an employer is sizing you up for a job, he is deciding whether your natural predisposition will fit in with the company environment.  For example, do you work well in a team setting, or are you fine sitting alone in a cubicle all day with very little outside contact.  Will you fit in with the various personalities in the office?  This question is pretty important in a small business setting.  Are you a born leader, or are you happier just following someone else’s lead?  There’s no right answer here.  You are what you are.  The idea is to be yourself and let the employer see a realistic view of you.  That way he knows early on whether you will fit in with the company or not.

Loyalty: Loyalty is a real virtue to employers.  Hiring and training new employees costs the company money and time.  A hiring manager wants some assurance that you will not waste it.  I’m not saying that you have to sign your life away and stay with a company for 30 years, but showing that you will stay long enough to make the effort worthwhile is important.

Integrity: Integrity is another word that gets tossed around often, but many people don’t really stop to consider its meaning.  Dictionary.com defines integrity as “adherence to moral and ethical principles; soundness of moral character; honesty.”  Why is this important to employers?  The easy answer is that you don’t want someone embezzling funds or stealing office supplies, but there is more to it than that.  Many companies have proprietary technology and systems and trade secrets.  A person with integrity would not knowingly give those secrets away whether he is at work or at a bar after hours.  Someone with integrity can be trusted at all times.

MORE SUBTLE

Interpersonal communication skills: The ability to speak with others and communicate your ideas clearly and succinctly is essential in most business.  The better a person is at interpersonal communication skills, the better he will do in the long run.  The ability to choose the right words and show the right non-verbal signs when having a conversation goes a long way.  Have you ever had a conversation with someone who uses angry words and stands with crossed arms?  It’s not a pleasant experience.  Is that a person that you’d like to cross paths with on a regular basis?  Probably not.  Now think of someone who is always smiling, uses optimistic language, and might even pat you on the shoulder for a job well done.  That is the type of person most people want to do business with, buy from, and work with.  It’s a subtle thing, but it makes a difference.

Confidence/Arrogance: These traits go along with temperament, but are sometimes harder to pick up on.  Someone who comes across as confident on paper, or in an interview, might well be perceived as arrogant in a group setting.  The question is whether or not that person is confident in his skills and willing to learn more as he progresses, or does he think he knows it all already.  Sometimes there is a fine line there.  Most employers want confidence, but very few are looking for arrogance.

Flexibility: The ability for an employee to be flexible is important on many levels.  Flexibility covers basic aspects of the job such as scheduling.  If the company operates 24/7/365, employees need to be able to work any shift if necessary.  If the company is small, an employee may find himself taking on responsibilities that were not in the original job description, as the employer’s needs change.  The ability to learn and adapt is crucial, especially in a field such as meteorology where the technology is constantly changing.

These are just a few of the things employers want in job candidates.  Job seekers, please keep these in mind not only as advice on how to present yourselves, but also as a way to gauge the employer as well.  The interview process is a two way street.  It is just as important for you to decide if your talent, experience, and work ethic will fit with the company.  Don’t take a position that you know you will hate in a month.  Neither you nor the employer will benefit in the long run.

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The Californian had little experience with forecasting Midwestern weather.  He had been at Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma less than three weeks.  When World War II broke out, he left his classes at Occidental College where he was enrolled, and enlisted in the Army Air Corps.  He ended up in the weather forecaster school in Grand Rapids, Michigan.  The demand was so great that new forecasters were put to work after a hurried nine month course in meteorology.  His tours of duty were mainly in the South Pacific, forecasting weather for the forces that were battling the Axis.  He was eventually promoted to the rank of Captain.

At the end of the war, he was assigned to Fort Benning in Georgia, where he honed his ability to map out the details of weather at different altitudes and visualize those details.  This ability to understand a three dimensional picture of the atmosphere is critical to weather forecasting.  On the afternoon of March 20, 1948, he plotted the weather at the surface and aloft across the vast and flat terrain of the American Plains.  There was nothing on the charts out of the ordinary.  It looked like a dry and boring forecast with just some gusty winds through the evening hours.

He settled in to get acquainted with the backup forecaster, who was also from California.  About 9 p.m., much to the forecasters’ surprise, they began to see surface reports of lightning from stations just to the southwest and west of Oklahoma City.  Echoes appeared on their weather radar, less than twenty minutes away.  The backup forecaster, a Staff Sergeant, sat down to type up a warning that thunderstorms were approaching.  To their horror, at 9:52 p.m., a report streamed across the teletype from Will Rogers Airport, just seven miles to their southwest that a tornado was on the ground, visible from the airport.  Sure enough, illuminated by lightning, a huge funnel was visible almost immediately.  It roared across the base, doing $10 million worth of damage and injuring several personnel.

There were recriminations immediately.  A panel of investigators from Washington flew in the next morning.  The nervous weather officer and his superior answered questions.  The board of inquiry listened to the facts and quickly rendered a decision.  The event was not forecastable given the state of the art in meteorology.  But later that day, Colonel Robert Miller and Major Ernest Fawbush were summoned to the Commanding General’s office.  He directed Fawbush and Miller to investigate the possibility of forecasting tornadoes.

They reviewed the weather charts from the day before, as well as those from other tornadic events.  They identified that tornadoes seemed to occur in warm, moist airmasses, with strong winds aloft.  But the difficulty lay in delineating the areas which were most likely to experience the destructive storms.  Issuing a tornado forecast for a single point seemed improbable.

But less than a week later on the 25th, Fawbush and Miller looked at their weather charts and then at each other.  The weather pattern looked nearly identical to that of the 20th.   What were the odds that another tornado would strike the base?  Infinitesimal.  They went to the General and told him what they saw.  The General ordered the base secured.  They reconvened with the General at early afternoon.  It was then that they issued the first tornado forecast.  Sure enough, a tornado moved across the well-prepared base that evening.

It was the beginning of modern tornado forecasting.

Some of this content taken from Mike Smith’s new book “Warnings!”  It will be released on May 1st.   Mike will be telling the story of how effective the severe weather warning system has become in saving American lives.  One of the turning points he will talk about will be Fawbush and Miller’s improbable forecast.

About Bill

Bill Murray is a forecaster for AlabamaWX.com, the official weather blog at Alabama’s ABC33/40. Get a daily dose of his weather history at www.twitter.com/wxhistorian. He is also one of the hosts at WeatherBrains, the weekly netcast that’s all about weather. Listen at www.WeatherBrains.com  or subscribe through the iTunes Music Store. It’s free!

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Almost every year northwest Minnesota and eastern North Dakota have to deal with flooding.  Some floods are larger than others.  The Grand Forks flood of 1997 made national news as did the flood last year and so will the flood this year in Fargo.  Why does this happen so often in this part of the country?

To answer that you first have to go back 30,000 years during the ice age period called the Wisconsin Glaciation.  This period brought the glaciers south across much of present Canada and the northern parts of the present day United States.  The glaciers acted like large earthmovers, scraping the land clean and also compressing the land under many miles of ice.

Around 12,000 years ago the glacial period was ending and they slowly retreated north.  The land area left over contained much of the glacial melt and precipitation of the time. This was called Glacial Lake Agassiz, named after Louis Agassiz (1807-1873), the father of glacial geology. At different times in its life, the water body encompassed much of Manitoba and western Ontario, northwest Minnesota and eastern North Dakota, as much as 365,000 square miles as shown below in Figure 1 (Glacial Lake Agassiz History, State of North Dakota).

Figure 1

The southern tip is where Wahpeton North Dakota and Breckenridge Minnesota currently sit.  Water always flows downhill, in this region downhill is actually to the north.  As the glaciers melted between 12,000 and 9,000 the lake slowly drained as drainage outlets to the north which were blocked off by the glacier were opened up as it melted.

After 9,000 years the work of the glaciers on the landscape can finally be seen.  On the US side of the border you have rolling shorelines across east central North Dakota and west central Minnesota.  In the middle you have the flat lakebed and the most glacial compression with the lowest point being the Red River of the North.

The Red River Valley is a young river valley in geologic terms.  It starts at the meeting of the Ottertail and Bois de Sioux rivers at Wahpeton, North Dakota.  The channel is digging the land out and slowly going deeper and deeper.  The land around it, the old lakebed, is very flat, sometimes with only one foot change in elevation per mile.  There is only a drop of 233ft of elevation from Wahpeton, North Dakota to Winnipeg, Ontario.  Figure 2 (American Red Cross) shows the major tributaries and elevations into the Red River.

Figure 2

Before the area was settled by pioneers in the 1800s, the land was a combination of thick sod and swamp areas to filter and contain the runoff.  After pioneer days the land was plowed fields and drainage tiles and ditches were constructed.  The changed landscape now encourages fast drainage from the field to tributaries to the Red River.

With fast drainage comes flooding.  It is not uncommon to see moving lakes across the surface of the Valley during periods of major flooding.   It often follows a centerline of some minor tributary, but not always.  This is called Overland Flooding as water can come in from almost any direction to flood different areas.  Both cities and rural farmsteads are affected by Overland Flooding, sometimes by surprise.

The river flows north, making a long duration flooding event because the river is frozen as you go north and it needs to thaw so you can have better drainage.  This leads to a longer lasting flood than if the river would flow south with unfrozen waterways.

In the major metropolitan areas of the region, Grand Forks/East Grand Forks and Fargo/Moorhead areas, the areas near the river have huge dikes, mounds of clay along them to channel water through the cities.  While this does protect the cities to higher levels it also raises the crest level and increases the river velocity as a large area of water across the land is channeled into a narrow area.

The recent floods over the past 15 years have brought about a change of thinking to protect the major cities.  Not only are the new dikes being built higher, but they are also being moved back farther away from the river to lower the final height and river velocity.  Some of this reclaimed area comes from previously flooded neighborhoods in past floods where rebuilding was not an option.  These areas are now public recreation areas at times of low water.  After the 1997 Grand Forks flood, they created the Greenway, which gave 2200 acres back to the river and are used for golf, disc golf, walking and biking trails, and camping.

This year’s flood will affect most of the Red River Valley the Fargo/Moorhead area has the highest flooding threat.  Upstream the Grand Forks/East Grand Forks area is protected to higher levels than the devastating 1997 flood.

The current forecast for flooding in the Fargo/Moorhead area is for a 38ft crest this weekend, two feet below last year’s record 40ft crest.  Figure 3 shows the current Fargo river level at 7pm CDT on March 18, 2010 and the projected crest from the North Central River Forecast Center (NCRFC).

Figure 3

The crest at Grand Forks/East Grand Forks is forecast to be 48ft, two feet above major flood stage but far below the record 54ft crest of 1997.  Figure 4 shows the current level at 7pm CDT on March 18, 2010 and the NCRFC forecast for the weekend.

Figure 4

American Red Cross:

https://arcims.redcross.org/website/DROMaps/ARC_DROMap_Links_Archives.html

Current Fargo River Level:

http://www.crh.noaa.gov/ahps2/hydrograph.php?wfo=fgf&gage=fgon8

Current Grand Forks River Level:

http://www.crh.noaa.gov/ahps2/hydrograph.php?wfo=fgf&gage=egfm5&view=1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1

Glacial Lake Agassiz History:

https://www.dmr.nd.gov/ndgs/ndnotes/Agassiz/Lake%20Agassiz.asp

Grand Forks Greenway:

http://www.grandforksgov.com/greenway/index.htm

©2010 Charles Schoeneberger

About Chuck

Chuck has a background in Atmospheric Sciences and a degree from the University of North Dakota, Grand Forks. He has a background in operational forecasting producing products for transportation needs with the 511 system and Departments of Transportation in Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Montana with Meridian Environmental Technology Inc. of Grand Forks, ND.  He is looking for new job opportunities in the operational forecasting realm, and he blogs for the Minneapolis StarTribune newspaper about statewide weather.  In addition, Chuck has a background in Geographic Information Systems and is also looking for ways to apply these skills towards weather outreach and communications.    He is a native of Minnesota, just outside the Minneapolis/St. Paul metro area and enjoys all four seasons and the constantly changing conditions.

Minneapolis StarTribune Weather Watchers Blog:

http://www.startribune.com/weatherwatchers/chuckschoeneberger.html

University of North Dakota, Grand Forks, Atmospheric Sciences Department:

http://www.atmos.und.edu/Default.aspx

National Weather Service Warning Decision Training Branch:

http://wdtb.noaa.gov/

COMET at UCAR:

http://www.comet.ucar.edu/

Twin Cities Chapter of the American Meteorological Society:

http://twincitiesams.org/

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Yesterday Whatever-Weather passed a benchmark in the number of “absolute unique visitors” to our site.  I wanted to take a moment to thank all of our friends and readers for visiting and for returning.  We launched Whatever-Weather with a marketing budget of only $50 and the plan to use social media and word of mouth to get the word out about our little endeavor.  I’d say that the plan worked!  The thing about social media is that it takes a little effort on the part of everyone to create a network.  So, again, thanks to all of you for helping to spread the word.  Please keep it up!

When we first launched, I posted a blog entry about how best to use our site.  We’ve posted so many entries since then that, at this point, that one is buried deep within the depths of our blog page.  So, for the newer visitors, here is how we envision our site to be used:

• Our blog is the place for our specialists to share their knowledge.  We have a weather historian (Bill Murray), an Air Force meteorologist (Patricia Vollmer), an operational meteorologist (Chuck Schoeneberger), a job hunter (Jacob Hamblin), and a former TV Chief Meteorologist (Janice Jones) plus more coming soon.  If you have a specialty, and would like to volunteer as a contributor, please contact us.  All that is required is a passion for your subject and writing skills.
• Our forum is called “Network” for a good reason.  That is the place where you can share information and build your professional network.  It is broken up into four categories: Forecasting, Technology, Chasing, and Off Topic.  You can even use the Off Topic forum to post information on upcoming workshops, conferences and events.  Please feel free to use it as often as you’d like!  That’s what it’s there for, and it’s free!
• Our jobs board is the heart of Whatever-Weather.  The original spark of inspiration for our site was to provide a board that is free for employers and meteorologists and climatologists to use.  There is no fee or subscription required.  We are thankful for the employers who are posting jobs with us, and we are looking forward to more coming aboard.  As the job board grows, we grow.
• Of course, offering free services without some source of income is not the best business plan.  For that reason, we have a “Shop.” Please take some time to peruse the variety of items we have there including books, umbrellas, jewelry, NOAA weather radios, flashlights, weather stations, etc.  If it is weather related and we can get it from our drop shippers, we will carry it.  We are adding new products regularly.  This month, we added new NOAA weather radios, and all of the items in that category are 10% off through 3/31/10 using the coupon code “SEVERE 2010.”  Another part of our business plan is to offer advertising space as our readership grows.  If you would like to advertise with us, please contact us.
• Whatever-Weather will become the one-stop shop for meteorologists.  We are here for you, so if there is something that you would like to see on our website, don’t hesitate to contact us.  We are always open to suggestions on how to improve your experience.

Once more, I’d like to thank you all for spreading the word about Whatever-Weather and ask that you continue to tell others about us.

Sincerely,

Nicolle

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This blog post appeared in the author’s Ground Control to Major Mom blog on February 11, 2009. In winter and spring of 2009, Patricia served as a weather officer in Southwest Asia. In February 2009, Patricia experienced her first Middle Eastern Shamal.

I’m always pitching to other meteorologists how awesome it is to do weather forecasting for the Air Force. One of the cool things about serving in the military is being able to do more than just Continental U.S. forecasting. While it’s great to learn as much as I did about tornadoes, the Norwegian Cyclone Model, N’oreasters, lake effect snow, etc., having to understand phenomena in other parts of the world is an important part of my job. It’s fascinating to look back on my 15 years of service and recall what I’ve had to learn about Lake Baikal High Pressure, the western Pacific Monsoon, and Rhone River Delta lows. So I had a new lesson when I was introduced to forecasting a shamal.

So…what the heck is a shamal?

Well, let’s define it here. It’s a strong northerly wind that picks up dust from Syria and Jordan and carries it all the way down the Arabian peninsula. This link does a pretty good job covering the meteorology behind the shamal.

It’s interesting to point out that just as important as having a synoptic situation set up for a shamal, is understanding the soil/terrain conditions that would contribute the dust to get advected down the Arabian peninsula. Something we discovered in early 2009 was how significant drought conditions in Syria in 2008 resulted in a whopper shamal season. Imagine all that dust that isn’t being settled by rainfall or crop plantings. There is an ongoing research effort to try to characterize dust “source regions”, but we’ve learned that these source regions change very quickly. Remote sensing of these source regions is making these characterizations easier, but it’s still quite a challenge.

And it was shamal-ing as I typed this last winter. The winds were gusting to 40 knots from the northwest, and the dust came down all the way from Syria — we watched it on the satellite! I even saw the wall of dust towards the northwest minutes before the winds started here, but I was in a no-photography area so I wasn’t able to capture it for you.

(Side note: I have to give public kudos to the forecast team in the U.S. and here at my base for the great job they did predicting its onset here. They said it would arrive by noon, and it got there at 11:55am! In fact, during one of the onsets, this higher ranking officer walked up to me and asked “Where’s this dust storm you guys forecast?” It was about 10 miles to our north, and I was able to point up towards the north and show him the wall of dust headed in our direction. It was great!)

I have a couple pictures of what shamal vs. non-shamal conditions look like here, but they didn’t turn out really well. I wish I could have captured how it looks here better. Here’s a picture I swiped from someone else’s website (the picture has instructions on how to link, so my assumption is that it was legal to do so), of my base in 2004 under the same conditions as I’m experiencing right now.

It looks like fog. That “you can’t see your hand in front of your face” kind of fog. If you’re standing inside looking out into this stuff out the window it looks like a brownish-yellow fog. But the wind is howling…and if you inhale too deeply, you start coughing. If you breathe the air without a cover over your mouth for too long, you feel the grit on your teeth. It smells sort of like chalkboard chalk. Do you remember clapping together blackboard erasers when you were younger? And inhaling that dust for too long? That’s the sensation.

You feel the grit on your hands, in your hair, and on the surface of your skin. I stood outside for 5 minutes waiting for a bus from my duty location back to my dorms and could feel how dirty my hair was in that short time. Again, remember how chalk dust feels on your hands after you’ve dusted off the excess. A fine grit.

If your eyes aren’t covered, the dust gets into the eyes and it’s difficult to see as your eyes get watery. I had goggles for my eyes and carried around a small towel to cover my mouth.

I was talking to a British fighter pilot right when the storm started and in a typical British no-holds-barred fashion, he gave gory details about where on our body we’d be finding shamal dust remnants for days after the event ends.

It becomes hazardous to do things outside in these conditions. As if the winds and reduced visibilities aren’t enough of a problem, the respiratory hazards associated with prolonged inhaling of this dust can be a problem too.

Even though I was inside typing this (I usually typed outside where the WiFi was stronger), there was still a layer of dust settled on my keyboard, and on the table on which my laptop is sitting.

A shamal event wreaked havoc on the coalition invasion of Iraq in 2003. For you weather weenies, here’s a paper about the meteorology of the shamal that impacted the “March to Baghdad” in late March ’03. There are arguments to this day about the amount of advantage coalition forces were able to gain from the duststorm, but I’m not going there.

This is my attempt to share a video I took about 1/2 hour after the first wall of dust and wind hit us on Februrary 11th. Visibility was about 1/10 of a mile and the winds were from the northwest at 35-40 knots.

From 2009 02 11 Shamal

Click on it and see what happens…also feel free to view the rest of the pictures from this album here. I didn’t take many, conditions weren’t great for the camera.

The dust remained suspended in about the lowest 500 feet for about 24 hours after the winds died down on February 12th. Visibilities increased to about 3 miles, but dust still got everywhere, including my laptop as typed this. Don’t fret, Dave sent me plenty of canned air and computer cleansing wipes.

About Patricia

Patricia is mainly a stay-at-home Mom living in Bellevue, Nebraska, just south of Omaha.  She’s a native of Norfolk, VA, and graduated with a B.S. in Meteorology from Pennsylvania State University in 1995, and a M.S. in Meteorology from the Air Force Institute of Technology in 2002.  Patricia has served for 15 years so far as a weather officer in the U.S. Air Force.  After 10 years of active duty, having served in such locations as Bosnia and Korea, Patricia became an AF Reservist in 2005 to spend more time with her two sons, ages 7 and 5.  She currently serves her Reserve time on the U.S. Strategic Command weather support team, providing worldwide weather awareness and guidance for the command’s needs.  Patricia has a blog, Ground Control to Major Mom, which covers a variety of topics from parenthood to weather to current events.  Patricia’s passion is with remote sensing and she had the opportunity to explore GPS-derived water vapor assimilation into the MM5 weather model as her Master’s degree research.

vollmerdp@gmail.com

http://www.twitter.com/vollmerdp

http://vollmerdp.blogspot.com

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I’ve been asked countless times by younger (usually high school age) people and by friends about what it takes to become a good meteorologist.  The first thing I always have to include in my response is the fact that my personal experience was not typical.  I returned to school, North Carolina State University to be exact, at the age of 30 to earn my BS in meteorology.  I was determined to finish the degree in three years, and I did.  Most people start much younger and take at least 4 years.

With that disclaimer out of the way, I’ll go into the important part.  Meteorology requires an aptitude for math and science.  It also helps if you enjoy them.  There is no way around this fact.  While not all schools have the same course requirements, many of them are at least similar.  NCSU bases its requirements on what the NWS is looking for in a potential employee.  That means I had to take Calculus I – III, differential equations, two chemistry courses, and two physics courses before really getting into the hard core meteorology classes.  Along with those requisites, I also had to take a programming language (I chose Fortran), statistics for scientists, and a few other odds and ends.

More important than any of these classes, and at the same time integral to passing them, a meteorology student must have a passion for weather!  None of it matters if you don’t love what you’re studying.  On days when I was so bogged down by equations so long that they stretched across two black boards, I had to remind myself just why I was putting myself through it.  All it took for me was to look at the sky, to feel the breeze, or to glance at an active radar loop.  Often, the hardest part was keeping everything in perspective.  Why torture myself with Calculus and Fortran?  Because I wanted to know what makes a good thunderstorm.

There’s one more thing necessary to becoming a good meteorologist.  A good met has an instinct for forecasting.  I honestly believe that instinct, or intuition, is ingrained from birth.  You can look at the models for hours some days without coming to a confident forecast conclusion.  If you have that instinct, then you know which way to go when the models can’t agree.  Could you be wrong?  Sure.  We all are on occasion.  Still, the meteorologists with that natural, inborn knack for forecasting seem to be right that much more often.  Like with so many other things in life, the key is to trust your instinct.

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Some of you know that my first degree was in communication with a concentration in mass communication. In order to earn that BA, I had to take classes in public speaking, criticism of the information media, criticism of the entertainment media, ethics in communication, statistics for non-scientists, a foreign language, political science, English and literature, and history. The most important and useful class that I had to take was interpersonal communication. Honestly, I think *everyone* should be required to take that class in high school.

My theory is that the causes of many of the problems in the world can be simplified into two categories: 1. selfish, greedy, envious people out to get what they don’t deserve but think that they do, and 2. poor communication skills. Since the first one is just part of the nature of humanity, I will focus on the second. Communication skills are things that *can* be improved and taught. They are a necessary function of everyday life.

When speaking/writing/emailing with another person, you must consider the fact that each person has his/her own unique frame of reference. A frame of reference is basically that person’s life experience: what they were taught, what they have learned, what they know, and what they don’t know. Never expect someone else’s to be the same as your own. Unless you are twins and have never been separated since birth, that really isn’t possible.

When you assume that the person with whom you’re conversing knows exactly what you know, then you’re likely to leave out pertinent information, and doing so will leave a hole in the conversation. For example, I know someone who answers straight forward questions with random Nascar analogies. While that might work while drinking beer with buddies who watch Nascar with you, it doesn’t work for a building full of coworkers who may have never even seen a race. Assuming that everyone watches Nascar is a bad idea and a bad way to answer a question.

Similarly, if you only give half the information necessary to having an informed conversation, you cannot expect a good result. If you are withholding the info because you assume the other person knows of it already, you can make the discussion much longer than it needs to be. For example: a person asked to leave work momentarily to run an errand after 10:30am. The question arose as to why that person couldn’t wait until she was scheduled to leave at noon. It was a fair question given that noon is after 10:30am. The answer was that the errand had to be completed by 11:15am. OK. So had all of the information been presented at the beginning, the conversation could have been over much more quickly with a simple “yes” or “no.”

On the other hand, if information is omitted in order to mislead, then we get into a question of ethics. I’m not going to tackle that here.

It seems that mind-reading is more rampant than ever. Unfortunately, I missed that talent when God was handing them out. Never assume that someone knows the thoughts going through your head. Unspoken complaints never get resolved. If something is bothering you, go ahead and talk about it. That is the only way to find out if there is a way to fix the problem (or perceived problem). Not discussing it can only lead to nothing being done about it. The best idea is to discuss it with a person who can actually address the issue, that is go straight to the horse’s mouth.

Another very important aspect of good communication is the art of *active listening.” This appears to be a lost art these days. Active listening means quieting your own thoughts long enough to hear exactly what the other person is saying to you and not what you *think* they are saying to you. I can’t tell you how many useless arguments I’ve witnessed because someone jumped the gun and assumed they knew what the other person was going to say or “really meant to say.” LISTEN to exactly what is being said. A really good idea in a productive conversation is to do the following: when the person speaking is done, say “so what I hear you saying is___” and repeat what they just said in your own words. If you got it right, then you are on the same page. If you got it wrong, then you both have a chance to fix the miscommunication at the moment in which it occurs, thus saving time and energy and keeping problems from arising down the road.

Communication is a two-way street. It takes the participation of both parties. It also takes a grasp on the English language, but I won’t go into that here either.

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This originally appeared in Patricia’s Ground Control to Major Mom blog on 25 February 2010.

After hearing Nicolle lamenting on Facebook and Twitter about “meteorology” not being the same thing as “metrology”, where apparently someone had misspelled her career choice, I was reminded of this blog post I had written in 2008. I had encountered a similar case of “Why does my career field have to be so difficult to spell?”

Presenting the Do-It-Yourself Demotivational Poster Generator!!!

My husband Dave and I have always thought motivational posters were cool, such as this one:

But we get MORE of a kick out of the parodies on the motivational posters. This one was framed in Dave’s office in Florida.

Sure, folks have tried to make up their own, and you get something like this one below, which is from the U.S. Joint Forces Command Joint Warfighting Center in Suffolk, VA. Framed, hanging up on the wall. I couldn’t even go into this room with a straight face. I did a lot of Reserve work in the room with this poster in 2006 and 2007. There was a series of posters featuring different facets of military capability: “Intelligence”, “Operations”, “Logistics”. While I’m honored that someone thought to include “Meterology”, I wish someone had consulted a spell-checker first.

I didn’t add that Post-It note, someone else did:

With the link I’ve shown above, you can upload a picture of your choice, then add your own title and catch-phrase. Then you can e-mail the poster to friends, save a JPG of the poster to your hard drive, and you can even order an 11 x 14 of the poster for about $12!

Enjoy my latest creations.

Feel free to try it out and let me know if you come up with any particularly good ones!

Here’s a link to the company that markets the REAL motivation posters, if you’re wanting to learn more about the real thing: Successories.

About Patricia

Patricia is mainly a stay-at-home Mom living in Bellevue, Nebraska, just south of Omaha. She’s a native of Norfolk, VA, and graduated with a B.S. in Meteorology from Pennsylvania State University in 1995, and a M.S. in Meteorology from the Air Force Institute of Technology in 2002. Patricia has served for 15 years so far as a weather officer in the U.S. Air Force. After 10 years of active duty, having served in such locations as Bosnia and Korea, Patricia became an AF Reservist in 2005 to spend more time with her two sons, ages 7 and 5. She currently serves her Reserve time on the U.S. Strategic Command weather support team, providing worldwide weather awareness and guidance for the command’s needs. Patricia has a blog, Ground Control to Major Mom, which covers a variety of topics from parenthood to weather to current events. Patricia’s passion is with remote sensing and she had the opportunity to explore GPS-derived water vapor assimilation into the MM5 weather model as her Master’s degree research.

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This week is Severe Weather Awareness week in North Carolina, where Whatever-Weather is headquartered, and many other states across the nation.  While I’m sure most of you reading this are well aware of why we start spring with these observances, I feel the need to cover the topic.  Blame the broadcaster in me.

After this chilly winter and the concerns over will it snow or ice, how much, and for how long, it is nice to think ahead to a warmer time of year.  Spring has so many things I love: colorful flowers, green grass, a new wardrobe, and, best of all, stormy weather.  This spring is off to a slower start than most years.  We can blame that chilly winter weather that has been hanging around the South and wearing out its welcome for that.  Now that March has arrived, it won’t be long until we hear that rumble of thunder.

With the rumble of thunder, often come the beeps of an Emergency Alert System broadcast and a severe weather watch or warning.  Oh! The excitement!  Like so many other meteorologists, I became interested in studying the weather when I realized that I love thunderstorms.  Now that I am a meteorologist, I want to share that love, but in a responsible way.  So, for the non-mets out there, here comes the lecture, and for the mets out there, here come the reminders…

First, Severe Weather Awareness Week is a time to remember to make sure the batteries in your flashlights and NOAA weather radios work.  If you don’t have a NOAA weather radio, buy one!  It is the quickest and easiest way to be alerted to dangerous weather situations.  In fact, they are now called NOAA weather/all hazards radios because you can be alerted to more than just dangerous weather situations by the system.  The newer, upgraded models include S.A.M.E. technology, which lets you set the geographic locations for which you want to be warned, and they are pretty easy to program.

Second, understand the meanings of the alerts.  For example, a “watch” means that conditions are favorable for a situation to occur such as a tornado watch or a flash flood watch.  A warning means that same situation is either occurring or is imminent.  Also, a watch often covers a longer stretch of time (hours) and wider geographic area (states) than a warning (minutes/counties).  So, a tornado watch means that the atmospheric conditions are favorable for the formation of tornadoes during the period of noon to 5pm (example only).  A tornado warning means that either Doppler radar has indicated a possible tornado and/or spotters have reported a tornado (or funnel cloud) and you need to take shelter immediately.  The warning may only last 15 minutes, or it may be 45 minutes to an hour long depending on the storm and the size of the area covered by the warning.

Lastly, take the weather seriously.  Fatalities caused by tornadoes, floods, flash floods, and hurricanes can often be avoided.  Not all of them are avoidable, but most are.  Don’t drive into flooded roadways if you can’t see what is under the water.  There might not be a road under there!  If you’re a spotter, don’t stand under large trees, power lines or near metal fences while spotting.  Lightning is a real danger.  Know where you are in relation to the hail and the tornado and stay out of the path of the storm.  If you are a chaser, please remember that your safety and the safety of others on the road are more important than the thrill.  Don’t put yourself or other drivers/pedestrians in danger just to get that one good shot of the tornado.  In the grand scheme of things, it’s not worth it.

Again, given that our readers are mostly meteorologists, I know that I am preaching to the choir, but sometimes we all need a little reminder about safety.  That is the purpose of our annual observance of Severe Weather Awareness Week.

*Through the end of March, take 10% off any NOAA weather radio in our shop.  Use coupon code “SEVERE 2010.”  Now you have no excuse not to have one.

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During the early morning hours of Tuesday, March 1, 1910, the crack Northern Pacific Railroad passenger train, the Spokane Express, sat on the tracks in the station at Wellington, Washington.  Wellington was a tiny town just west of the tunnel at Stevens Pass along the summit of the Cascades Mountains.

The train had been stranded at the station for well over a week by powerful blizzards that had been sweeping the Cascades along with another Northern Pacific train, the Fast Mail.  The superintendent for the railroad believed that the trains were safe as they sat parked on the tracks at Wellington.

As a powerful snowstorm replete with lightning and thunder raged over the mountain pass during those pre-dawn hours, a frightening roar awakened those sleeping in the train cars and in the little town.  A powerful avalanche was breaking loose on the mountain hundreds of feet above the railroad tracks.  Hundreds of tons of ice, snow and rock came hurtling down the mountainside.

It swept the locomotives, sleeping cars, day coaches and mail cars over a steep ledge.  Before the rolling stock came to a halt, it had fallen over one thousand feet and lay buried under forty feet of ice and snow.  The depot at Wellington was also swept away.

It would be the most disastrous avalanche in United States history.  Ninety six people lost their lives, including many women and children and workers who were sent to battle the persistent snows.  No other avalanche in U.S. history comes close to this one in terms of death toll.

It was most likely started by the loud thunder caused by the unusual electrical storm.  The Northern Pacific Railroad was found negligent, but the decision was overturned.  The court said that the disaster was an “act of God.”

About Bill

Bill Murray is a forecaster for AlabamaWX.com, the official weather blog at Alabama’s ABC33/40. Get a daily dose of his weather history at www.twitter.com/wxhistorian. He is also one of the hosts at WeatherBrains, the weekly netcast that’s all about weather. Listen at www.WeatherBrains.com  or subscribe through the iTunes Music Store. It’s free!

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