Last Update 03/21/07
Copyright © 2007
northflams@gmail.com

2005-2006 Activities

The 2005-2006 chapter year was a year of transition for the North Florida Chapter. The 2004-2005 chapter year, while highly successful, left the chapter hurting financially. The new leadership of the chapter, headed by President Pat Taylor, made the conscious effort to step up fundraising efforts early in the year to address this issue. And, sure enough, the chapter's finances turned around very quickly, thanks to the successes of such events as a local car wash, several bake sales, dues collection, and the chapter's first golf tournament, held at the Dick Veller Seminole Golf Course in Tallahassee in the fall. Also in the fall, partially for fundraising purposes, we organized block seating for the FSU-Miami football game -- the first win over Miami in 6 tries for FSU -- that proved very popular with approximately 70 people part of the block.

Of course, the chapter year was not all about fundraising. We received news early in the fall that the national AMS had decided to award our chapter with the Local Chapter of the Year Award for 2004-2005 for our outreach efforts in the previous year. This award, coupled with the proximity of the annual meeting, brought about a renewed commitment to enhance our visibility at the Annual AMS Meeting -- the 86th, held in Atlanta, GA -- in late January. When accounting for attendees being supported by professors to present research, professors attending the conference themselves, and friends of the chapter who have since graduated, over 50 people were in attendance in Atlanta for at least part of the week. This far and away surpasses that which we saw in both San Diego and Seattle, with approximately 15 and 10 attendees, respectively. While in Atlanta, members too part in the numerous conferences -- particularly the annual lightning symposium and the weather year-in-review sessions -- attend the student conference (particularly to see Max Mayfield, Director of the NHC, as one of the keynote luncheon speakers!), and explore what downtown Atlanta had to offer. We hope to have a significant presence in San Antonio, TX for the 87th Annual Meeting in January 2007.

Several outreach efforts were continued and expanded upon through the chapter year. For the second straight year, we provided mentoring and judging for the Fairview Middle School Science Olympiad. Multiple school visits, both for mentoring and for science fair judging, took place across the city and county in early 2006. Together with Comcast, we manned a booth at the annual (and very popular!) Springtime Tallahassee festival in downtown, allowing local youth and their parents to participate in a wide array of meteorology activities as well as take home a memento of their day in the form of several Earth system posters from NASA. Members also participated with FSU Meteorology outreach efforts at WeatherFest at the Annual AMS Meeting, demonstrating much the same activities as at Springtime Tallahassee.

A wide array of speakers and topics were presented over the course of the chapter year. Early presentations featured professors in the FSU Meteorology Department, with talks by Dr. Phil Cunningham and Dr. Bob Hart in September on fire weather and presentation skills respectively. In an attempt to diversify our interests and provide a wide array of speaker topics, several professors from outside the department -- Dr. Mark Sussman from the math department, Sir Harold Kroto from the chemistry department (as our banquet speaker), and Dr. Tony Stallins from the geography department -- gave talks on various aspects of their works and how they relate to meteorology -- particularly with numerical modeling or geographical/spatial relations of meteorology data. But, by far, the best attended meeting of the year was held in October, featuring a panel discussion on the history of the FSU Dept. of Meteorology headed by Dr. T.N. Krishnamurti with speakers Drs. LaSeur and Gleeson. This unique meeting was very informative and helped draw in new members to the chapter interested in the history of the department.

At the close of the chapter year, elections were held for the 2006-2007 Executive Board. Featuring two undergraduate students and two graduate students, two males and two females, and two people who have been involved with the chapter for many years and two who are just getting started, it is quite the diverse bunch. We hope to build on 2005-2006 with new activities and ideas in 2006-2007, the 5th Anniversary of our incorporation as a local chapter of the AMS.