AMS Executive Council members in attendance were: Steve Pierce, John Rinier, Tyree Wilde.
On Saturday, January 23, 2010, approximately 47 people gathered at Stark Street Pizza in Portland to hear featured speaker and AMS councilor Steve Pierce talk about model soundings. John Rinier, Oregon Chapter AMS Treasurer, welcomed everyone to the meeting for President Bobby Corser who was unable due to an illness. John updated the AMS membership on upcoming meetings, the Snowflake Contest Winners, and gave a reminder about staying current with membership dues. By meetings end, the AMS had gained five new members and renewed two.
Featured speaker Steve Pierce is an Oregon AMS Councilor with 25 years of personal studies in the field of Meteorology. In addition, Steve has a degree in Broadcast Television with 15 years experience. Steve gave a PowerPoint presentation that covered all of the basic elements of a model sounding. He explained the relationship between temperature, dew point and elevation and how to correctly identify various weather patterns such as freezing rain and snow on a model sounding. The December 29th surprise snowfall event near Portland was Steve's case study for this particular presentation. Additionally, he described the relationship between millibars and elevation above sea level. For example, 500 millibars is normally equivalent to approximately 18,000 feet above sea level. Jonathan Wolfe and Tyree Wilde, both from the local National Weather Service office, gave additional details on dry and wet adiabatic lines on a sounding, as well as moisture density in the atmosphere. Jonathan Wolfe was gracious enough to stay after the meeting and shows a few AMS members even more detailed information pertaining to soundings.
At the end of the meeting
AMS member, Charlie Ferris
gave away an antique rain gauge.
It was a great turnout along with great pizza!
Respectfully submitted by
John Rinier
Treasurer
Oregon Chapter of the AMS