Committee on Severe Local Storms

The Committee on severe local storms promotes AMS activities and represents the segment of the AMS research community engaged in understanding the structure and predicting the behavior of hazardous deep convective weather phenomena. This primarily includes analyzing, predicting, and understanding the structure and dynamics of severe thunderstorms, either as isolated cells or organized clusters, and associated hazards including tornadoes, damaging winds, large hail, lightning, and flash floods. This also includes the hazard information communication process, climatology of hazards and storm environments, and classification of hazard severity (e.g. enhanced Fujita scale for tornado intensity). We oversee a specialty conference every two years, promote outreach and community engagement activities, and review additions and changes to the Glossary of Meteorology along with updating AMS statements related to severe storms.

We welcome comments and suggestions from our community, so don't hesitate to contact us!

Update for 10 Nov. 2022:  Summary of 30th SLS Conference

The 30th Conference on Severe Local Storms was organized by the AMS Committee on Severe Local Storms and hosted by the American Meteorological Society.   The conference was hybrid in design and held between 24-28 Oct. 2022, with the in-person location in Santa Fe, NM.   Much appreciation for their tireless efforts in hosting and facilitating the event are extended to the program chairpersons, Michael French and Kristin Calhoun!   Also, we appreciate the participation from the severe weather community at the 30th SLS conference, whether online or in-person!  

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Here are the final results from judging of the student presentations!

Outstanding Student Presentation Awards

Oral Presentations

3rd:

 

Luke LeBel

Penn State University

15.1A:  An Analysis of the Impact of Vertical Wind Shear on Convection Initiation Using Large-Eddy Simulations: Importance of Wake Entrainment

2nd: 

 

Andrew Muehr

OU/CIWRO

15.5A: Examining the Impact of Mid-Level Shear and Low-Level Storm-Relative Flow on Supercell Characteristics and Evolution

1st: 

 

Rachael Cross

Univ. of Oklahoma

17.4A: A Radar Simulation and Large-Eddy Simulation Approach to Exploring Observational Tornado Debris Signature Hypotheses

Poster Presentations

3rd: 

 

Milind Sharma

Purdue University

P9: Quantifying the covariability between ZDR/KDP Column Volume and Lightning Flash Rates in Southeast U.S. Storms

2nd: 

 

Tyler Pardun

OU/CIWRO

P97: QLCS Tornado Detection Using Merged Products Derived from MRMS

1st: 

 

Funing Li

Purdue University

P70: Rough Amazon Suppresses South American Tornado Potential

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In the attached PDF, please find additional summary highlights from the conference. 

The agenda can be found here:  https://ams.confex.com/ams/30SLS/meetingapp.cgi and here:  https://www.ametsoc.org/ams/assets/SLS%20Final%20Program.pdf