University: State University of New York, Albany
Major: Atmospheric Sciences
About Alicia:
I am a senior at the State University of New York at Albany, majoring in Atmospheric Science. I have lived in New York all my life, but I really LOVE it out here in Oklahoma. I am working on a research project with Bob Johns of the Storm Prediction Center on shortwave troughs and tornadoes. In my spare time, I enjoy reading, listening to classical music, and doing anything outside on a hot summer day.
University: Lyndon State College,
Vermont
Major: Meterology
About Jamie:
Hello, my name is Jamie Casto and I am from north central West Virginia. I am a senior Meteorology major at Lyndon State College in Vermont. Lyndon State is a small school of approximately 1100 students. Over 100 of these students are enrolled in the Meteorology program. This makes our school one of the largest undergraduate only programs in the country.
My interests in Meteorology pertain to anything from severe storms research to forecasting. The summer project that I am working on focuses on tornadoes and shortwave troughs. My mentors for this project are Chuck Doswell and Harold Brooks.
University: Iowa State University
Major: Meterology
About Steve:
My name is Steve Decker. I'm from Plymouth, Michigan, where I graduated
from Plymouth-Salem High School in 1996. I've completed two years at Iowa
State University in Ames, Iowa. My major is, you guessed it, meteorology.
I plan to graduate in May 2000. My main meteorological interests are severe
weather, snowstorms, and numerical weather prediction. Other interests include
my girlfriend Jean and travelling. I've been to 43 of the 50 states. Oklahoma
was state number 43. Other hobbies are watching The Weather Channel and
playing various sports, such as basketball, volleyball, football (flag or
two-hand touch only please), and curling. (Well, not really, but I was on
the championship team in curling intramurals this year at ISU.) My research
topic here in Norman is flash flooding, especially with regard to synoptic
scale diagnostics, although that might change. My mentor here is Dave Schultz.
Check out his home page at http://www.nssl.noaa.gov/~schultz.
One case I'm looking at is the flooding in central Iowa in June 1996, which
occurred a few days before my ISU orientation.
That's about it.
University: North Carolina State University
Major: Meterology
About Jill:
Hi. I am a senior at North Carolina State University in meteorology. My interests in the field include anything from forecasting to numerical modeling. This summer experience will hopefully help me narrow down some of my interests and give me a better sense of whether or not research is something I'd like to continue doing in the future.
This summer I am working on a research project entitled "Climatology of Warm Season Morning MCS's and their Environments", which is part of larger study called "The Morning Convection Project". The overall goal is to identify new tools to aid in forecasting the evolution of MCS's that have existed through nighttime hours and affect areas of the Great Plains during the 7 am to noon time frame. This period of the day is of particular interest because of the tendency for many of these systems to dissipate during this period, thereby producing a climatological minimum in convective activity in the 10-11 am period. The entire climatology will cover the years 1994 - 1999 for the months of June, July and August within a small region of the Great Plains. Currently, I am identifying each system and determining their tracks from origination to dissipation.
University: Northland College, Wisconsin
Major: Meterology and Earth Science
University: Valparaiso University, Indiana
Major: Meterology
University: University Of Oklahoma, Oklahoma
Major: Meterology
About Christina:
I am going to be a junior in the fall at OU in the School of Meterology. I have always liked math and science. In the summer when I am home, I love to waterski when I can find the time, and when the weather is nice. That's a problem in Northern Michigan.... most of the time it's too cold to be at the lake. I am also interested in lightning and severe weather. I had a great opportunity to go out mobile balloning this spring and I learned so much from those experiences. My research topic is a preliminary analysis of lightning data from this past spring's MEaPRS project. I am plotting lightning data from the National Lightning Detection Network on top of satelltie images of the storms that MEaPRS intercepted. I also be looking at the radar images and soundings from the storms. Because I have a short time to do this project I will most likely only look at one or two storms.
University: Plymouth State College, New Hampshire
Major: Meterology
About Chris McAloon:
Hi. My name is Chris McAloon. I'm from Warwick, RI, a city comparable in size to Norman. I'm a senior Meteorology major at Plymouth State College, in Plymouth, NH. Plymouth is a small school of 3500 students and only 40 of which are Meteorology majors. The weather is something that I have always been interested in, and always wanted to do. More recently I've become increasingly interested in severe storms. That is why I initially applied for this REU Program, and what I hope to study in graduate school. During my time here this summer, I am working on a project called OASIS98.
OASIS is an acronym for Oklahoma Atmospheric Surface-layer Instrumentation System. My project specifically involves the assessment of the accuracy of instrumentation being used to measure the surface energy budget at the Oklahoma Mesonet. I will being accomplishing this with the help of the National Center for Atmospheric Research's ASTER (Atmosphere-Surface Turbulent Exchange Research) Facility. ASTER is a facility that is designed to measure directly, the same things that OASIS is measuring. We will be using ASTER, however, as our reference, to let us know if the instrumentation we are using is good enough to be used elsewhere.
University: University Of Wisconsin, Milwaukee
Major: Mathematics and Atmospheric Sciences
About Christopher Rozoff:
majors: Mathematics (computer related) and Atmospheric Sciences
*Also appreciate and focus on physics, chemistry, and computer science
Hobbies: Piano, running, web page development, storm chasing, rock
concerts, hiking, wilderness, inline skating, fishing, math trivia, extracurriculars
at school ...
REU Project: Statistical methods in determining maximum hail size
previous to a convective event. Such methods are based on hail reports in
conjunction with "proximity soundings", and we hope that some
nonparmetric test will reveal usefulness with some thermodynamic and kinematic
parameters. Project mentors: Jeff Craven (SPC) and Dr. Harold Brooks (NSSL).
University: University Of Oklahoma, Oklahoma
Major: Computer Science