It was a snowy October day . . .

... and a record-breaking early snow it was. The surface low and upper trough took a classic track - intensifying off Norfolk and moving up the east coast just offshore. Some of the totals are very impressive: >20" in several states. For October, when the waters and ground are still relatively warm, this was an especially significant event.

On the western shore of the Chesapeake, we didn't see any accumulation, but we did see flakes flying at mid-day Saturday. Points to our west (Frederick, Hagerstown, etc) and north into PA and NJ saw far more snow than we did (Frederick ~3"). Here's a satellite from Sunday a.m. showing the accumulation swath.

Proposals and laboratories

So since my summer funding has run out, I've been working hard(er) this year to line up something for June-Aug 2012. Over the summer I submitted a proposal to NSF to study intraseasonal variability of air quality (specifically ozone). We'll see how that comes out, as it's presently in external review. Then two weeks ago a colleague (from Oceanography) and I submitted another proposal to NSF, this time looking at the Arctic and intraseasonal variability there. We'll also see how that goes. Finally, last week I met with representatives from Lawrence Livermore, Los Alamos, and Sandia national laboratories to talk about visiting faculty programs. It might work out that I could visit one of the labs and work with one (or more) of their scientists on a project of our mutual choosing (perhaps, and ideally, overlapped with one or both of the above-mentioned NSF proposals). Eight weeks in Livermore- wouldn't that be cool?!

In other news, I've had some good success with internal funding in other projects involving students: (1) my SWIFT colleague worked to support another 10 students' participation next year, which is great news for them! (2) My proposal to take 4 students to Ecuador & Chile is forwarded up the chain of command for final approval, so we'll see if we head there next March.

A tale of the "C's": conferences, California, and Colorado

Back in the last week of July and the first week of August, I went out to present at the AMS Mesoscale Conference in Los Angeles. I enjoyed a great few days of talks, research brainstorming, interaction with old friends, meeting of new friends, jogs around LAX (not a terrible place after all to have a conference... the sidewalks are wide and the road leading to the beach actually not that traveled at all!) My talk went well, and also my visit with my friend Dianne (we went out to Malibu). After LA, I flew to Denver and spent a few days there, first in a personal retreat to the Great Sand Dunes National Park west of Pueblo, then up to Mt. Democrat south of Frisco, then into Denver itself for the weekend, and then finally up to Ft. Collins and Colorado State University for a week-long COMET Satellite Workshop. Each of the experiences in Colorado went very well. Here are some pictures.