 What's in this newsletter:
June 1 Webinar: NWA Showcases
Online Weather Learning NOAA Debuts First Imagery from GOES-18 President's Message
Our annual meeting is scheduled for August 20-24 at the Sheraton Pittsburgh Hotel at Station Square in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. A team of dedicated volunteers has completed reviewing the abstracts and final touches are being made to the agenda. This year, we had 232 abstracts submitted and 47 reviewers. Our meeting will be held in a hybrid format again this year so participants will have the option to attend in person or online. This not only allows for flexibility should the risks associated with traveling change due to COVID, but it also allows people to attend the meeting who might otherwise not be able to travel. One facet of the meeting that has been transformed in recent years to make the best use of the hybrid format is what we’ve, up until now, called the poster session. This year, we are rolling out a new name and reimagining what ‘posters’ can become. If you submitted an abstract this year, you may have been told that you were assigned a showcase. What is a showcase? you may ask. It is a new spin on virtual posters designed for a hybrid meeting. There will be no traditional printed poster sessions at this year’s meeting. Continuing the pattern of the last two meetings, the showcases will be housed in the virtual environment. The meeting’s hybrid environment allows presenters to use technology to create a showcase that is more interactive or informative than a standard printed poster. In the paper poster format, posters were displayed for only a few hours during the annual meeting. A showcase will be available in the meeting app a few days before the meeting starts to months after it ends. The chat feature tied to a showcase allows the presenter and attendees to communicate throughout the meeting and the months that follow, and you can even set up video meetings to converse with those visiting a Showcase. 
There are many possibilities for how to present your showcase. If you like the design of the traditional poster, you can still present it in that format online. But you may also consider some modifications to take advantage of technology. For example, you could add hyperlinks to make your poster interactive, save your poster as a GIF with embedded animations (e.g., radar loops, figures, videos, etc.) or utilize QR codes for additional resources or file downloads. You can also think of the showcase as a set of slides created in a program like PowerPoint or Prezi—much like an oral presentation. We encourage showcase presenters to upload a short presentation to the Whova app like we did last year. If you choose this format, you can narrate your presentation in a short (5 minute or less) pre-recorded video and share videos and animations within your presentation. You can even upload an expanded slide set that includes additional information for all the slides you couldn’t fit on your posters in the past or into an oral presentation. The showcase team will present a webinar on showcases very soon. In that, they will offer ideas on creating an engaging showcase presentation. Because we expect there to be more people attending in person this year we will have more opportunities for showcase presenters to interact with attendees both online and face to face. More information about that will be communicated as it gets closer to the meeting. And if you’re not presenting a showcase, I hope you’ll take the time to browse a showcase session at the annual meeting and check a few out. I think it will be a great part of the agenda. If you have questions about the showcase format you can email me, or the meeting co-chairs at [email protected].
The hotel block for the 2022 NWA Hybrid Annual Meeting is now open. It will remain open until July 29, 2022, or until the block is full. Note: Friday night August 19, the room block is very limited. If you get a notice that the block is full, try removing Friday August 19 from the reservation and try the reservation again. The reservation link, specifics about the hotel, and nearby restaurants are located on the Meeting Website. The meeting will be a hybrid event meaning both virtual and in person attendance options are available. Watch the meeting website, Newsletter, member emails, and our social media sites for upcoming details on registration, exhibit options, and more.
The Sol Hirsch Education Fund Grants for K-12 Teachers/Educators will close June 7, 2022. More information can be found on our scholarship website. By issuing these grants, we're helping educate future meteorologists. Shauna Tamar Harris wrote a lovely letter detailing how the Sol Hirsch Grant helped educate her students. Dear Members of the National Weather Association Foundation, My name is Shauna Tamar Harris and I was a 2021 recipient of one of your grants to bring weather education to my school, Freedom Classical Academy, in North Las Vegas, Nevada. I wanted to report to you that with your grant, I was able to introduce approximately 400 students in grade 6-8 on the concepts of weather and climate. My lessons, which I have made into Google Slides and are part of this digital package. These lessons were instrumental in helping students understand how weather affects the climate and how connected we are to the natural world. Upon reflection, when I teach this unit again, I will create a pre-test to establish a baseline in what the students do not know about this concept and then after the unit is complete, give the same test to compare growth. Furthermore, these lessons can and will be adapted for application to younger students in grades 3-5, thus educating even more students in the future. With the funds you granted to me I was able to purchase a digital 7-in-1 weather station that will be installed on our school’s roof and the digital display will be mounted in the classroom for classes to monitor and record the weather not only in real time, but the data collected will be used or future study when this unit is taught again next year to a new batch of students. Also purchased were several different weather books that have been a source of inspiration to many students - and will continue to be for others as we visit the topic of weather and climate in next year’s schedule. However, the students were most excited to get their hands on the anemometers and sling psychrometers! Most students were happily running around the field, excited to “catch the wind” and tell how fast the gusts were. They made it a competition to try to get the highest number which came in at around 5.6mph. (We had to wait for a windy day for them to work!) Thank you for making this learning possible for these students. It is an experience that many shall not forget for a while and maybe, just maybe, with the help you provided, have inspired some to study weather a bit more in depth than they would have without your intervention and gift. On behalf of the students you have helped this year, and those who will benefit in the future, I thank you again for your willingness to extend a hand in furthering the education of children on Weather and Climate. Your generosity is greatly appreciated and I hope we will live up to the integrity of Mr. Sol Hirsch and his desire to help educate today’s children. With utmost respect and gratitude, Shauna Tamar Harris If you would like to donate to the Sol Hirsch grant or any other NWA Foundation Scholarships, please visit our website.
Coming to the 2022 NWA Annual Meeting, NWA Showcases! As we move into the new normal of hybrid science conferences, we took a look at what has worked well and what can be improved in the last couple years. First and foremost, calling them posters just doesn't make a ton of sense in the virtual space. There is so much more you can leverage in your presentation when you have the full breadth of options that technology and the internet provides. So the NWA is framing the virtual poster sessions this year to encourage diversity in presentation types, styles, and formats! What's the best way to showcase your science? Want to go traditional with virtual PDF version of an in-person poster? You can do that! Want to add videos, GIFs, online tools, videos, or more? You can do that too! This is your opportunity to be creative and present in the most engaging way you can! Here is the registration link, After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the webinar.
If you can't attend the live webinar, you can watch the recording later. To access the recording, register through the link above.
The USA Science and Engineering Festival provides virtual and in-person educational STEM events and programs. Whether you are educating children or your inner child, engaging in science is fun for everyone. Check out the NWA Virtual WeatherReady Fest for more opportunities to brush up on your weather knowledge.
NOAA Debuts First Imagery from GOES-18
From NOAA: "On May 11, 2022, NOAA shared the first images of the Western Hemisphere from its GOES-18 satellite. The satellite’s Advanced Baseline Imager (ABI) instrument recently captured stunning views of Earth. GOES-18, NOAA’s newest geostationary satellite, launched on March 1. The ABI views Earth with sixteen different channels, each measuring energy at different wavelengths along the electromagnetic spectrum to obtain information about Earth’s atmosphere, land, and ocean." Visit NOAA's website to read more about GOES-18.
The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) Hurricane Committee has retired Ida from the rotating lists of Atlantic tropical cyclone names because of the death and destruction caused by the category 4 hurricane in the United States of America in 2021. Storm names are retired after WMO deems further use of the name as insensitive.
Storm names can be hard to pronounce. NOAA has produced a comprehensive list of future storm names and pronunciations.
Thinking of Fellow Meteorologists
The NWA is also keeping the meteorologists involved in the Minnesota car crash in our thoughts and prayers. Our sympathies go out to the family and friends of Martha Llanos Rodriguez. We wish Brad Barrett a full recovery. Weatherwise, the best magazine for weather enthusiasts, currently offers a discounted subscription for NWA members. Weatherwise articles present the latest discoveries and hottest issues in meteorology and climatology and focus on the relation of weather to technology, history, culture, art, and society. In each issue, our expert columnists answer reader questions about the weather: discuss current events and people in the news; review new weather-related books and videos; test reader forecast skills with analysis of weather maps; and summarize recent weather events in the United States and Canada. Visit our website to find more information about getting a discounted subscription.
August November
Have you checked out our job page recently? We've received several job postings for meteorologists, hydrologists and assistant professors. We update the job postings as they arrive, and they've been arriving more frequently. Check out the newest job postings or submit a job posting here. National Weather Association | 3100 Monitor Ave, Suite 123 | Norman OK 73072 | 405.701.5167 Publisher: Janice Bunting, NWA CEO Submit newsletter items to [email protected]
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