After we wrapped up daily operations in the HWT on 6 June 2008, I took a 2 week holiday to chase storms and then entertain visiting family members. I’ve spent the last few days back in the office catching up on 9+ weeks of accumulated emails and other assorted and sundry items that have piled up.

I’ve been meaning to make a post expressing my gratitude to the many participants of the Experimental Warning Program’s 2008 spring experiment. This year’s experiment was an order of magnitude larger in terms of effort by these folks than last year’s experiment, and they all deserve many kudos.

The biggest expression of thanks goes to our IT Coordinator, Kevin Manross, who put in more hours than anyone else to pull off the experiment.

Next, I’d like to thank our Weekly Coordinators for keeping operations on track each week: Jim LaDue, Kevin Manross (again!), Travis Smith, Patrick Burke, and Liz Quoetone. There were a few times when we relied on our backup coordinators to fill in when needed: Kevin Scharfenberg and Kiel Ortega.

The cognizant scientists brought their expertise to the experiment to help guide live operations and playback of archive cases for each of the three experiments.

For the Gridded Warning Experiment, they included Kiel Ortega (his software!), Kristin Kuhlman (she shed that rookie hat quickly!), Mike Magsig (lots of these ideas were his), Travis Smith (SWAT’s fearless leader), Angelyn Kolodziej (up and coming star), Les Lemon (the veteran), Kevin Scharfenberg (the “bureaucrat”), and Kevin Manross (once again!).

For the Phased Array Radar (PAR) experiment, Dr. Pamela Heinselman captained the ship, along with Ric Adams, Dr. Rodger Brown, Les Lemon, Kristin Kuhlman, Arthur Witt, Dave Preignitz, Rick Hlucan, and that seemingly available Kevin Manross.

For the Collaborative Adaptive Sensing of the Atmosphere (CASA) experiment, the leadership of Brenda Phillips and Jerry Brotzge got us through the storm, or lack there of! Maybe next time we’ll get decent storms in the CASA network during the forecaster shifts, and not the last hour of the last day of the experiment! In addition, we had help from Ellen Bass, Don Rude, David Pepyne, Kurt Hondl, and Patrick Marsh.

We had IT help from Charles Kerr, Vicki Farmer, Karen Cooper, Paul Griffin, Brad Sagowitz, Brian Schmidt, Doug Kennedy, Joe Young, and Darrel Kingfield.

There were a number of guest evaluators from the NWC that provided expertise: Brad Grant, Cynthia Whittier, Paul Schlatter, John Ferree, Patrick Marsh, and Jami Boettcher.

Undergraduate students who supported our SHAVE efforts were: Steve Irwin (coordinator), Jennifer Bowen, Jessica Erlingis, Margaret Frey, Tiffany Meyer, and Kelsey Mulder.

I can’t forget our extra special guest star from the Weather And Society Integrated Studies (WAS*IS) program, Dr. Eve Gruntfest, who spent an exciting week with us in mid-May.

The EWP leadership team of Travis Smith and David Andra, along with the other HWT management committee members (Steve Weiss, Jack Kain, Mike Foster, Joe Schaefer, and Jeff Kimpel), and my MDL boss Dr. Stephan Smith, were instrumental in providing the necessary resources to make the EWP (and EFP) spring experiment happen.

Finally, I express a multitude of thanks to our National Weather Service and international operational meteorologists who traveled to Norman to participate as evaluators in this experiment (and I also thank their local and regional management for providing the personnel). They are:

David Blanchard (WFO Flagstaff, AZ)

Mike Cammarata (WFO Columbia, SC)

Ken Cook (WFO Wichita, KS)

Andy Edman (NWS Western Region HQ)

Bill Rasch (WFO Billings, MT)

Craig Shoemaker (WFO Tucson, AZ)

Bryan Tugwood (Environment Canada, Toronto, ON)

David Schmidt (Environment Canada, Edmonton, AB)

Ria Alsen (Environment Canada, Toronto, ON)

Dave Hotz (WFO Morristown, TN)

Daniel Porter (WFO Albuquerque, NM)

Ron Przybylinski (WFO St. Louis, MO)

Dan Miller (WFO Duluth, MN)

Jonathon Howell (WFO Memphis, TN)

Steve Rogowski (WFO Sterling, VA)

Steve Hodanish (WFO Pueblo, CO)

Ryan Knutsvig (WFO Elko, NV)

Dave Patrick (Environment Canada, Winnipeg, MB)

Eric Stevens (WFO Fairbanks, AK)

Kevin Brown (WFO Norman, OK)

Mark Melsness (Environment Canada, Winnipeg, MB)

Brad Colman (WFO Seattle, WA)

Jon Hitchcock (WFO Buffalo, NY)

George Phillips (WFO Topeka, KS)

Chris Sohl (WFO Norman, OK)

Milovan Radmanovac (Hydrometeorological Service of Serbia)

Many thanks to everyone, including those I may have inadvertently left off this list. Please let me know if I missed anyone. I can certainly edit this post and include their names later.

Greg Stumpf (EWP Operations Coordinator)