After we wrapped up daily operations in the HWT on 12 June 2009, Norman got hit by a weak tornado. While only minor damage occurred, and there were no injuries and deaths, what a way to end our 6 week experiment! This is this year’s EWP Thank You post, expressing our gratitude to the many participants of the Experimental Warning Program’s 2009 spring experiment. This year’s experiment was just as successful as the 2007 and 2008 experiments, and it could not have been carried out without the hard work and long hours of our team of participants.

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. As you will see below, Kevin wore many hats again this year.

Next, we’d like to thank our primary- and co-Weekly Coordinators for keeping operations on track each week: Kiel Ortega, Dale Morris, Jim LaDue, Patrick Burke, Travis Smith, Liz Quoetone, Paul Schlatter, Greg Stumpf, and Kevin Manross.

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

For the Multi-Radar/Multi-Sensor (MRMS) application experiment, they included NSSL/CIMMS principle investigators Travis Smith and Greg Stumpf, with additional help from NSSL scientists Arthur Witt and Kevin Manross.

For the Lightning Mapping Array (LMA) experiment, they included NSSL/CIMMS scientist Kristin Kuhlman who was the principle investigator, along with visiting scientists Geoffrey Stano (NASA-Huntsville) and Eric Bruning (Univ. Maryland/NESDIS).

For the Phased Array Radar (PAR) experiment, Dr. Pamela Heinselman captained the ship, along with these folks from NSSL, CIMMS, and OU: Dave Preignitz, Ric Adams, Arthur Witt, Rick Hluchan, Adam Smith, and Jennifer Newman.

For the Collaborative Adaptive Sensing of the Atmosphere (CASA) experiment was again led by Brenda Phillips (U. Mass.), Jerry Brotzge (OU), and Ellen Bass (U. VA). In addition, we had help from Don Rude (U. VA), David Westbrook (U. Mass.), Cedar League (Univ. Colorado – Colorado Springs), Rachel Butterworth (OU), Corey Potvin (OU), and Vivek Mahale (OU).

We had NSSL IT help from Jeff Brogden, Robert Toomey, Charles Kerr, Villiappa Lakshmanan, Vicki Farmer, Karen Cooper, Paul Griffin, Brad Sagowitz, Brian Schmidt, and Joe Young.

We were also graciously provided AWIPS help from NWS Warning Decision Training Branch scientists Ben Baranowski and Darrel Kingfield.

There were a number of guest evaluators from the NWC that provided expertise: From WDTB, Les Lemon and Veronica Davis, from SPC/CIMMS (and the GOES-R Proving Ground), Chris Siewart, and from Florida State University, Scott Rudlosky.

Undergraduate students who supported our SHAVE efforts were: James Miller (coordinator), Anthony Bain, Jessica Erlingis, Steve Irwin, Erika Kohler, Tiffany Meyer, Corey Mottice, Nicole Ramsey, and Brandon Smith.

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 Dr. Stephan Smith, chief of the MDL Decision Assistance Branch, were instrumental in providing the necessary resources to make the EWP spring experiment happen.

Finally, we 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 we also thank their local and regional management for providing the personnel). They are:

Steve Cobb (WFO Lubbock, TX)

Suzanne Fortin (WFO Pleasant Hill, MO)

Gino Izzi (WFO Chicago, IL)

Jeff Michalski (WFO Seattle, WA)

Tom Ainsworth (WFO Juneau, AK)

Chris Wielki (Environment Canada, Edmonton, AB)

Rebecca Schneider (Environment Canada, Montreal, QC)

John Billet (WFO Wakefield, VA)

Kevin Brown (WFO Norman, OK)

Steve Hodanish (WFO Pueblo, CO)

James Cummine (Environment Canada, Winnipeg, MB)

Sarah Wong (Environment Canada, Toronto, ON)

Matthew Kramar (WFO Sterling, VA)

Mike Vescio (WFO Pendleton, OR)

Rob Handel (WFO Peachtree City, GA)

Bill Martin (WFO Glasgow, MT)

Pete Wolf (WFO Jacksonville, FL)

Bill Ward (NWS Pacific Region HQ, Honolulu, HI)

Daniel Nietfeld (WFO Omaha, NE)

Gail Hartfield (WFO Raleigh, NC)

Steve Kieghton (WFO Blacksburg, VA)

Dan Miller (WFO Duluth, MN)

Jenni Rauhala (Finnish Meteorological Institute, Helsinki)

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

Greg Stumpf (EWP Operations Coordinator)