The November 2010 meeting will be at 6:30pm in St. Paul at the 3M Auditorium of the University of St. Thomas’ Owens Science Hall.

The topic will be the Minnesota tornadoes of June 17, 2010. This should be an awesome presentation with several speakers – don’t miss it!

See the Events page at http://twincitiesams.org for a link to directions and a map, and check out the other upcoming events while you’re there.

There is a parking ramp on the southwestern corner of Grand Avenue and Cretin Avenue.

Please also remember to bring a nonperishable food item for a donation.

President’s Corner

Hey, everyone. Thanks to those who turned out for the October meeting at DTN/Telvent. Bryan's presentation was very interesting for me (and I assume the rest of the group there), and his pictures from Wadena after the tor-nado were quite sobering.

Also, at the meeting we took our nearly-final step toward becoming an NWA chapter by passing a set of constitutional amendments. We've got one more amendment to pass, then we should be in.

On June 17 this year the larg-est tornado outbreak in Min-nesota recorded history oc-curred. We've got a treat for you - at this month’s meeting we will have a forum where people involved that day will talk about their experi-ences. We have confirma-tions from people not only at the Twin Cities WFO, but

"probables" from officials from other NWS offices and some non-NWS people. I think this is going to be a great forum, but it will only be great if you get the word out for this event. There are more details elsewhere in the newslet-ter. This is coming together at the last minute, but it looks like it will happen. We'll get you more infor-mation as it becomes available, so stay tuned and be ready to act. Thanks to Matt Friedlein and Doug Dokken for getting the big pieces into place.

Other than that, please look at your late winter and spring sched-ules and think about taking a day to work at a science fair. This is a great opportunity for us to show the next generation of meteorolo-gists and earth scientists that, yes, there is a future for their passion, just as there was for ours. Send a note to any of the officers to find out what you need to know.

— Cb

In this Newsletter:

Upcoming meeting

will be on Friday,

November 12,

2010 at 6:30pm

Information about

future conferences

in NewsNotes —

p2

We’re getting even

closer to becoming

a joint AMS/NWA

chapter

Proposed Consti-

tutional Amend-

ments — p3

A look back at the

“Big Blow” of

1913, the extraor-

dinary November

storm — p4 Inside this issue:

News Notes 2

Member Birthdays 2

Chapter News 3

Member News 5

October 2010

meeting minutes

5-6

Photos from the

last meeting

5-6

Editor’s Notes 7

Upcoming Meeting—Friday November 12, 2010

November 7, 2010

Volume 32, Issue 3

Editor:

Meredith A. Willems

Twin Cities Chapter of the

American Meteorological Society

November 2010 Newsletter

give the year.

You probably do need to re-new (ahem) sometime soon, so send in your information to Bryan at:

treasurer@twincitiesams.org.

These are the members whose November birthdays we have on file.

Please let Bryan know your birthday when you renew the next time. You do not need to

Scott Gillespie - 11/6 Jon Chrzanowski - 11/15 Doug Gniot - 11/14 Rich Naistat - 11/18 Stacy Fleenor - 11/26 Thomas Hultquist - 11/27 Meredith Willems - 11/27

Member Birthdays

NewsNotes

C o n v e n t i o n l o c a t i o n : www.mnstormchasingconvention.com/MNSCClocation.htm

2011 Speakers:

KEYNOTE SPEAKER: Tim Samaras (TWISTEX)

Ryan Wichman (With Adam Lucio and Jesse Risley)

Jenna Blum (New York Times Bestselling Author, with her new book THE STORM CHASERS)

Dean Baron (MidwestChaser.Com)

Michael Stanga (TheWxPage.com)

Justin Turcotte (Meridian Environmental Technology, Inc.)

IMPORTANT: Seating for the event is VERY lim-ited and you are encouraged to register as soon as possible! Registration details are available at: http://www.mnstormchasingconvention.com/MNSCCregistration.htm

— Michael Stanga

If you have news of a professional conference or other gath-ering that would be of interest to our members, send it to Meredith Willems at newsletter@twincitiesams.org.

The fifth annual Northern Plains Winter Storm Conference is set again for St. Cloud…right in our backyard! This two-day event is hosted by the St. Cloud State University meteorology depart-ment, as well as their student chapter of the National Weather Association. It will be held this year on November 15-16th. This conference has had multiple speakers from the Twin Cities AMS over the past several years and is a fabu-lous opportunity to learn the latest and greatest about this region’s cool season weather. For more information, follow the conference web site at: http://www.stcloudstate.edu/eas/npwsc/.

The 2011 Minnesota Storm Chasing Convention will take place February 26, 2011 at The Holiday Inn - Arbor Lakes in Maple Grove, MN.

New This Year:

Register ONLINE thru Paypal. Mail-in regis-trations will not be accepted.

The price of admission covers a lunch buf-fet!

The convention website has changed to: www.mnstormchasingconvention.com.

Video hour!

November 2010 Page 2

Twin Cities Chapter of the American Meteorological Society

November 2010 Newsletter

There is a lot of Chapter News this month!

In case you missed last month’s newsletter and meet-ing, our chapter was named Chapter of the Year by the American Meteorological So-ciety. This is quite an accom-plishment. We will be pre-sented the award at the Janu-ary 2011 annual AMS meeting in Seattle.

We have almost, almost, com-pleted the steps needed to apply for National Weather Association chapter status. There is one more Amendment to the Constitution which needs to be voted upon. See elsewhere in this newsletter for details. We will take a few moments at the beginning of the meeting on November 12th to vote on this; that will be the only chapter business planned for our full and exciting meet-ing. It’s important that we fin-ish this last piece of business so the NWA chapter member-

ship application can be final-ized.

Speaking of exciting meetings, if you missed October’s meet-ing at Telvent/DTN, you cer-tainly missed a good one. Bryan’s presentations on the August 9, 2009 tornadoes was quite interesting, but it paled in comparison to his personal story and photographs of the devastation caused by the June 17, 2010 Wadena EF4 tornado. He will be covering the Wadena tornado more fully at the meeting on Novem-ber 12th – I would highly rec-ommend you come see it.

Our chapter will be one of the sponsors of the 2011 Minne-sota Storm Chasing Conven-tion, which will be held on February 26, 2011 in Maple Grove. Mark your calendars, and go register online! See the NewsNotes section for details.

Our chapter is in need of a new Science Fair Coordinator. Tony Sudano, who graciously

performed this duty last year, is moving on. See Member News for details. Please con-sider stepping up to perform this valuable and enriching service. Think of the excited students! Think of their smil-ing, adoring faces! Think of the goodwill you will bring to the community! Think of enhanc-ing your professional resume! Think of contacting any of the officers if you’re interested. Otherwise, we’ll have to go around offering deals you can’t refuse. ;-)

Another deal you can’t refuse is renewing your membership. For many of us, this is the time of year when our 12-month membership expires. Sign up for another year of exciting meetings with our award-winning chapter. See the Be A M e m b e r p a g e o n www.twincitiesams.org for details, send your check in to Bryan soon, or bring it to the meeting!

This will be presented at the November meet-ing.

Proposed Constitutional Amendments to the Twin Cities Chapter of the American Meteoro-logical Society.

This amendment is proposed due to the ex-pected affiliation with the National Weather Association.

Amendment X (Revised wording for Article IV

This Chapter is an autonomous chapter of the American Meteorological Society and of the National Weather Association.

Proposed Constitutional Amendment

Chapter News

November 2010 Page 3

Volume 32, Issue 3

Consider becoming

a science fair judge

or our chapter

Science Fair

Coordinator.

The Great Lakes have experi-enced many gales or “blows” in the late fall, and the deadli-est of those is known simply as “The Big Blow”. Unfortu-nately, many of the exact de-tails can’t be known, because the Weather Bureau didn’t have the capability to collect the types of upper air data that meteorologists live by today.1 Furthermore, weather offices were still far and few in between, and national weather data were only pro-vided to the offices twice each day. In many ways, this storm has been compared to the famous Great Lakes storm that struck in January of 1978.2

The Great Lakes region en-joyed warm, dry weather in the days leading up to the storm. High pressure was situ-ated over the eastern U.S., and winds were mostly out of the southwest.1 Duluth was the first city to notice a decline in the weather, observing a 62 mph wind speed around 7 pm on Friday, November 7.3 Shortly after, an Arctic cold front passed and the wind died abruptly. However, this was merely a false lull that pro-vided a false sense of security for many ships’ captains. By Monday morning, the winds were back up to 60 mph in Duluth, accompanied by a low of 6° F.

On Saturday morning, a low pressure system was in On-tario with a strong cold front draped to the southeast across the Lakes.1 Behind it was a

massive, cold high pressure center. More importantly, a second, weak low pressure system was making its way across the southern states.1,2 In Michigan, Port Huron was hit by blizzard conditions that downed telegraph lines. At Sault Sainte Marie, winds were below 40 mph, but vessels on the open water reported winds near 80 mph.3 Strong gale winds aligned perfectly with the long northerly fetch of Lake Huron, offering ships no place to hide. At least 8 boats and 200 lives were lost on Lake Huron that day.

Conditions completely deterio-rated on Sunday.1,2 The south-ern low, now over Virginia, was strengthening. During the day, the northern low and its cold air were pulled into the southern system, resulting in a classic bomb situation. The low deepened and moved into northwestern Pennsylvania, while the Arctic high pushed its way into Minnesota, result-ing in furious winds through-out the Lakes Region. Cleve-land witnessed steady north-west winds above 50 mph, with a maximum gust of 79 mph. Buffalo, N.Y. recorded a record low pressure of 28.77 inches of mercury. Sleet and snow knocked out communi-cation and transportation in both cities. On the four upper lakes, winds were sustained above 70 mph through the afternoon with gusts exceed-ing 90 mph.

Heavy snow continued to fall

on the upper Great Lakes on Monday, but ships “at sea” began to lift anchor and search for safe ports. The people of Cleveland were not only bur-ied in snow, they were without safe drinking water due to the high waves that occurred on Sunday.

All told, at least 253 people from 12 ships died on the Lakes during the storm (41 people and 2 ships on Lake Superior). Many other ships were either stranded or dam-aged. The Weather Bureau never considered that such high winds were possible with the storm, and several politi-cians immediately called for an investigation of the Weather Bureau’s practices. The “missed” forecast was simply a result of a sparse observation network and a failure to pre-dict the correct track for the southern low. As a result of the disaster, important changes were soon instituted in the hope of providing better services for the future.

— Anthony Stender

Sources: 1. Brown, David G. White hurricane, a great lakes November gale and America’s deadliest maritime disaster. Interna-tional Marine and McGraw-Hill, USA, 2002, 250 p.

2. Deedlerr, W.R. “’Hell hath’ no fury like a Great Lakes fall storm, Great Lakes w h i t e h u r r i c a n e , N o v e m b e r 1913,”Accessed on the web on 11/6/2010 at http://www.crh.noaa.gov/dtx/stm_1913.php.

3. Armington, J.H. (editor), Climatological data for November, 1913: District num-ber 4, the lake region. Monthly Weather Review, 41 (1913), 1678-1687.

A Look at Weather History: The “Big Blow”, November 7-10, 1913

All told, at least

253 people from

12 ships died on

the Lakes during

the storm (41

people and 2

ships on Lake

Superior).

November 2010 Page 4

Twin Cities Chapter of the American Meteorological Society

November 2010 Newsletter

Tony Sudano is leaving

Weather Eye Radio Network

this month and returning

home to Ohio. He will be

studying GIS at Cleveland

State.

If you have news, professional or per-

sonal, that you’d like to share, send it

to Meredith Willems at:

newsletter@twincitiesams.org.

Minutes from the October 2010 meeting

Now that the Constitutional changes have been approved, we can submit final paperwork to the NWA.

Next on the agenda was dis-cussion of chapter sponsorship of the Minnesota Storm Chas-ing Convention which will take place on Saturday, February 26, 2011 in Maple Grove. The keynote speaker will be Tim Samaras. The chapter can have a small table at no cost. It was

generally agreed that the chapter should sponsor the convention and use the table.

The next big event on the hori-zon is the Northern Plains Win-ter Storm Workshop which will be held in St. Cloud on Novem-

ber 15-16th, 2010. There was discussion about when and where the chapter’s November meeting will be held, due to the workshop taking place one week before our normal meet-ing time. The November meet-ing will most likely be moved to take place the same week as the workshop, but final details still need to be ironed out. An announcement will be made through email, the website

and the November newsletter to the membership about the meeting date and time.

Chris Bovitz then shared the letter he received from the national AMS awarding our

The October meeting, held at Telvent/DTN in Burnsville, was called to order at 7:00pm by President Chris Bovitz. Intro-ductions of the dozen or so members present were made. Bovitz read the September 2010 meeting minutes and they were approved with no adjustments by those present.

Treasurer Bryan Howell pre-sented the financial state of the chapter and reviewed last year. During the 2009-2010 chapter year $739 were taken in and $878 were spent; a de-crease of $139 in assets. The chapter now has $184 in the bank and $175 in cash, for a total of $359. These figures represent the financial state of the chapter before any dues were collected at the October meeting.

Paper copies of the proposed Bylaws and the Constitutional Amendments was distributed to the members in attendance. Chris briefly reviewed both, and each was approved by a voice vote of the members present. (Ed. – see the Septem-ber and October 2010 newslet-ters for the full text of the pro-posed ByLaws and proposed Amendments.)

There was discussion about the next step for achieving NWA chapter membership.

Member News

Volume 32, Issue 3

November 2010 Page 5

Continued on page 6

Chapter members tour Telvent/DTN after the meeting and presentation.

chapter Outstanding Chapter of The Year for last year. There will be a formal presentation at the January 2011 Annual AMS meeting in Seattle. This is the first time our chapter has been selected – congratula-tions all around, and especially to last year’s officers: Presi-dent Chris Bovitz, Vice Presi-dent Matt Friedlein, Treasurer Bryan Howell and Secretary/Editor Kevin Huyck. A special thanks was given to Matt Friedlein for his good work in

putting together our applica-tion.

Discussion turned back to the upcoming November meeting, which will most likely be held at St. Thomas University in St. Paul. The topic will be the June 2010 tornado outbreak in Min-nesota. Storm chaser stories are needed as well as contri-butions from the Grand Forks and Duluth NWS offices. The officers are also working on finding local Emergency Man-

agers to speak.

Matt Friedlein is still working on, and still needs help with, the chapter poster. The poster will be displayed at the annual AMS meeting.

Doug Dokken shared the news that he and Kurt Scholz had attended the 3M Teachers’ Workshop.

The meeting was adjourned at 7:30pm.

Minutes from the October 2010 meeting (continued)

November 2010 Page 6

Twin Cities Chapter of the American Meteorological Society

November 2010 Newsletter

Bryan Howell presenting at the October meeting.

There is certainly a lot going on this month. Check out the Chapter News and NewsNotes sections. The Northern Plains Winter Storm Workshop is finally almost here, taking place next week in St. Cloud. And spring weather is right around the corner. Well, okay, maybe not right around the corner. But soon enough that the Minnesota Storm Chasing Convention is being planned already.

In case you didn’t already know, Minnesota is having a record-breaking tornado year in 2010. Some of us got a view of that Minnesota severe weather at October’s meeting. There will be more, much more, at this month’s meeting on November 12th. We’ve got a big room reserved at Owens Science Hall at St. Thomas, and many speakers coming. See the website’s homepage for a printable flyer to post or hand-out. Bring your coworkers, bring your friends, heck, bring your Great-Aunt Edna. Let’s do our best to fill the auditorium and have a great discussion.

We are almost finished with making amendments to our Constitution so that we can become a National Weather Association chapter. The final application should be com-pleted soon. This will be a step

forward for our chapter. Your officers are doing their best to make this an active, robust chapter, and have been recog-nized for that effort by the American Meteorological Soci-ety.

Something that will continue to raise our profile in the local community is providing sci-ence fair judges this spring. The chapter also needs a new Science Fair Coordinator. This is rewarding, professionally enriching work. Please con-sider making this important contribution to our profession and our chapter.

A meteorological event that raised our profession’s profile in the public eye was the “Big Blow” of 1913, a major winter storm that affected much of the northeastern third of the country. Anthony Stender writes about it in his “A Look at Weather History” story, in his usual interesting way. It was a devastating storm for the Great Lakes Region, with un-precedented loss of life and property. What little weather data was available for the 1913 storm greatly resembled a storm that occurred January 27-29, 1978. Not many people are still alive who remember the first storm, but those of us over 40 will probably remem-ber the very similar storm of

late January 1978.

I’d like to ask you to remember where you were during the Blizzard of ’78 and I’d be very interested to hear your stories. Mine is this: I was ten years old, and my family and I were attempting to move cross-country from California to Con-necticut that week. Our dog spent days in a sedative-induced haze due to our can-celled and delayed flights, our moving van was delayed for a week, and we (my parents, my younger brother, I and the dog) spent that week in a tiny little hotel room while my brother and I started school in an unfamiliar and snowbound town without winter clothing and my mother battled double pneumonia and celebrated her birthday. I can’t repeat here Mom’s words to Dad regarding her opinion of the wisdom of that move, but suffice to say, it was a most memorable storm to me. Who knows, maybe that’s why I became a meteor-ologist?

I hope that many of you will be at the meeting on Friday. It should be a fascinating presen-tation about the Minnesota severe weather event of June 17, 2010. See you there!

— Meredith Willems

Editor’s Notes

Volume 32, Issue 3

November 2010 Page 7

Do you have an idea for a weather story? News from the field? Professional updates? Interesting information? Did you attend a confer-

ence and would like to share your experience? We need your contributions! If you have questions or contributions, please contact

newsletter@twincitiesams.org.

Call for Contributions