Here are some upcoming events that I plan on attending; if you’re going to be there and happen to see me, stop and say hi.
I am no longer a member of Midwest SSTRC Inc.
There was a lot of internal discussion between myself, and members of the Board of Directors of Midwest after I announced I was leaving. There was also discussion between members of the organization in response to my leaving. These discussions were private, and as such I will not repeat them here—I will say that we nearly reached an agreement on my returning as a member, but remained apart on two important questions. Ultimately, I decided that Midwest isn’t the organization for me. I’m not leaving with any ill feelings towards Midwest, and I hope there are no ill feelings towards me.
I still intend to go out into the field to check out severe weather occasionally next summer. It’s something I like to do as a hobby—I’m not a hardcore storm tracker, but I do enjoy seeing nature up close. Hopefully, this year will be a little more interesting without being more dangerous, and I’ll have more to write about. I will be also be taking the NWS storm spotter class again this year, but I’m not sure yet which session I’ll be attending.
If you live in Madison and you’re interested in coming along and checking out the weather at some point this summer, please leave a comment and we’ll see what we can work out.
I have nothing too major to report… my dual band handheld still travels with me in my backpack, but I’m now in school three nights a week. So between work, being in class, doing homework, and my other part time job, I haven’t had much time to devote to fiddling with radios. There also hasn’t been much weather worth going to to see lately, so I haven’t done any storm chasing.
I did participate in a Dane County exercise in August, which was interesting mainly because it was my first operational exposure to ICS.
Exercises are actually very interesting… I hesitate to say “fun”, because emergency response isn’t something that’s supposed to be “fun”. It did feel good to step into a situation where something fairly major was happening, but everyone knew their roles and things gelled pretty quickly. Let’s call it a good working environment.
And with that, I have homework yet to do today, and I’m headed to work this afternoon. But yes, I’m still around.
My car is cleaned out and fueled up, I have a new south central Wisconsin map, rain gear, and most important, a new set of windshield wipers.
There will be no severe weather requiring storm spotter activation this week, anywhere in Dane County. Guaranteed. 
A sure sign that spring is here (besides the temps in the 70’s lately):
April 09-13, 2007 - Wisconsin Tornado and Severe Weather Awareness Week
Drill Day is Thursday April 12, 2007 from 1 to 2 PM.
…MOCK TORNADO DRILL…
THE DRILL WILL START AT 1 PM WITH A MOCK TORNADO WATCH FOR ALL OF WISCONSIN…IN EFFECT THROUGH 2 PM CDT.
BETWEEN 110 PM CDT AND 155 PM CDT…THE 5 NWS OFFICES THAT SERVICE WISCONSIN WILL ISSUE MOCK TORNADO WARNINGS…ON A STAGGERED BASIS. THE MOCK TORNADO WARNING ISSUANCE ORDER WILL BE…
* MILWAUKEE/SULLIVAN NWS OFFICE WILL OCCUR FROM…….120-125 PM CDT
THE MOCK TORNADO WATCH/WARNING DRILL WILL END AT 2 PM CDT.
More details and updates are here (NWS Sullivan)
