This past week (October 7-11) was Northern Vermont University’s Fall Break. Despite not holding classes, Atmospheric Sciences students, faculty, and staff were quite busy!
Faculty Attend UCAR Annual Meeting
Atmospheric Sciences faculty attended the 2019 UCAR Annual Members Meeting in Boulder, Colorado. Dr. Hanrahan and Dr. Preston participated in workshops and breakout sessions to learn about and provide guidance on the directions of UCAR (University Corporation for Atmospheric Research) and NCAR (National Center for Atmospheric Research). They also toured some NCAR facilities including the NCAR-Wyoming Supercomputing Center and the Marshall Field Site.
Dr. Preston and Dr. Hanrahan pose in front of the National Center for Atmospheric Research 
The entrance to the NCAR-Wyoming Supercomputing Center 
Dr. Hanrahan in front of Cheyenne, a supercomputer at the NCAR-Wyoming Supercomputing Center 
Dr. Preston takes a photo at the Marshall Field Site
Students Visit NWS Offices
Five students spent their fall break traveling around the southeast U.S. They visited three National Weather Service offices: Peachtree City/Atlanta, Georgia, Huntsville, Alabama, and Jacksonville, Florida. While at the NWS Jacksonville, they met up with Matt Zibura (wearing the bright blue shirt in the photo below), an LSC alumnus (’87).
Matt Zibura ’87 (left) with NVU Atmospheric Sciences students 
Equipment Upgrades
Back at NVU-Lyndon, Dr. Jay Shafer finished installing a wireless Davis Instruments Vantage Pro2 Plus weather station next to our research-grade weather station. This new weather station will assist Northview Weather LLC in creating an intercomparison of solar radiation data between the research-grade Kipp and Zonen solar radiation sensors and the Davis solar radiation sensor. This is useful because our Lyndon Mesonet of weather stations around Vermont mostly uses the same Davis Vantage Pro2 Plus weather stations (which Northview Weather is using to create an incoming solar radiation climatology). We will also now be able to conduct comparisons among the Davis Instruments rain gauge, the research-grade Texas Electronics rain gauge, and the manual CoCoRaHS rain gauge. Jason Kaiser, the Atmospheric Sciences Data Systems Administrator, also completed a much-needed replacement of a projector in one of Atmospheric Sciences classrooms during the fall break.
Davis station (left), research-grade station (center), CoCoRaHS rain gauge (right) 
Ensuring the new projector replacement is sharply focused
