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Southwest Michigan AMS/NWA
7 Nov 2018
West Michigan Aviation Academy
5363 44th St SE
Grand Rapids, Mi 49512
President Warren Wheeler called the meeting to order at 7:10 PM. All of the board members
were present with the exception of William Marino, Treasurer. There were 17 people in
attendance.
Since William Marino couldn’t attend the meeting, Warren Wheeler, President, gave the financial
report which lists a total funds balance of $771.09. This is down from the last report due to
expenditures for gift cards and audio/visual equipment. We have 25 paid members for 2018,
which is a record high for the club. Dues are currently being accepted for 2019.
Cort Scholten, Vice President, will be sending out an email soon announcing the winter
forecasting contest. The categories this year will likely be: the coldest temperature in Grand
Rapids plus the total snowfall for Grand Rapids, Muskegon and Lansing.
Our speaker for the evening was Andrew Schut. He has officially been a
member of the National Weather Service co-op weather observer program
since 2015 but has been reporting weather observations since the mid 1980s.
His presentation was titled: Measuring the Weather Elements. How Hard Can
it Be? It turns out that since the National Weather Service has chosen to use
automated weather equipment for taking observations back in the 1990s
instead of human observers, it has not been easy.
A lot of work has gone in to improving the sensors for such things as cloud cover, visibility and
precipitation types but the NWS still hires humans to augment the observations at many locations
to ensure accuracy. Here is a photo of the Automated Surface Observation System (ASOS) at the
Gerald R. Ford Airport.
After quite a bit of good discussion about how these sensors work and how accurate they are, the
meeting was adjourned at about 8:30 PM. The next meeting will be held December 12th at the
National Weather Service Office. The talk will be given by Heather Orow, a NWS forecaster who
will be showing slides of her Iceland trip as well as information on space weather. More
information about this talk will be coming soon. We hope to see you there.
Respectfully submitted by
Craig James Woods
Secretary
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