The Texas Weather Conference: Preparedness to
Prediction to Protection
The second annual Texas Weather Conference will
be held on March 3-4, 2017 at the
University of Texas Commons Learning Center in Austin, TX. Program,
registration, and hotel accommodation information is available at our website, www.txwxconference.com.
Continuing with the theme of “Preparedness to
Prediction to Protection,” the Texas Weather Conference seeks to combine the
experience, knowledge, and vision of all those with a stake in weather and
climate in the state of Texas. Public, private, and broadcast meteorologists
will join emergency management officials as well as scientists and students
from Texas universities in discussing the latest in preparedness, prediction,
and response to high-impact weather events and climate extremes. Sharing
cutting-edge research and operational experiences from multiple perspectives is
expected to unite the Texas weather community around common goals and needs to minimize
the detrimental impacts of weather and climate on society.
Papers are solicited in a variety of fields
relevant to the scope of the conference, including: severe weather; river and
flash flooding; drought and water resources; winter weather; tropical weather;
coastal flooding; fire weather; air quality; wind energy; and climate extremes.
Each session will blend the latest in scientific understanding with
presentations on risk communication and response. Therefore, interdisciplinary
sociological studies on high-impact weather and collaborations involving
multiple communities in the weather enterprise are of particular interest. In
addition to oral presentation sessions, abstracts are also solicited for a
poster session encompassing the topics listed above. Student poster submissions
are particularly encouraged.
Please submit abstracts no later than Friday, December 16, 2016. There is no fee
for abstract submission and abstracts are limited to one first author
submission per participant. Please indicate at the time of submission if you
prefer an oral or poster presentation, recognizing that oral presentations will
be limited based on the number of submissions and time constraints. Authors of
accepted presentations will be notified by email and a preliminary program will
be posted by early January 2017.
For additional general information, please
contact the conference planning committee at txwxconference@gmail.com.
Contact information for all committee members is also posted on the website if
you have specific questions to address to them.
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Dr. Harold Brooks
Senior Scientist
National Severe Storms Lab
Dr.
Brooks is a research meteorologist and Senior Scientist in the Forecast
Research and Development Division at the National Severe Storms
Laboratory (NSSL) in Norman, Oklahoma. He majored in physics and math at
William Jewell College and graduated in 1982, with a year at the
University of Cambridge studying archaeology and anthropology. His
master’s degrees are from Columbia University in Atmospheric Sciences.
He has a Ph.D. from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in
Atmospheric Sciences. After graduating from Illinois,
he was a National Research Council Research Associate at NSSL and
joined the permanent staff there in 1992. During his career, his work
has focused on why, when, and where severe thunderstorms occur and what
their effects are. He has been an author on two IPCC Assessment Reports
and a US Climate Change Science Program report on extreme weather. He
organized the Weather Ready Nation workshop to identify scientific
priorities for severe weather forecasting in 2012.. He received the
United States Department of Commerce’s Silver Medal in 2002 for his work
on the distribution of severe thunderstorms in the United States, the
NOAA Administrator’s Award in 2007 for work on extreme weather and
climate change, and the Daniel L. Albritton Award for Outstanding
Science Communicator in 2012 from NOAA’s Oceanic and Atmospheric
Research. He is a Fellow of the American Meteorological Society.
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Dr. Daan Liang
Professor and Interim Director of the National Wind Institute
Texas Tech University
Daan
Liang is a Professor in the Department of Civil, Environmental, and
Construction Engineering (CECE) and holds the position of the Interim
Director of National Wind Institute (NWI), an intellectual hub for
interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary education, research, and
commercialization related to wind science, wind energy, wind engineering
and wind hazard mitigation at Texas Tech University. In this role,
Liang is the chief administrator responsible for leadership, management,
and stewardship of NWI’s facilities, finance, personnel, and operation.
He is also responsible for an interdisciplinary doctoral program in
wind science and engineering and strategic relationships with other
research centers, universities, industries, government agencies, and
national laboratories. His research interests include windstorm damage
assessment, disaster mitigation and recovery, and structural health
monitoring of civil structures. He has been supported by grants from the
National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Energy, the Texas
Department of Transportation, and private industry. Liang received his
B.S. degree in Engineering Management from Tianjin University, Tianjin,
China, in 1997, and the M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in Civil Engineering
from the University at Buffalo, NY, USA, in 1999 and 2001, respectively.
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Dr. Robert Korty
Associate Professor
Texas A&M College of Atmospheric and Geographic Science
Dr.
Korty is an Associate Professor of Atmospheric Sciences at Texas
A&M, where he has been on the faculty since 2007. Dr. Korty earned
his bachelor's degree from the University of Virginia, and Ph.D. in
Climate Physics and Chemistry from MIT. His research interests include
large-scale climate dynamics, and for the last several years has focused
on the question of how tropical cyclones respond to changes in
climate. He teaches courses in dynamics, tropical meteorology, and
statistical methods.
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Rick Mitchell
Meteorologist
NBC 5, Dallas-Fort Worth
Rick
Mitchell has been a broadcast meteorologist for nearly 30 years. He is
a graduate of the University of Nebraska with a degree in atmospheric
science. Out of college he spent three years at AccuWeather before
moving on to television. His television career began in Des Moines
before heading to Oklahoma City where he spent 18 years. He currently
works for KXAS-TV in Dallas-Fort Worth. He has covered just about every
weather phenomenon from tornadoes and hurricanes, to blizzards and ice
storms. In 2018, he will take over as chief meteorologist at KXAS
becoming only the third chief meteorologist in the station’s history. |  | Dr. Clint Dawson
Professor, Department Associate Chair
University of Texas at Austin, Aerospace Engineering and Engineering Mechanics.
Clint
Dawson is a native Texan, graduating with BS and MS degrees from Texas
Tech, and a Ph.D. from Rice University. Since 1995, he has been a
faculty member in the aerospace engineering and engineering mechanics
department, and a core member of the Institute for Computational
Engineering and Sciences at the University of Texas at Austin. He holds
the John J. McKetta Centennial Energy Chair in Engineering, and heads
the Computational Hydraulics Group at UT Austin. His research focuses
on algorithms and high performance computing for coastal ocean modeling,
with applications to hurricane storm surge and environmental modeling.
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2017 Committee/Sponsor Information
Conference Program Committee:
- Dr. Brian Ancell: Assistant Professor of Atmospheric Science, Texas Tech University
- Colleen Coyle: Meteorologist, WFAA-TV (ABC), Dallas Fort-Worth
- Melissa Huffman: General Forecaster, National Weather Service, Houston/Galveston WFO
- Dr. Chris Nowotarski: Assistant Professor of Atmospheric Science, Texas A&M University
- Tim Oram, Meteorological Services Branch Chief, National Weather Service, Southern Region Headquarters
- Martin Ritchey, Emergency Management Coordinator, Caldwell County
- Dr. Amanda Schroeder, Hydrologist, National Weather Service, West Gulf River Forecast Center
- Chikage Windler: Chief Meteorologist, KEYE-TV (CBS), Austin
- Dr. Zong-Liang Yang: Professor and Director of the Center for Integrated Earth System Science, University of Texas
Conference Host Team (Austin/San Antonio National Weather Service WFO): - Trevor Boucher, General Forecaster
- Nick Hampshire, Lead Forecaster, Co-Chair
- Dr. Larry Hopper, General Forecaster, Co-Chair
- Aaron Treadway, Meteorologist
- Jon Zeitler, Science and Operations Officer
Conference Logistics Team (Texas Floodplain Management Association):
- Markie Casebier: Executive Office Administrator
- Selena Mirza: Projects Manager
- Roy Sedwick, CFM: Executive Director
Sponsors:
2017 EM Panelist Information
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Jeff Braun
Fort Bend County
Jeff Braun has worked in local government for over 30 years, including service as City Manager in three communities. He was appointed as the Emergency Management Coordinator of Fort Bend County in 2003.
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Maribel Martinez
U.S. DOE Pantex Plant
Dr. Maribel Martinez
has over 10 years experience in Emergency Management working at the
local, state, and national government levels. This includes 6 years as
the Assistant Emergency Management Coordinator for the
Amarillo/Potter/Randall Office of Emergency Management and 3 years
within the Consolidated Nuclear Security Pantex Emergency Management and
Safeguards and Security where she is currently the Vulnerability
Assessments Section Manager and site Meteorologist/Emergency Management
support during high weather impact events. Maribel is an IAEM Certified
Emergency Manager and graduated from Texas Tech University with a
Masters in Atmospheric Science and a doctorate in Wind Science and
Engineering. |
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Eric Meyers
Navarro County
Emergency
Management Coordinator for Navarro County since January of 2000.
Navarro County OEM is an ALL VOLUNTEER office within the county. As EMC,
we have worked a wide variety of incidents including HAZMAT incidents,
wildfires, assistance with LE operations, major sheltering operations,
and very specialized incidents, such as the STS107 Columbia Recovery
Mission. One of our primary roles is the coordination of all weather
related events. We have dealt with every aspect of weather related
operations including tornadoes, severe thunderstorms, winter weather,
and especially flash flooding. Our office is dynamic and fluid to be
able to respond, recover, mitigate and plan for the hazards which
present themselves to Navarro County. | |
Martin Ritchey
Caldwell County
Martin
Ritchey is Chief of Homeland Security and Emergency Management
Coordinator for Caldwell County Texas and serves as Chairman of Capital
Area Council of Government’s Homeland Security Task Force. Mr. Ritchey
has responded to multiple tornadoes, floods, major fires, commuter and
freight rail incidents, commercial aviation accidents, a major bridge
collapse, several mass casualty – mass fatality incidents. In the past
two years he coordinated three presidentially declared flood disasters
and the deadly hot air balloon accident in July of 2016.
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Steve Rosa
Brazoria County
Steve
Rosa currently serves as the Emergency Management Coordinator for
Brazoria County. Steve have worked at Brazoria County for 12 years,
starting as the Strategic National Stockpile Coordinator in the
Bio-Terrorism division of the health department for 3 years. He then
accepted the position of Deputy Emergency Management Coordinator and
held that position for 3 years. In 2010 he was appointed by County
Judge E.J King as the Emergency Management Coordinator. He was
reappointed to this position on January 1, 2015 by County Judge L.M.
“Matt” Sebesta Jr. Steve is celebrating 39 years of marriage, has 3
children and 4 grandchildren.
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Shel Winkley (Moderator)
KBTX, Bryan / College Station
Shel
Winkley is the Chief Meteorologist at KBTX in Bryan / College Station,
Texas. He has been with the station since 2009, when he started as
Morning Meteorologist, and worked prior to that at KFDA in Amarillo
(where he was known a "Shotgun Shel"). Shel is a proud member of the
Fightin' Texas Aggie Ol' Army Class of 2007 and has the honor and
opportunity to help out with weather related forecasts & situations
for Aggie Athletic events. |
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