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Concur. The College of the Environment at Univ of Washington is excellent as is specifically the Department of Atmospheric Sciences. They have undergrad (BS in Atmospheric Sciences) and graduate programs. They also understand the matrixed nature of the modern atmospheric scientist and offer minors in climatology and meteorology as well as a dual major of a BS in Applied & Computer Math Science. They are heavy on research with long-standing colloborative programs with NOAA, JPL and JISAO. I am not an alum but worked with the Department for years. Very good.

Excellent photo set, thanks for posting. There's a lot to be gleaned from them about the microdynamics of a strong tornado in a densely populated area.

The computing systems are really a system of systems with Supercomputers doing a lot of the heavy lifting and mainframes and client/server stuff taking a significant amount of local load. Here's a high-level diagram of the overall architecture, with some stuff redacted out: Here's a slide deck that details most of the infrastructure and its tie in to numerical weather prediction modelling. There are some interesting computing systems links on slide 68. https://skydrive.liv...B544483E3%21258 The local office stuff is typical of a remote or regional office. Local, high-res models with smaller domains are run at these sites so that 1) the main computing systems are not impeded and 2) it offers the local offices more flexibility in ad-hoc runs for significant or hyper-local forecasting needs. Here's a pic of our local office: http://www.erh.noaa....r/computers.htm Here's a draft roadmap for the NextGen exascale computing systems that will likely power all sorts of government-facing numerical and graphical predictive analysis systems, including those in NOAA, going forward. I only have the draft on this workstation. Ping me via PM if you want the latest and I'll dig it up when I can. https://skydrive.liv...B544483E3%21257

Absolutely excellent read and a great memory. Did you do the same thing over there for 09-10 Feb?

It was indeed a great storm. 20.5" in Clarksburg, right during the height of the holiday season and cold enough throughout the column that it was going to be all snow, all the time. It was great fun to see the storm modeled so well and I was giddy as more and more hitsoric storm analogs popped up as the event drew near. The two things that stick out the most for me were 1) being able to drive an AWD SUV through 20" of powder since it was so light and fluffy (technical term) and 2) taking a look at the ULL back in the midwest as the coastal bas bombing out off the VA capes and thinking, "that's going to make the pivot righ over me and give another inch or two on the wraparound 12 hours from now!!!" Here's a pic from the house on the morning of the 20th. It's safe to say construction on the remodel was at a halt...