1996

1/8/96 Hannah Wittmeyer Witt daughter

"Hey Daddy. Did Rudolf get hit by the lightning and that's why his nose is red?" It took repeated inquiries for Hannah's parents to compose themselves and give the obvious answer. "Why, yes, Hannah."

1/8/96 Zachary Eitzen csu-atmos

David Mocko is getting his car registered in MD. He asked Zach for personal plate ideas. Reply:
"top ten suggestions for david mocko's personalized plate:

		10. TWCFAN	9. INTWPRS	8. NJDVLS
		7.  VORTMAX	6. KORPNCH	5. TRWCHSR
		4.  MAMATUS	3. WXWENIE	2. MR. F5

and the number one suggestion for david mocko's personalized plate is:

		1. ILUVJJ

(might be a little difficult to explain to a girlfriend, though) JJ = Jeanetta Jones.

1/8/96 Nicholas Gallus Gallus son

Bill Gallus used to think the Wittmeyer kids were strange... no longer. "Everytime our furnace clicks on (which is often in Iowa) and makes its rumble, Nicholas yells "thunder". I constantly tell him it is winter and it isn't thunder. It seems to make no difference. In addition, he likes to go into his room after dark and flick the lights on and off rapidly, calling it lightning and asking me to make thunder noises. Finally, he likes me to draw pictures with him, and always wants me to draw lightning (no problem) and thunder (???)" All of this with no encouragement from Bill.

1/8/96 Greg Stumpf nssl

Can't say this ever went up for a vote so here goes: Greg's cat is named Xenia. Of course you all know why. Greg TOOK HIS CAT TO XENIA, OH just to get a picture of her on the city welcome sign. What I want to know is, is this sign a pre or post-tornado welcome sign?

1/16/96 Greg Thompson rap-ncar

Greg was involved in the game "Outburst!", where the players shout out items which match a given category. When the subject of "signs of the zodiac" came up, others cried out "Aquarius" and the like, while Greg inadvertantly chimed in with "Virga!".

1/16/96 Mark Branson csu-atmos

Mark was playing a new computer war simulation game he got for Christmas at the Witts during holiday football viewing. In the game, some military units can 'dig in' defensively. He was talking about his current situation in the game, noting the enemy's high "entrainment" value. He was immediately and appropriately accosted by the Witts in his mispeak of the word, "entrenchment".

1/22/96 Joe Terry nasa gsfc

Said "The one thing that I'm really gonna hate about dying is that I'm gonna miss so many great snowstorms."

2/5/96 Kelley Wittmeyer csu-atmos

After reading a banner that proclaimed Coffeeville as the site of the famous Dalton gang raid, Kelley guffawed and exclaimed, "That's not what Coffeeville is famous for! It's famous for having had the world's largest hailstone fall there."

2/19/96 Greg Stumpf nssl

Kelley sent Greg an email saying that Tipton, CA is the almond capital of the world. It took Greg less than five (5) minutes to fire back with:
"Did you know that tipton, OK holds the record highest temperature for the state? It has hit 120F there three times (last time was in 1994).
"Did u know that tipton, KS was the sight of the infamous mega-supercell of june 15, 1992, and that we witnessed a 17-minute anticyclonic tornado there?
Also, Mitchell County KS (where tipton is) had 5-hours straight of solid Tornado Warning!

"And just north of Tipton is Cawker City, KS, the sight of the world's largest ball of twine! (and I saw it!)."

2/19/96 Mike Meyers nws-gjt

Grand Junction TV Reporter in a Groundhog Day Interview:
"So Dr. Meyers, what physical mechanisms allow the groundhog to forecast the weather?"

Mike Meyers responding as GJT NWS SOO:
"Well, it has to do with the conditional solenoidal stratification of the ozone layer and it's implications and teleconnections with the groundhog's homeostatic fluctuations."

For those lucky enough to live in the Grand Junction area, this interview will be seen on tonight's news (2-2-96).

2/26/96 Ian Wittmeyer csu-atmos

On a recent ski vacation, a number of the members of what we like to call the "Wx-Weenie Hall of Fame" were gathered together. We're talking about some of the guys that were the reason that this list was started in the first place, including Ian Wittmeyer, Steve Hodanish and Chris Landsea, so you knew that sooner or later there was going to be trouble. Sure enough, there were many wx-weenie one-liners thrown out over the course of the trip, but one particular incident stood out.

On a number of nights, poker was played. At one of these games late into the night, Hodanish had won a pot, but since he was dealing the next hand, he neglected to stack up the chips he had just won. Soon, there wasn't much room between all of his chips and the next growing pot. Ian suggested that some sort of boundary was needed to denote which chips were Steve's and which were in the pot. This got the weather weenie thought process going and Ian quickly placed a number of red chips along the "leading edge" of Steve's chip pile and told everyone that it was a warm front. Then Landsea placed a couple of blue chips in front of the red line of chips and said "Oh, look: It's now turned into a stationary front!" At this point, Hodanish was laughing so hard that he was fighting back tears of laughter and telling everyone to stop it so he could finish dealing the game, which only egged everyone else on all the more, and it got really ugly, with comments about the enhanced convection (stacks of white chips) located behind the front and other related gems. But Ian is the one who started it all, so he is hereby nominate for his "poker chip warm front".

3/25/96 David Mocko gsfc

Put together an extensive web page about the Blizzard of '96 complete with photographs and antics of a party he and his buddies had that night (drinking beers, pulling up maps...). This one needs to be seen to be "appreciated". http://climate.gsfc.nasa.gov/~mocko/blizzard.html

3/25/96 Dr William Gray csu-atmos

Dr Gray is trying to figure out what the great ocean conveyor belt is doing this year so he can use it in his '96 forecast. he came into Jim Kossin and John Knaff's office and suggested that they drop Knaff out in the northern atlantic wearing a "zero buoyancy vest" and if he sinks, then the conveyor belt isn't running.

4/1/96 Don Dazlich csu-atmos

At Zach Eitzen's lunch at Jays, the two-bean soup was served during a discussion of baroclinic instability. One side of the soup was dark and one side was light, prompting Don to comment that differential heating would set up a temperature gradient, and that if you could rotate the cup you could model baroclinic instability in the soup.

4/1/96 Scott Denning csu-atmos

Following the above discussion, Scott was prompted to recommend the soup at Suehiro Japanese Restaurant because of its excellent Rayleigh-Benard convection.

4/1/96 Philip Gabriel csu-atmos

At the end of the day when he is getting ready to leave, Phillip announces, "Time to make like a particle, and scatter!".

4/22/96 Jim Kossin csu-atmos

Last Saturday while strolling to Suehiro's, Tara Jensen, Cara-Lyn Lappen and Jim were talking about how Cara-Lyn was failing her JT300 (technical journalism) class and she was asking if anyone had any suggestions on how she would pass. Later on at dinner, Jim slipped into weather weenie mode by saying "I have an idea about your JTWC class" (JTWC being the Joint Typhoon Warning Center in Guam). What we want to know is when did Cara-Lyn start communting to Guam to take her technical journalism class?

4/22/96 Maggie DeMott DeMott daughter

Charlotte had turned on the weather channel this morning while getting 2 yr old Maggie's breakfast together. Maggie got into eating her cereal, and then hears the music they play while they show the local forecast. She looks up, stops eating, and says "Weh-duh Chan-oh!" Not realizing what she had said for a few seconds, Charlotte said "What did you say!?" She got a big grin on her face, pointed to the television and said "Dat duh Weh-duh Chan-oh, Mommy!"

4/29/96 Steve Miller & Phil Partain csu-atmos

For their artistic portrayal of atmospheric mesoscale phenomenon in terms of pork on a whiteboard in rm 412 entitled: A Boaring Day at the Office with a secondary title of: The Wild Undular Boar Theory. The following concepts were illustrated, along with their real-world counterparts:

		boarticity advection  vorticity advection
		squeal line           squall line
		boariolis effect      coriolis effect
		honey bake low        wake low
		boaroclinic zone      baroclinic zone
		tusk front            gust front
		snoutflow boundary    outflow boundary
		mesohog               mesohigh
		high off the hog      ??????

A pig-like cloud illustration contains the "Babe Rules" tattoo on the left hindquarters)

5/13/96 Kelley Wittmeyer csu-atmos

Upon returning from a trip to the candy machine, Kelley remarked to her officemate Don Dazlich that "Suzy-Qs are an F4". She tried to explain herself by saying that she was merely referring to the buttons that she had to push to make the Suzy-Qs drop out of the machine, but Don said the intended implication of her statement was quite clear.

5/20/96 Steve Hodanish nws-mlb

Here's some classic HO from a recent mail from him, "PS - HOLY Camelions!!!!I am having a very hard time keeping control of my faculties with... 1) chase vacation coming up, 2) TWISTER, and 3 - A phone call from DR FRIDAYS (Head of NWS) office asking ME to send IMMEDIATELY a photo of the GOES 8 launch so they can give it to the new commerce secretary as a gift when he gets sworn in next week!!! (I didn't have one so I had to rip the one off the wall which was hanging in the NWS/MLB office lobby). I also found out that this photo is hanging up in DR Fridays office!! ...[del]... Lord only knows how I am going to sleep tonight...let alone the next couple of nights!!!)
...Give me a home, where the supercells roam, and the tornadoes are a mile or so wide....

5/20/96 NWS-Melbourne Staff nws-mlb

Out of 20 people who work at NWS-MLB, 9 attended TWISTER opening day (MIC, SOO, WCM, 4mets, 2HMTs). When Dorthy was finally "successful" in deploying the "balls" into the tornado, the NWS/MLB staff cheared and clapped. Now, this does not sound all that impressive, but it was ONLY the NWS/MLB staff that clapped (and this theatre was PACKED! And the disappointing part of it is, HO was NOT the one who initiated the cheering. Boy... ya think you know a guy and...

5/20/96 Chris Shaw College of DuPage

Chris saw TWISTER Friday. He had to push past TV news crews to get into the theater and after he'd finished "tossing his cookies", he offered this critique of the movie: FROM THE HOME OFFICE IN NORMAN OKLAHOMA, IT'S THE TOP 10 REASONS WHY MICHAEL CHRICHTON'S "TWISTER" SUCKS...

		10.  It cost me $7.50
		9.   Three words... NO WALL CLOUDS
		8.   The 85,000 pound Dodge RAM pickup truck
		7.   Core punches with no rain
		6.   Not one, single mobile home park
		5.   I can never reach BLUE with my left foot...  oh,
		     sorry, that's why Parker Bros. "Twister" sucks!
		4.   I never had two women fighting over ME during a
		     chase
		3.   Those looked like stratus clouds to me
		2.   The fat, redneck with the B.O. in the next seat

		And the number one reason why Michael Chrichton's
		"Twister" sucks...
		1.   Because those twisters blew when they're
		     SUPPOSED to SUCK!!!!!!

5/20/96 Ian & Kelley Wittmeyer, Mark Branson, Ian Baker, Terry Schuur, Bill Thorson, Steve Finley, Jason Nachamkin, Mike Weissbluth, et al.

Iwitt decided to invite a few people over to watch, ridicule and drink to the horrible movie that aired last week, "Tornado". Here is his email announcement and the weenies that occurred.

		WWUS9 KMKC 082057
		SEL9
		MKC WW 082057

		BULLETIN - IMMEDIATE BROADCAST REQUESTED
		SEVERE WEATHER WEENIE PARTY WATCH NUMBER 1
		NATIONAL WEATHER WEENIE SERVICE KANSAS CITY MO
		357  PM CDT WED MAY  8 1996

		.A..THE WEATHER WEENIE PREDICTION CENTER HAS ISSUED A
		SEVERE WEATHER WEENIE PARTY WATCH FOR

		     PORTIONS OF NORTHERN COLORADO

		EFFECTIVE THIS SATURDAY EVENING UNTIL 1100 PM MDT.

		WEATHER WEENIES...DANGEROUS WEENIEISMS, AND OTHER
		OUTLANDISH WEENIE COMMENTS ARE POSSIBLE IN THESE
		AREAS.

		THE SEVERE WEATHER WEENIE PARTY WATCH AREA IS ALONG
		AND 75 STATUTE FEET EAST AND WEST OF A LINE FROM 120
		FEET NORTH OF 2715 HIGH PLAINS COURT TO 100 FEET
		SOUTH OF 2715 HIGH PLAINS COURT.

		REMEMBER...A SEVERE WEATHER WEENIE PARTY WATCH MEANS
		CONDITIONS ARE FAVORABLE FOR SEVERE WEATHER WEENIE
		PARTIES IN AND CLOSE TO THE WATCH AREA. PERSONS IN
		THESE AREAS SHOULD BE ON THE LOOKOUT FOR THREATENING
		WEATHER WEENIE CONDITIONS AND LISTEN FOR LATER
		STATEMENTS AND POSSIBLE WARNINGS.
		$$

		D... CONDITIONS IMPROVING FOR WEATHER WEENIE PARTY
		INITIATION. CAP IS WEAK AND WILL LIKELY BE GONE BY
		LATE AFTERNOON ON SUNDAY.

		...WITTMEYER

The following labelled food was served:
PBL : Pabst Blue Ribbon - see Baker's weenie'ism 3/27/90
Tubes & Rods : Bugles and Pretzels
Dryline Dip : Texmex dip
Debris : Pico de gallo
Tostito Alley : chips
Not What We're Here For punch : rainbow sherbet punch, see Hodanish 6/23/90
Towering C[a]U : cauliflower & assorted veg's
CAPE Creator Beans : bean casserole
Curly Fries and Potato Wedges were left in the freezer.

Assorted Weenie Comments

When Ian started the grill, someone said, "he's cutting to the chase and getting on it."
The Oklahoma Chase Hat was brought and placed in a prominent location.
Thorson wore a cloud shirt.
Finley trips on step, beer foams over and Ian says, "Overshooting top!". Steve shouts, "Spontaneous convection!"
With respect to this ranch the 'chasers' stayed at, Jason commented it was "ground zero". Says Mark, "it's the chaser's bed and breakfast."
When the movie characters were dancing, it was remarked by several that they were catching some "personal vorticity".
At one point, a chaser leaves his right turn signal on a bit long, says Mark, "He's a right turner!"
A chaser and a Washington beaurocrat are in the barn watching a storm at night and he kisses her. Says Ian, "A real chaser would be watching the storm, not kissing!"
Immediately after the movie, it should be noted that Iwitt and Weissbluth went to the computer room to look at maps.

5/28/96 Somebody... in netland

The Top 10 Rejected Titles for the Movie "Twister"

	10 Totally Gone With The Wind
	9  Lift and Separate
	8  Summer Film So Full of Special Effects We
	    Couldn't Fit in the Plot
	7  The Weather Channel: The Movie
	6  Schindler's Twist
	5  I, Cumulus
	4  Wizard of Oz II: The Search For Toto
	3  Four Weddings & A Funnel
	2  A Funnel Thing Happened On The Way To The Farm

	and the Number 1 Rejected Title for the Movie "Twister"...
	1  Roofless in Seattle

5/28/96 Ian Wittmeyer csu-atmos

On the day his mom drove in for a visit from California, did Ian rush home to be there when they arrived? Well, not really... He rushed home before they got there, grabbed his chase gear and made off for eastern Colorado!

5/28/96> Ian Baker, Ian Wittmeyer, Mark Branson csu-atmos, aster

These boys went to see TWISTER the other night and submit the TWISTER Guide To Tornado Chasing
baker:

wait until the tornado has been reported to get after it. nobody wants to wait around for weather to happen.
make sure you know the intensity of the forecasted tornado before you chase it-REAL chasers only go after the big ones
the only bust we know about is the one in helen hunt's tank top.
chasing at night? no problem! you know where it will be anyway!
property be damned-if you need to drive through a cornfield to get to within 20 feet of a tornado, the farmer will understand. it's in the name of SCIENCE.
be sure to watch the road for farm equipment falling from above.
if it looks like you might be in danger, follow these steps:
try to outrun it in your car
try to outrun it on foot
look for the largest building you can find (preferably on high ground), and go into it.
don't forget, when contemplating a chase, to grab a handful of dirt. this will give you the image of a shaman or other 'in tune with the earth mother' persona, and by slowly releasing dirt from your hand you can have a handy anemometer!

mark:

to better maximum your strategic position relative to the tornado, it's often desirable to leave the paved road and drive along a dirt road that exactly parallels and remains roughly 20 yards away from the paved road you were just on. this will allow you to smash your pickup truck into a bridge so that the tornado can catch up to you and you can watch it whisk your pickup away as you remain perfectly safe under the bridge as the tornado passes directly overhead.
once you have a tornado spotted, don't worry about watching it. instead, you should intensely monitor the real-time data available on your laptop to determine if conditions are favorable for the maintenance of the current storm or the development of new storms.

ian witt:

Don't bother looking at any current data, those 6hr-old upper air analyses will show you exactly which way the tornado will change directions two minutes from now.
Storms invariably wait for chasers to enjoy a nice home-cooked meal and a hot shower before producing any tornadoes.
Instead of watching wind direction, wind speed, temperature and humidity, a chaser should instead become intimately familiar with local soil composition and moisture profiles. Knowledge of these conditions are the final word in tornado prediction.

6/10/96 Jason Nachamkin csu-atmos

Zach and Jason were looking at a developing storm and debating whether it was going to become more impressive or not when a plane passed overhead, flying at low altitude. Jason said, "ah, there's the low-level jet!"

6/24/96 Larry Carey csu-atmos

Larry's personalized license plate reads 70 DBZ. Enough said. I don't believe Larry's been up on the board since the "HAIL" incident...

6/24/96 Gilbert Sebenste niu-atmos

Greg Stumpf reports on Gilbert's new answering machine message:

"Hi! I can't come to the phone right now. If you've seen a tornado today, press
one and tell me about it. If it was a multiple vortex, press 2, 3, 4 and 5. If
you're paranoid about me asking these questions, don't bother pressing buttons--
I know which storm you're on and I'm coming to get you. If you've seen one
tornado, but seen it touch down several times, keep pressing 6 repeatedly. If
you've seen a yahoo, press 7--but only while going at least 90 MPH with your
eyes off the road. Finally, if you've seen nothing, hang up. You obviously don't
have anything to say!"

7/1/96 "Chaille"

The following letter was received by Paul Hebert, MIC at NWS-MIA.
Dear Sir:
Last night, my 7 year old son saw the movie TWISTER. He has abandoned his dreams of being a train engineer and wants to be a meteorologist. Needless to say he was determined to make an even better tornado studying machine. He wanted to empty his bank account to get a tornado sniffing dog.

I told him that the U.S. Government funded scientific research, and suggested he write a grant. I thought you may enjoy his efforts, and I know that he would appreciate some kind of reply to his Grant Request.

.................................................
Attached to the letter was Chaille's proposal:
.................................................
Dear Sirs:
I want to make an experiment to study tornadoes from the inside. I will need a lot of money, so I am asking you for a Grant. I will need these things:

	1 Helicopter
	5 gallons of gas for the helicopter
	5 pilots for the helicopter
	1 stewardess to serve cokes
	1 dog with a good sense of smell (not too big)
	1 crash helmet for the dog
	100 cameras
	100 empty cans of coke (cut into little wings with a hole in the middle)
	100 empty coke cans cut into big wings
	10 video cameras
	1 Doppler radar
	1 truck
	1 camper
	lunch
	2 computers (1 with pictures)
	100 metal boxes for cameras (with a hole so the camera can see outside)
	100 parachutes for the cameras
	1 vacation for my family to Oklahoma and Kansas so we can find tornadoes

I think this will probably cost around $5,000, so send me this money as soon as you can, so I can find the dog with the good sense of smell to sniff the tornadoes. I promised an old lady that we would bring her a video of the inside of a tornado, so I really need to get started. Thank you, Chaille

8/27/96 Mike Meyers nws-gjt

While Witts were out visiting Mike, the Groundhog Day News video tape was requested (2/19/96). Mike went through all 17 of his video tapes before he found it. After the infamous interview, he and Ian Witt kept the tape going, watching Grand Junction local weather forecasts Mike has taped so they could see what the weather was like last February and March!

8/27/96 Hannah Wittmeyer Witt daughter

Hannah noticed a vortex form in the bathtub as the tub was draining. She laughed and announced in a loud voice, "Tornado warning in the bathtub!"

8/27/96 David Mocko nasa-gsfc

Jason Nachamkin told Dave that they had been delayed on a chase by a funeral procession. Dave responded with: "Unbelievable, it only happens to us. When I die, I give you permission to drive my hearse (with my dead body in the back) on a chase if the weather looks good on the day of my funeral."

9/3/96 Ian Wittmeyer csu-atmos

At a recent baby shower, a helium balloon got away. As it lofted into the air, Ian said, "Let's see if there's any low level shear!"

9/3/96 Gilbert Sebenste niu-atmos

Greg Stumpf announced his engagement. Gilbert sent the following reply.
EYYYESSSSSSSSSSSS!!!!!!! May your romance be free of Kelvin-Hemholtz waves... may her happiness radiate upon you as if you were standing in front of a WSR-88D...and may the attraction between you two be stronger than a tornado near a mobile home park. In short, congratulations!

Now, the message on that wedding cake...let's see... what would be appropriate for a WSR-88D algorithm developer? Why yes...it's coming to me now... "Accepted August, 1996...Commissioned September, 1997"!

9/16/96 Ken Harding nws-abr

From out of the woodwork, or make that out of Alaska..., comes Ken and this nomination. It seems that while Ken was with the NWS up in Anchorage, he had business cards printed with the windchill chart on the back!

10/29/96 Ian Wittmeyer csu-atmos

Ian was replying to an email. His reply read, "a likely storm.". He immediately sent another email saying "i mean, a likely story."

11/11/96 Professor Dave Randall csu-atmos

Mark Branson reports that while meeting with Dave, Dave told him about a calico cat he saw in a park during his recent trip to Japan. Calico cats are black, brown and white. So Dave says, "but this cat was strange because on it's one side it was just brown and white while on the other side it was black and white so it was like a mixed rossby-gravity wave."!

11/18/96 Allan Rosenberg

Please check out the following two URL's. The latter can be found as a link from the former also.
http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/7456/tgs.htm
http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/7456/gilbert.htm

11/18/96 Eveready Energizer Battery Bunny

Nominated for their new commercial. Below, Jason Nachamkin describes it in his own words:

I don't normally rave about commercials, but I rarely find them as amusing as the latest Energizer Battery spot. It opens up on a group of three grad student types putting lots of fancy equipment in an old van. The guys then start talking into the camera documentary style about how they have been chasing the little pink bunny for years, and how they have always dreamed of seeing this elusive creature. A couple of them even show some "rare" photographs they got from previous chases as a respectful hush falls over the group.

The next shot is of them 'chasing' through the plains in their well equiped van, including a rotating radar dish on top. Then suddenly, they start yelling excitedly and the camera shows a shakey montage of the van's interior including lots of floor video. The next thing they are running into a field after what they think might be a possible bunny. As they reach their target, the lead chaser turns around with a dejected look and declares "Just a woodchuck" to a chorus of groans.

12/16/96 John Knowles mil

John and Mindy went to the Star Trek movie, "First Contact" the other night. In one of the shots of earth from the space ship John leans over to Mindy and says, "It looks like there is a storm in the gulf." Notes Mindy, you can't take him anywhere!

12/30/96 Steve Miller csu-atmos

Steve observed, w/r/t 'star trek storm in gulf' nomination, the following, "Yea, but did you notice that the storm was ANTICYCLONIC in the NORTHERN HEMISPHERE??!!"

12/30/96 Terry Schuur csu-atmos

Terry was asked, after a successful defense, what he was going to do now. He replied he'd be going to NSSL. When asked if he was going to be able to spend some time chasing, he seriously replied, "It will take some spin-up time before I become a chaser."