Friday, May 8, 2009

Arrived in Norman for 'Media Day'

We finally arrived in Norman for Media Day. It was well orchestrated chaos. Even more than usual, there were print, photo, and TV reporters, documentary companies, seemingly every kind of press out to take pictures of the VORTEX2 fleet. I'll post some pictures later, but this was surely the largest gathering of severe weather science equipment ever. Dozens of science vehicles, a large crowd of media, students, scientists, etc. Even Miss Oklahoma, in costume and crown, was there. Who knew that science was so glamorous? I was assigned a satellite truck and gave 15 interviews between 5:30 am and 9:30 am, then gave one of the introduction talks at the media day gathering. Many VORTEX2 PI's, the Steering Committee, and other scientists were at the meeting and we received several interesting questions from the audience and through call in lines and e-mail. Then we all went to the parking lot to be interviewed some more.

Meanwhile real work had to continue. We were real happy that the broken generator on the rapid-scan DOW had been replaced...until we found out that the generator shop had installed the wrong generator. Now we have to get yet another generator overnight from Texas and beg the shop to work on in on Saturday. Nothing is easy it seems.

The DOW7 rushed out of media day in order to get its transmission replaced. Otherwise the team is working on software, weather instrument inatalls, and completing two Pods for CU.

1 comment:

  1. I want to wish you guys good luck with the project. As a Meteorology student at OU, I'm
    proud and at the same time happy of being here, in Norman, to witness VORTEX2. I will be following the blog.
    Keep up the great work.

    ReplyDelete