Greetings WRFlings

[On location in Boulder, Colorado]
Yes, the title of this post is from a note posted on the side of the cardboard cutout that’s on stage in the lecture room (more on that later). I can’t take credit for it, unfortunately, haha. Anyway, The first day of the WRF Tutorial out here at NCAR (Foothills Lab, not the mega-cool Mesa Lab, unfortunately) was pretty good, even though we did have to wake up ridiculously early this morning. We didn’t get any hands-on work in today (our first actual practice session is tomorrow afternoon), as the whole day was basically lectures on basics of the structure of the model suite and the dynamical guts of the model itself. This all is made a bit more complicated by the fact that, even though back in the day WRF was originally planned to be a one-size-fits-all model, there are now two almost completely separate versions that use different dynamical cores (among other things): WRF-NMM (Nonhydrostatic Mesoscale Model, favored by NCEP) and WRF-ARW (Advanced Research WRF, favored by NCAR). A couple of the talks were even interesting, too. 😉 And then one of the speakers in the morning started out his presentation on guitar, singing a song he “wrote” called, “Give WRF a Chance.” The lyrics were sooooo nerdy. 🙂 But the highlight of the workshop/tutorial today was definitely coming into the lecture room and seeing a big cardboard cutout of Worf from “Star Trek” on stage next to the lectern. I guess he’s their mascot, haha. Who said atmospheric scientists didn’t have a sense of humor? 🙂
There are about 60 people form around the world at this tutorial though, it’s pretty cool. And a good number of them are grad students, which is really cool. There are even a few from Australia (including from Monash University and the University of Melbourne!), I’ve gotta make sure to talk to them at some point. Tonight Walter & I hung out for awhile and went to dinner on Pearl Street with a grad student from UW-Madison named Claus, he’s a pretty cool guy. And there was at least one other person besides him that I talked to today who was familiar with Gustavus and where Cumberland was, which is definitely not a common occurrence outside the Midwest. 😉
The weather’s been pretty nice out here so far, and tomorrow’s gonna be fantastic, with a high up near 60. But then tomorrow night we’re gonna get some snow and one heck of a cold front, which’ll drop the temps down to 11 overnight Tuesday, and they won’t even get to 20 on Wednesday. Welcome to the Front Ranges, I guess. I’m suddenly regretting not bringing something warmer than what I did, but it’s not like it’ll be pleasant to spend much time outside anyway with a bitter windchill, so I should be able to get by okay. Some morning this week I’ll have to find a decent sightline to take some pictures of the Flatirons, though, even if I have to brave some cold!