Date: 1/25/99

Sender: Neil Stuart

To: Gary Carter

Subject: AMS meeting in Dallas

Mr. Carter,

Sorry it's taken me this long to let you know how the AMS meeting was. I still haven't received the official minutes from the BOGM

meeting. I'm sure Dan McCarthy has been quite busy at SPC with all the severe weather that has been occurring. So, I'll just

summarize with the notes I took. All of us in the BOGM plan to work closely with you and everyone

else at regional Scientific Services Divisions. We hope to be able to use ccmail and maybe regional staff notes to keep

everyone updated on new items related to the BOGM. I'm not sure if AMS-related material is technically a legal use of government

ccmail, so I won't do any blanket regional ccmail until I get an official word.

Since we are the BOGM, which includes military and many other non-NWS entities, we have a large number of people to contact, a

large majority of which probably don't know we exist. Dan's meeting notes will be a basis for creating my own message to send

to folks in the region so they'll know who we are and what we do. Now that Ron McPherson is Executive Director of the AMS, he is

more open to the idea of possibly putting forecasting-related articles in the Bulletin of the AMS, perhaps on some routine

basis. If we can eventually convince the proper authorities, this would certainly encourage operational folks to read more of

the Bulletin of the AMS. Also, we hope to include more BOGM material in the annual administrative issue.

The issue of AMS certification of NWS meteorologists was essentially killed after much debate since AMS certification may

not necessarily add value to our job qualifications. Also, an annual fee for renewal of certification is not desireable. We

were informed that Gen. Kelley has a committee to evaluate proficiency standards in the NWS which is similar to

certification since proficiency would be evaluated at some regular interval.

One of the more exciting prospects for the BOGM is the web page that is already linked to the AMS home page. We have big plans

for the BOGM web site and have many innovative ideas that we hope will attract many operational folks to the web site, perhaps

encouraging more operational folks to become involved with the AMS. We want to make the web site a primary source of important

forecast-related reference information, and also make it somewhat interactive, encouraging people to contact us and other AMS folks

with questions and input.

We also discussed our involvement in the selection of Reichelderfer Award nominees. We will be working with the

Committee on Weather and Forecasting to select nominees. I suppose that names of nominees with documentation could be sent

to BOGM or WAF folks once they've been through the proper channels.

Finally, an AMS career guide for meteorologists will be published later this year and will include a section on NWS and military

meteorologists. I believe one of the BOGM members was very involved in this project.

So, we have some exciting plans, and I hope to make significant contributions during my 3 year term, especially with the web page

development. The overall AMS meeting was very interesting. It was tough attend every session I wanted, but I attended the AMS business

meeting, Tropical Conference, some of the IIps Conference, some of the Conference on Applied Climatology, and met/talked with

many nice people. I really enjoyed the experience, and look forward to more in the coming years.