Proceedings of the recent 36th AMS Severe Local Storms conference in Nashville are now online. My new boss, Dr. Pam Heinselman, was one of the co-chairs. She never even broke a sweat!

It was a terrific conference. Highlights included:

• Dave Lewellen’s ultra-high resolution simulations of tornadoes interacting with other-than-flat topography. Some of his simulations looked remarkably like my video of the 7 November 2011 tornado interacting with the Wichita Mountains!
• Harold Brooks gave a “mythbusters”-style keynote talk about the 2011 and 2012 tornado seasons, and how the media hype (or lack thereof) squares with statistics. If you have 30 minutes, I highly recommend watching his recorded presentation. It’s an informative hoot!
• Tim Marhsall, fresh back from surveying the dangling NYC crane from Hurricane Sandy, gave back-to-back presentations about his damage surveys of the 27 April 2011 Alabama tornadoes and the 22 May 2011 Joplin, Missouri tornado. He always makes me want to rip out the walls of my house to make sure they’re toe-nailed.

There were, of course, lots of other great presentations and posters, including a couple by yours truly, but these were my three favorite.

In addition to my professional contributions, I organized the traditional, less-than-formal “photo and video night” at the conference (with some help from Dan, Lou Wicker, and Judith Z. of the AMS staff). There were contributions ranging from all over the U.S. to Australia, Japan, and Germany. We noted sadly the howling vacuum created by the absence of Dr. Bob Schlesinger – a former colleague at UW-Madison – who is famed for the uniquely-styled presentations that he usually delivers at video night. A response to my inquiry at UW indicated that Bob was unable to travel to the conference because of health issues. I organized a get-well card for him, which was soon so densely scrawled upon by dozens of people that we had to resort to using the back cover. I certainly hope Bob comes back in 2014. It just wasn’t the same without him!