What a week!!!

The past week and a half in a few words: Thunderstorms, three museum events, more thunderstorms. More on the thunderstorms later.

Three events last week, THREE!! I don't think we've ever been so busy in the past three years. Tuesday was the climate change seminar, Wednesday was our Earth Day/ Third Birthday and to wrap it all up was the 14th annual Weather Museum Classic on Friday.

Though we lost two speakers within 24 hours of each other due to illness, the seminar turned out great. All the speakers were really good and the turn out was far better than we had hoped for. Tom Wysmuller was.....amazing. His 50 minute talk went for what felt like 15 minutes. I'd love to be able to see his three hour presentation one day. One of the theories (not his own) he presented was that with the north pole Ice cap melting, we'll soon have a large build up of snow throughout Canada and the northern US (is this happening already?). This increased snowfall will then lead to a larger albedo for the planet (the larger the albedo the more sunlight that gets reflected back to space) which then cools us off. Interesting indeed.

Also of note is the talk given by John Anderson of Rice University. The Texas coasts are disappearingg. We're not at the levels that Louisiana is at (a dire situation), but that doesn't mean we can't start doing something smart about it now.

The next day was our Earth Day celebration! I'd like to issue a very special thanks to the volunteers from El Paso Corporation and US Bank. Without you, there would have been no way we could have handled it all.

The day was a complete success with our largest attendance ever! We'd made a few changes with our activities, with both the recycling relay and rain gauge re-fill changed around to be more competitive. With that, we successfully ended up with a nice mud pit by the rain gauges three hours in.

Highly recommended: moon walks. They can distract kids for hours. Too bad we couldn't have everyone on at once. It was quite the task trying to limit it to 5 people at a time. 200 kids with 5 on at a time equals almost too difficult task for one supervisor. Again, thank you volunteers.


Wrapping up the week was the golf tournament at the Wildcat Golf Club. If the wind had died down a bit, the weather for the day would have been perfect. Lots of golfers, lots of good times, and great food contributed to one of our more successful fund raisers. The best part was that the rain waited until we were completely done with the awards ceremony. It was pretty neat driving around on the drink cart while watching the storm build up as it made it's way towards the city. Driving home in it....not so neat. Among the numerous attendees were: Judge Ed Emmett, Dr. Neil Frank, Cecilia Poole, Marshall Seese, and Keith Westerlage.

Here's hoping we get even more participants next year!