WFO New Orleans/Baton Rouge and the Lower Mississippi River Forecast Center at Slidell, LA, hosted a group of middle school teachers from the New Orleans Public School District recently as part of a curriculum planning effort. Topics of the August visit included an in-depth discussion of hydrology, JetStream (the Southern Region's online weather school), and potential study and job opportunities in NOAA and the NWS. Photo by Tim Destri, Forecaster, WFO New Orleans/Baton Rouge.

Michael Davis of the Nashville, TN, Weather Forecast Office (WFO) demonstrates a tornado machine to some of the thousands of school children on hand at a festival marking the start of the school year in the Nashville area. On Sunday, August 15, 2004, Davis and Mark A. Rose participated in the fifth annual Mayor's First Day at the Gaylord Entertainment Center in downtown Nashville. The City of Nashville hosts the event on the day before students return to school. About 20,000 people toured the exhibits. The highlight of the weather service's display was a tornado machine borrowed from WFO Huntsville, AL. Read more about the event and view photos at http://www.srh.noaa.gov/ohx/newsletter/first_day_2004.htm. Photo by Mark A. Rose.

WFO Nashville, TN, Meteorologist Mark A. Rose poses with Huntsville's tornado machine while simultaneously thinking of ways to explain to Nashville's sister office why the Alabama tornado machine will be staying in Tennessee. (It caught fire. The van got rear-ended and the tornado machine was totaled. Security confiscated the tornado machine. We accidentally left the tornado machine at the arena, and when we went back, it was gone. We raffled it off to raise money for charity.) Photo by Michael Davis.

Experts on Great Lakes meteorology gathered recently at the State University of New York at Buffalo to exchange ideas and information on the latest operational forecast techniques and common forecast issues that affect the Great Lakes Region. The workshop, jointly sponsored by the NWS and the Meteorological Service of Canada, has grown to include researchers, university professors and students, private sector and media meteorologists, military weather services as well as others who have an interest in operational meteorology. The 13th annual meeting included topics such as severe convective weather, waterspouts, lake effect snow storms, numerical modeling, ENSO/climatology and HAZMAT operations in the Great Lakes RegionA keynote address by Marc Hodges of the NOAA HAZMAT Team covered the importance of accurate NWS spot weather forecasts in support of hazardous materials cleanup operations on the Great Lakes to protect the coastal ecosystem. Photo by Tom Albrechcinski, University of Buffalo's Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation.

Take a look at other NWS news, as submitted for the NOAA Weekly Report.