Michael French

Quite under the weather but still excited to give my talk in the next session of #ECSS2025 (and then leave so I don’t get anyone sick).

He also adjusted from his planned projects for me & fostered my desired focus on spending more time reading and thinking in terms of “Big Ideas.” That comes at the cost of fewer papers/grants, but it allowed me to form my own identity in this field to this day. A much deserved retirement to Howie!

That includes work ethic, demeanor, personal communication, and scientific writing (yuck). I was objectively terrible at all of these and now I’m functional. Not an easy task!

I would congratulate Howie on his retirement, but he’d never read this post!🤣

The lessons I learned working for Howie are only tangentially related to supercells & tornadoes. The most important things he taught me were about everything else it takes to succeed in what you care about.

The latest edition (October) of BAMS highlights our presentation at #AMS41Radar on the relationship between "Immense" supercell updrafts and tornadoes (attached). Working on a more complete paper to submit soon (or in 2026 or in 2027 🤥). Anyway, check it out!

Congratulations to @ecreightonwx.bsky.social for passing his Ph.D. proposal defense on observing the vertical alignment of supercell mesocyclones. One (big) step to go!

And my talk on Immense ZDR columns for tornadogenesis prediction is in the next session starting at 4 PM! #AMS41Radar

Well deserved!

For those of you at #AMS41Radar, check out poster 109 at 2:30 PM today led by @ecreightonwx.bsky.social who is looking at vertical alignment of mesocyclones in supercells. I promise exhilarating conversation!

We are happy to announce that the 51st NESC is coming back to Burlington VT!

Dates: March 13-15

More info coming soon!

To submit your abstract for the upcoming European Conference on Severe Storms, visit: ecss.eu

Do not forget the Abstract submission deadline of the upcoming European Conference on Severe Storms ⛈️🌪️⚡next Friday 6 June!

We hope to welcome all researchers and forecasters with an interest in severe storms to Utrecht 🇳🇱 this November 🙂!

Sponsored by @eumetsat.int @eumetsat-users.bsky.social.

😢

Reply to “Comments on ‘Identifying Z DR Columns in Radar Data with the Hotspot Technique’” "Reply to “Comments on ‘Identifying Z DR Columns in Radar Data with the Hotspot Technique’”" published on 22 Apr 2025 by American Meteorological Society.

The authors' reply to our comment can be found here: doi.org/10.1175/WAF-...

New group paper out about ZDR column detection, but really about the appropriate way to evaluate algorithms designed by others (run the actual algorithm 😀) and how that wasn't done in a recent paper. Also some commentary about the difficulty in evaluating column algorithms: doi.org/10.1175/WAF-...

Regional conferences are a formative experience for many undergrads and I hope they continue to get the support they deserve. (I may have enjoyed the socializing aspect too.)

Very happy to fill in at #NESC25 this weekend under unfortunate (and ridiculous) circumstances. NESC was my first conference when I went as an undergraduate in 2002 & 2003, and it was the first time I realized research could be a career path for me. Prior to that, I had no idea what I wanted to do.

YouTube video by SmokeyPotatoJoe The Hold Steady - Positive Jam

So, um, let’s start it off with a positive jam youtu.be/NjfgUZBPrXA?...

Was hardly ever on Twitter anymore and tweeted about a visit from a colleague at Albany and realized there was like nobody left to read it. So here we are. I expect great things out of all of you.

What a time to be alive and back on social media.