This year's annual American Meteorological Society meeting, was held January 22-26 in Seattle, Washington. We were happy to see many of the Unidata community members participating in the meeting at our booth in the exhibit hall, and to meet so many prospective community members at the AMS Student Conference.

With so much going on at the conference, we can't cover everything here. Instead, we present some highlights as recalled by UPC staff members who attended.

Unidata AWIPS 16.2.2 is a new set RPMs which are designed to fully update existing 16.1.5 CAVE and EDEX installations. To update CAVE or EDEX, simply run the installCAVE.sh or installEDEX.sh scripts.

Thanks to a 2015 Unidata Community Equipment Award grant, combined with matching funds from Plymouth State University, students working in the weather lab in Plymouth State's Department of Atmospheric Science & Chemistry now have 21 new workstations on which to use the Integrated Data Viewer (IDV) and AWIPS II.

During the 2015-16 academic year, the workstations were used heavily by students in a variety of classes, including Synoptic Meteorology, Atmospheric Physics, Instrumentation & Observations, Mesoscale Meteorology, Numerical Weather Prediction, Satellite & Radar Meteorology, and our meteorological computer application class, which provides in depth instruction with IDV and ISL. Furthermore, students used the workstations to produce scholarly research in areas such as atmospheric rivers, orographic precipitation, and explosive extratropical cyclone intensification over the North Pacific.

Western Kentucky Student using AWIPS II

The Bachelor of Science Meteorology Program at Western Kentucky University, housed within the Department of Geography and Geology, is currently the only meteorology program in Kentucky and Tennessee that meets all Federal Civil Service requirements for employment by the National Weather Service and enables broadcast meteorologists to immediately pursue the “Certified Broadcast Meteorologist” program of the American Meteorological Society upon graduation. The program is facilitated by a variety of atmospheric science centers and laboratories, including the College Heights Atmospheric Observatory for Students (CHAOS), the Kentucky Mesonet, and the Kentucky State Climate Center. Faculty and students within the WKU Meteorology Program also maintain close working relations with the National Weather Service-Louisville and other nearby offices for lectures, workshops, storm surveys, and student employment.

The emphasis of the WKU Meteorology Program is on advanced theoretical and applied coursework, coupled with student engaged, hands-on active learning with meteorological instruments, field work, and data visualization. Students undergo extensive training in each course using a variety of Unidata and other software for data visualization regarding forecasting and research applications.

Updates to 16.1.5 include the ability to localize to any WFO, full support for UNIWISC McIDAS imagery, ESRL/GSD experimental HRRR decoding, colorized precipitation surface observations, image interpolation and colormap updates, as well as general fixes to D2D, NCP, and GFE perspectives.