Changes Changes Changes!

For all two of my readers - thanks for still following! Sorry for the radio silence. I have have been riding the roller coaster of life (looks like this)

Full Disclosure: I am currently obsessed with GIFs!

I have learned a lot, grown a lot, cried a lot and had a lot of time to think about what was important to me. I am happy to report it appears I have weathered the storm. But now the worst has passed and I'm moving forward with some really exciting projects!

After two years of making the case for social media in my office, we were approved to move forward with this project. So I have spent a lot of free time over the past month establishing these tools in our office and defining our place in the social media sphere! It has been fun, but definitely not as easy as I anticipated. (Story of my professional life)

The best part has been getting to work with other individuals throughout the American Meteorological Society, and developing relationships with my coworkers outside of my department. I find I really enjoy this level of engagement and I think they're excited to learn about what we do in the Education Program! 

I'm really excited to start working on developing a media kit. I really hope I'm able to make contacts in the press to get them into our workshops. A lot of the soul searching about being a professional led me to one thought: irregardless of how bad I felt, I still believed with the utmost passion in the mission of the AMS Education Program, and I felt proud to be part of a team that makes such a positive impact in the US Education System!

Cool Reading about Social Media in the Sciences:

http://www.labmanager.com/?articles.view/articleNo/30199/article/Social-Media-Gone-Viral

My Favorite GIF ever:

Tornadoes in CA

So my coworker told me about the Storm Prediction Center (SPC), and it is a resource to track daily meteorological events. This resource is common knowledge for meteorologists, but as a geologist I was BLOWN away! (tee hee - get the joke?) One cool feature of the SPC site is the "reports" tab are all the official logged NOAA reports about tornado, hail, and wind events that have occurred around the United States in the past 24 hours.

An image of the April 11, 2012 Stockton CA tornado.

A cool fact: today's only tornado (thus far, there's still 3.5 hours left!) was in Stockton, CA. Just as DC was caught unprepared by an earthquake, I'm sure many Californians are blissfully ignorant to the possibility of a tornado (but lets be serious all kinds of severe weather!) striking them. Check it out: there was a tornado near Stockton!

I just wanted to throw this out there to remind those I love that you should always be ready for anything. Take a moment to review the National Weather Services' StormReady website. Also, if you're a science enthusiast remember the SPC is a great way observe what's happening around the country.