The National Weather Service (NWS) Southern Region Headquarters (SRH) continued its successful Project TWISTER in 1998. Project TWISTER (Thunderstorm and Weather Interpretation with Student and Teacher Evaluation and Reporting) is the SRH's education and outreach program for area high school science students and teachers. The project has undergone considerable changes since it was initially reviewed at the AMS meeting in 1996. This paper will review the 1998 project and outline the more significant enhancements which have taken place over the past three years.
Recruiting for the project reached a new level in 1998. The Project TWISTER staff scheduled visits to Physics classes across Tarrant County to describe the project and hopefully generate interest among the students. We also developed an improved Internet home page describing the project, the NWS staff members, and what the students would experience. These recruiting efforts resulted in the largest group of recruits in TWISTER's four year history. Several recruits came from outside Tarrant County and applied through our home page. Two of our students were from the Houston area and traveled to Fort Worth for all of the TWISTER activities.
The 1998 training curriculum underwent significant modifications from previous years. In 1995, the training consisted of two sessions, with a total of 8 hours of classroom time. In 1996 and 1997, we expanded the training to three sessions totaling approximately 12 hours instruction time. While we kept the length of training consistent in 1998, we significantly increased the amount of computer-based instruction and hands-on practice time for the students. This allowed the students to more firmly retain the severe weather concepts taught.
As in previous years, the forecast and warning operations were the highlight of Project TWISTER 1998. Unfortunately, two of our three operations weekends were meteorologically quiet, so the students analyzed archived data from past severe weather outbreaks. For 1998, we were able to add satellite imagery to our archived product suite, enabling the students to see firsthand the value of satellite data. One group did have the opportunity to work about one hour of data during an actual severe weather event. Students monitored the amateur radio spotter reports from the field and made warning decisions using the same information that was available to the NWS
forecasters.
We feel that, with the 1998 version of Project TWISTER, our program has reached a level of maturity. We have attracted the attention of the science community across Texas, and we have already received comments from students inquiring about Project TWISTER 1999. While we are pleased with our progress, we feel that we can make continued improvements in the project. See Part 2 of this paper for a detailed discussion of these improvements