DJ's Sooner Stories

Wild Times in Oklahoma

(Click on the link to see the photos).
It's been a very busy past few weeks, which is why I haven't updated in awhile. Going into last Friday I had two papers to write and before that I had plenty of tests and homework assignments to keep me occupied. That's on top of the OU-Oregon game which I imagine everyone has heard about in one way or another and at this point I don't think I could add any more to that discussion. Well, last Friday we had the dedication of the National Weather Center, the culmination of years of planning and dealing and building all wound up into one day. I got there at 7:30 in the morning for my Oklahoma Weather Lab shift where we did the forecast for the next few days, and it was a hard one too (Sunny and hot!). During that time, we also came down to the front of the building to see the first flag raising ever at the building. First the ROTC students marched out the the American and OU flags and raised them in their formal manner. Following them, some of the professors and NOAA people came out to raise the 2 OU flags and the NOAA flag in a less-than-formal manner. Dr. Kloesel even put the OU flag on the pole upside down (in his words, "Oops!"), which may have been on purpose as he is from Texas.

Following the shift, I stayed in the student lounge at the Weather Center to work on my English paper. Around 9:15, I sneeze and reach down to wipe my nose when in through the door comes a small tour group. After wiping my nose, I turn around and realize that the short, bald guy in the middle of it is none other than Weather Channel meteorologist/hurricane target Jim Cantore. So in shock I stand there for a few seconds processing what's happening ("Hey, it's Jim Cantore! Wow, he's really short!") until he starts asking the tour guide about what the stuff in the room is for, so then I start explaining about the Oklahoma Weather Lab and all the stuff we do, and he asked some more questions and I answered them. Soon after that he left and I resumed my work, still a little in shock. Around 10 I went downstairs to see all the festivities going on in the lobby. The place was crowded with OU meteorology people and others from all over. After socializing for a bit, we all sat down and listened to the actual dedication ceremony, featuring Dean Dr. John Snow, the governor, the deputy secretary of commerce, and President Boren. After running upstairs to grab my stuff to bring with me, I ran into Dr. Carr, who introduced me to Dr. Bluestein, the OU professor who heads up the storm chasing projects and has appeared in a bunch of tornado chasing documentaries, including the IMAX film Stormchasers. We had lunch at the official banquet in the union, although we didn't get to eat in the main ballroom because so many people came that they didn't have room and had to put us downstairs. We did still get to see Gary England, Chief meteorologist for Channel 9 here and the first to use a commercial Doppler radar to issue a warning on a storm (he also appears in Twister on the TV in a couple scenes), and Jim Cantore give speeches. Gary gave an amazing speech about his experiences, stretching from his childhood when the only warnings for tornados were the sheriffs parking their cars on a small ridge and riding through town whenever they thought they saw something tornadolike to when he first attended OU to the 1974 superoutbreak to the Moore/Oklahoma City F5 of May 3, 1999 (on the weather center "I've been to the Mountain!". Cantore gave a speech about his experiences at the Weather Channel, which was very moving. Afterward, I managed to snap a picture of Cantore up close before he left for Atlanta again. Later that afternoon, after my physics class, I trudged back to the Weather Center to pick up my bike that was still there since the morning and happened on a tour of the Storm Prediction Center with just one other guy from OCS, so our tour guide who worked in the SPC, let us into the main forecasting room and we got to talk to the head forecaster of the SPC for about 20 minutes about tornadoes and other weather events. That was probably the most remarkable day so far of my short time here at OU.

And that was just the start of the weekend. That Saturday, Ted and I went up to the Physical Sciences Center for our first College Quiz Bowl tournament ever, the Route 66 Classic 12. We along with Chris Terril (whom we affectionately referred to as Chris T. or Christy), and James M, made up OU's only team playing (the other team members were running the tournament). The team had low expectations going into the tournament as we had never played at this level, but they were banished away as we went 6-2 in the preliminaries and ended up Division II Champions and third place overall, so we got a trophy. I finished 5th overall in the individual standings. The next day we had the Toby Keith Un-American Way Extravaganza 3: A Good Old-Fashioned, Barn-Burnin' Shootenanny!!! (College tournaments have way more creative names than high school ones), a half academic/half pop culture mix of questions that were harder than the ones they ask at the National tournament. Because of this, the games we played had some of the lowest scores I've ever seen in my life, including one game where we lost 35-30. Still, we managed to again come in third place, and I had the fourth highest individual score overall, including 2 powers (or insanely early buzzes) on See It Now! and microbursts, which tied for the highest amount out of all the players at the tournament. It should be a very good year for me in quiz bowl.

This week was relatively uneventful, with more classes and work. Today we had no school so everyone (except me and a few others) could get down to the OU-Texas game in Dallas, the biggest football game of the year. My friends and I will be watching it at the Union auditorium tomorrow at 2:30 pm on ABC. The winner has the chance to go on to a BCS Bowl, the loser, out of the rankings entirely, so it's a big game. If we win, you'll hear all about it from here.

posted by DJ @ 2:35 PM