University of Oklahoma Cooperative Institute for Mesoscale Meteorological Studies Graduate Research Assistant Hristo Chipilski won an award at the 17th annual American Meteorological Society Mesoscale Conference this summer.

Chipilski won second for Oral Presentation on, “Impact of PECAN IOP data on the forecast skill of bores and bore-induced convection.”

The presentation focused on the Plains Elevated Convection at Night project. PECAN was a large, intensive field project aimed at collecting data before and during night time thunderstorms in the arid western Great Plains from June 1 to July 15, 2015.

Chipilski, who is also an OU School of Meteorology PhD student, said his presentation highlighted the contents of two soon-to-be submitted papers.

“My talk tried to answer the question whether the assimilation of these novel observations in high-resolution models can improve the forecast skill of bore-induced convection, which was one of the research foci of the field campaign,” Chipilski said.

PECAN is part of Chipilski’s PhD work.

“Despite being rather comprehensive, the project allows me to merge research ideas from two distinctly different areas and gain a deeper understanding of the subject,” he said.

Chipilski said he is flattered to be awarded and it was his first time to present at a conference.

Congratulations Hristo Chipilski!