The University of Oklahoma Cooperative Institute for Mesoscale Meteorological Studies has announced the recipients of its second annual CIMMS awards.

The three awards are for Outstanding Publication, Outstanding Achievement in Research or Research Support by an Individual or Team, and Outstanding Achievement in Outreach, Education, or Service by an Individual or Team.

The award for Outstanding Publication went to Montgomery Flora, who with co-authors Patrick Skinner, Nusrat Yussouf, and Kent Knopfmeier, published, “Object-Based Verification of Short-Term, Storm-Scale Probabilistic Mesocyclone Guidance from an Experimental Warn-on-Forecast System.”

“Mr. Flora is nominated for leading development of novel, event-based probabilistic verification techniques for convection-allowing ensemble forecasts,” stated the nomination. “These techniques are becoming a crucial component of the Warn-on-Forecast project and provide a foundation for machine learning-based post-processing methods for predicting specific thunderstorm hazards.”

The article was published in the American Meteorological Society’s Weather and Forecasting, Volume 34, Issue 6, in December 2019.

The award for Outstanding Achievement in Research Support by a Team was awarded the Applied Computing for the Meteorological Enterprise, or ACME, Team. The team consists of Karen Cooper, Carrie Langston, Mike Taylor, Robert Toomey, Brian Kaney, Ami Arthur, and Nat Indik.

Members of the ACME team transitioned MRMS v12.0 from internally to the National Weather Service during the COVID-19 pandemic solely while teleworking from home. MRMS is the Multi-Radar Multi-Sensor System.

The award for Outstanding Achievement in Outreach, Education, or Service was awarded to Shawn Handler for his outstanding service to CIMMS staff and for going well above and beyond the call of duty to assist a teammate during a personal emergency.

Award recipients were nominated by a CIMMS team lead or technical advisor.