Notes from the President – Anthony Yanez   Hurricane Rita will long be remembered for the traffic jams it caused in Houston.  In fact more people died on the roads trying to get out than from any aspect of the storm.  Coming off the heels of Hurricane Katrina, Rita caused widespread panic.  I know people who live in The Woodlands that evacuated to Dallas.  Fortunately for us Rita just missed the Houston area.  However, if you’ve seen Lake Charles you know how powerful this storm was and the damage it inflicted.    But what about the next time… and there will be a next time.  Do we have an infrastructure that can support a million plus people trying to escape?  Who evacuates and when do they evacuate?  Finally, what message do we, as meteorologist, relay to our customers, family, and friends?     To provide insight on these questions are two professors from Rice University, Robert M. Stein and Rick K. Wilson, who studied the Hurricane Rita evacuation and have made some fascinating discoveries.  They will be joining us at our next meeting to discuss “The Human Side of Evacuation, A Hurricane Rita Study”.    Since we are meeting at Rice University, dinner will work a little different this month.  For those of you who want to eat, we will be meeting from 6:00pm - 6:30pm at Chipotle in the Rice Village .  The restaurant makes the food right in front of you so it doesn’t take long to get served.  From there we’ll travel to the meeting at Rice which will start promptly at 7:00pm.  Feel free to bypass dinner and simply join us for the meeting if that is more convenient for you.      I hope to see you on the 21st,   Anthony Yanez

The Human Side of Evacuations – Rick K. Wilson, Chairman & Robert M. Stein, Professor – Dept. of Political Science – Rice University Wednesday 21 March Dinner - 6:00pm Meeting – 7:00 to 8:00pm Chipotle Village Place 5600 Kirby #N-1 Houston, TX 77005 (713) 666-9769     The talk will include data collected a week after Hurricane Rita landed.  The focus is when people decided to evacuate and why.  The data is based on a survey of people living in the seven county areas surrounding the Houston Metropolitan area.  Overall, people pay less heed to public officials than to their neighbors when considering when to evacuate.  This is of concern for policy makers.   The talk will be held in room 116 of the Baker Institute.  The Baker Institute (Baker Hall) is located on College Way, which can be reached via Entrance 8 on University Blvd.     http://www.rice.edu/maps/maps.html

                                                                                                                               

	Calendar of Events AMS 2007 Corporate Forum Date: 22-23 March Location: Washington, D.C. 11th Annual Severe Storms/Doppler Radar Conf. Date: 22-24 March Location: Des Moines, IA 6th Annual Southeast Severe Storms Symposium Date: 23-24 March Location: Mississippi State University