News

As Chicago Cubs broadcaster (and father and grandfather of Atlanta Braves broadcasters) Harry Caray used to say, "Holy Cow!"

We have 186 registrants for the Fall 2025 FPAW Meeting. And we still have two days before registration closes. Is it plausible, maybe even possible, that we make it to 200 or more registrants? That might be an FPAW record.

Well, if you need enticing, a link to the document containing biographies of the Speakers, Tour Leaders, Session Leads, and Moderators/Panelists/Presenters is now up on the meeting webpage. And, I've taken the fully displayed agenda and reduced it to a link instead (way neater, I think).

So, DO NOT WAIT. Go to the Registration section of the Fall 2025 FPAW Meeting webpage, take 43 seconds to fill out the form, and "Voila!," you'll be registered and receive the calendar invitations when they are sent out after registration closes on Friday.

Yes, registration closes on Friday, October 3, 2025 at 1700E. In light of that, you may be asking yourself "What if, despite my best intentions, I don't get registered before the form is closed? Do I have any alternatives?" And, the answer is "Yes." You will need to click the Contact FPAW button and send a message requesting registration for the meeting, or email me directly at mfronzak@mitre.org with that same request. As long as you're not wanting to show up in person, it's not a problem. And if you are wanting to be a very last minute In-Person registrant, we'll see what we can do to support that request.

Matt Fronzak
FPAW Co-Chair 

Good evening, oh aviation weather SMEs.

If you intend to come to Campbell Scientific in Logan, UT next week and attend the Fall 2025 FPAW Meeting in person, you'll need to register in the next 20 hours as I write this. In-Person registration will close at 1700E tomorrow, 01OCT25.

So, don't wait! Don't hesitate! Join the 59 Friends and Partners who have already registered In-Person for this best-in-class FPAW Meeting.

And if you can't...

It's OK. Register as a Remote attendee. We already have 104 on the books, and we can absorb hundreds more!

Matt Fronzak
FPAW Co-Chair 

Hello, Friends and Partners.

We are eight short days away from what promises to be an exciting, one-of-a-kind FPAW Meeting. Between speakers coming to us from under the shadow of Mt. Everest, to deep dives into the sausage making that results in a METAR, to solving real-life METAR mysteries with a dozen of your best aviation weather friends, this meeting appears to me to be intent on raising the FPAW meeting quality bar even higher than it already is.

And if the excellent meeting discussions and debates aren't quite enough to bring you out to Logan, UT, look at what you get to experience by joining us in person:

• A Dirty Data Mixer sponsored by Campbell Scientific at the end of the meeting's opening day on Tuesday.
• An opportunity to recognize FPAW leadership midafternoon on Wednesday.
• A tour of the Campbell Scientific's Instrumentation Garden and Manufacturing Facility later that afternoon.
• Time to break bread Wednesday evening in the basement (AKA, brewing area) of Prodigy Brewing.
• More hair-raising tales delivered by four veteran pilots about flying in complex conditions Thursday morning.

The latest version of the agenda is now posted on the Fall 2025 FPAW Meeting website here, and it is as firmed up as it can be, given the looming specter of government shutdown in 30+ hours. Fear not, however. The show (or, in this case, the meeting) MUST and WILL go on, regardless.

So, get off the fence and join the 146 of us who have already registered. But hurry, and especially if you're planning to do so in the flesh. In-person registration will close on Wednesday, October 1, 2025 at 1700E. Remote registration will be available through Friday, October 3, 2025 at 1700E. After that, you'll have to use the FPAW Contact link to request last-minute registration.

Matt Fronzak
FPAW Co-Chair

Good evening, aviation weather wizards.

I have made what I hope is one of the last (if not the last) updates to the agenda for the upcoming Fall 2025 FPAW Meeting. You absolutely need to take a look at it here.

And, while you're there, if you haven't already registered for the meeting, go to the very bottom of the page, where you'll find the online registration form. Spend 47 seconds filling it out and, Voila, you'll get the meeting invitations once registration closes.

The tragic optimist in me wants to believe that the U.S. government will not shut down at 0000E on October 1, 2025. With that said, we've got Plans B and C formulated, and while the Fall 2025 FPAW Meeting won't be the same if our federal brethren are not there with us, either in person or remotely, it will still be one heck of an aviation weather extravaganza.

So, let your colleagues and friends know that "The Show WILL Go On" regardless, and that our upcoming gathering will be an epic FPAW meeting for the ages!

Matt Fronzak
FPAW Co-Chair

Good Saturday evening, aviation weather aficionados. I hope your favorite football teams are all winning (statistically impossible, I'm sure).

As my level of maturity (AKA, age) increases, I have come to realize that being an operational meteorologist provided me, in a curious, back-handed way, with a super power that not all humans have, namely the ability to make (hopefully) good decisions in the face of significant uncertainty. I'm sure that, as FPAW members, many of you, too, have those same super powers.

Unfortunately, it appears to me that we, the FPAW community, may have to exercise our collective superpowers at the Fall 2025 FPAW Meeting. Due to regulations that I don't fully appreciate or understand, if the government shuts down on October 1, 2025, and remains shut down for the start of the meeting on October 7, 2025, our federal colleagues will most likely not be able to attend the meeting, in-person or remote, either as federal employees or private citizens.

For context, there are currently 108 individuals registered for the meeting, 48 in-person and 60 remote, and I expect another 20-30 persons will register prior to the start of the meeting. Of those 108 current registrants, 30 have .gov email addresses. Twenty-two are honest-to-goodness federal employees. Another eight registrants have .gov email addresses, but either are contractors or work for cooperative institutes (e.g., CIRA, CIWRO, CIMSS), and it is not clear to me if their status is different than the feds. And of the 30 individuals with .gov email addresses, 12 are expected to be MPPs (Moderators, Panelists, Presenters) during the EXCELLENT sessions we have planned.

So, help me out here. If you have not registered for the meeting yet, PLEASE DO! It will help us better understand the effects of a potential government shutdown, and formulate Plans B and C, just in case.

With all that said, I'm going to borrow steal a phrase from the 19th century circus world and state, with confidence, not only that "The Show MUST Go On," but that IT WILL! And, FWIW, know that, regardless of the state of the federal government, Matthias and I will be in Logan, UT from Tuesday, October 7, 2025 through Thursday, October 9, 2025, to help lead the BEST FPAW Meeting ever!

Matt Fronzak
FPAW Co-Chair 

Good evening, FPAW Meeting groupies.

It has already been a very busy week of FPAW announcements, with preceding messages regarding a new FPAW Co-Chair and new FPAW Steering Committee members. However, this might arguably be the most important message of them all.

The Fall 2025 FPAW Meeting page has been updated with a detailed agenda for the entire three-day meeting. Although there are still a handful of TBDs sprinkled throughout, the agenda is mostly set, in terms of time, topics and presenters/panelists. And what a great set of topics, and equally adept presenters/panelists, we have!

Do take a peek at it, and think about what you'll be missing if you're not there to take it all in IN-PERSON. Yes, I know, getting to and from Logan, Utah can be a bit of a challenge for some of us. But, the scenery, the camaraderie and the interactions will help make it all worthwhile. Have I mentioned that this will be the last FPAW meeting my colleague and friend, Matthias Steiner, will be conducting? And did I point out that the Father of FPAW, Bruce Carmichael, plans to be in Logan, Utah to help send Matthias off in style?

You'll absolutely want to be there to help with that sendoff, for sure!

So, don't wait, don't hesitate, register for the meeting, IN-PERSON, and join us in four short weeks at Campbell Scientific in beautiful Logan, UT.

Matt Fronzak
FPAW Co-Chair

Hello, FPAW Community.

The terms of either four or five current FPAW Steering Committee (SC) members expire on September 30th each year. This year, 2025, there are four current members whose terms are set to expire at the end of this month:

• Elizabeth Wilson/Synoptic Data (Providers)
• Joel Siegel/FAA (RED & Academics)
• John Steventon/FAA (Regulations & Standards)
• Rex Alexander/Vertical Flight Society (Users)

In addition, two current FPAW SC members voluntarily withdrew from the committee earlier in 2025:

• Marilyn Pearson/CAE (Regulations & Standards)
• Matt Johnson/Metro Aviation (Users)

Finally, current FPAW SC member Nathan Polderman/United Airlines (Users) will be transitioning to the FPAW Co-Chair position effective October 1, 2025 (see yesterday's newsletter), resulting in one more Users opening.

With the above as background, recall from an earlier newsletter that there were 11 candidates for open FPAW SC positions starting on October 1, 2025, and that voting was projected to take place early this month. We can now report that the current FPAW SC members submitted their ballots late last week into early this week, and that their votes have been tallied (no hanging chads, thank goodness).

Matthias and I are thrilled to announce that the following aviation weather enthusiasts will join (and, in one case, rejoin) the FPAW SC on October 1, 2025:

• Elizabeth Wilson/Synoptic Data (Providers)
• Scott Landolt/NCAR (RED & Academics)
• Gordy Rother/FAA (Regulations & Standards)
• Gus de Azevedo/Oklahoma State University (Regulations & Standards)
• David Dillahunt/Southwest Airlines (Users)
• Beth Welliver/Joby Aviation (Users)
• Christian Amaral/ALPA (Users)

Please join us in congratulating them and welcoming them all to the FPAW SC. The information on the FPAW web site will be updated in the coming weeks to reflect all the changes listed above.

Matt Fronzak and Matthias Steiner
FPAW Co-Chairs

Dear FPAW Members,

If you have been poring over the high-level agenda for the upcoming Fall 2025 FPAW Meeting, you will undoubtedly have seen that conducting this meeting will be my friend Matthias Steiner’s final duties as FPAW Co-Chair. I will not steal my own thunder in this letter; instead, I will only say that I will miss his guidance, his wisdom, and his Swiss humor (yes, the Swiss can be humorous) very, very much.

Alexander Graham Bell is credited with coining the following phrase:
"When one door closes, another one opens; but we so often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door, that we do not see the ones which open for us."
For FPAW, and for me personally and professionally, I am thrilled to announce who is walking in through the open door.

Effective October 1, 2025, Nathan Polderman, Senior Manager of Meteorology, United Airlines, will join me (and Matthias for eight days) as FPAW Co-Chair (I wonder if that makes us all L-1011s, i.e., Tri-Chairs). Nathan oversees all weather decision support services and contracts for United and has been active in numerous aviation weather industry initiatives over the last 15 years, including most recently as a representative of the Users Community on the FPAW Steering Committee. He holds an M.S. degree in Atmospheric Science and is also a licensed aircraft dispatcher.

Please join me in welcoming Nathan to the helm of the finest aviation weather group in the world.

Matt Fronzak
FPAW Co-Chair