Lisa in Idaho

Went to Boise for the Annual IMET workshop, a weeklong conference to get recertified in survival standards, here of experiences from the last fire season from other IMETs, and touch up on certain other skills.

(For those of you who don't know what the heck I'm talking about, I am becoming an Incident Meteorologist (IMET) - basically a weather forecaster who travels to "incidents" - mostly wildfires, to help forecast the weather for that specific area. We require extra training in fuels and fire behavior among other items. Lots of fun, get to go camping too!)

Here we are practicing how to use a Pibal and Theodalite system. The red ballon is released then the theodolite tracks the elevation and azimuth as it rises, showing us what the winds are doing through the atmosphere.....very important to wildland firefighting.

Here is General Johnson - the director of the National Weather Service (a very BIG supporter of the IMET program!) and Kelly Hooper - one of my trainers during last summer's fire season. We worked on the Rattlesnake Fire in Garden Valley, Idaho.

Down below is Aimee Fish (also an IMET trainee, from Alaska Region Headquarters) and I at Bogus Basin! One night after IMET class was over, about 10 of us decided to go skiing at a place just north of Boise. It was a little sloppy at the bottom (it was 50 degrees!) but we still had a lot of fun!