Acknowledgements
I would like to thank my co-advisors, Lance Bosart and Dan Keyser, for their guidance, insight, and support throughout this research endeavor. I am grateful for the opportunity to work on such a relevant and interesting project, and I truly appreciate the time they have devoted to helping me improve as a scientist. I also wish to thank NOAA for their financial support of this research through the Collaborative Science and Technology Applied Research (CSTAR) program (Grant # NA07WA0458).
Thanks are due to Rich Grumm at the Central Pennsylvania Weather Forecast Office for his important role in the initiation of this research. I’d especially like to acknowledge Anantha Aiyyer, whose programming expertise greatly facilitated the compilation of datasets for this project. Anantha also proved to be an invaluable resource while I was working on the statistical portion of the project. In addition, I’d like to thank Alicia Wasula, Tom Galarneau, Ron McTaggert-Cowen, and Alan Srock for helping me generate the figures used in this thesis.
I appreciate all the assistance I received from Kevin Tyle and David Knight; without their technical support, this research would not have been possible. I’d also like to acknowledge Lynn Hughes, Diana Patton, Sharon Baumgardner, Sally Marsh, and especially Celeste Iovinella for their help in handling various administrative issues.
I would like to thank the faculty and all my fellow graduate students, especially Tom Galarneau and Joe Kravitz, for making this department such a fun and intellectually stimulating place to work. Special thanks goes to Scott Runyon for being so supportive and for keeping my stress level in check by constantly making me laugh.
Finally, I’d like to thank my wonderful family for their unconditional love and support. My mother and father deserve special recognition for being the best role models I could imagine, and also for encouraging my lifelong obsession with snowstorms, hurricanes, and other natural disasters.
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