November Monthly Meeting: “The Clouds Out Here Have Dark Bases”

Location: Zoom + In-Person at First Evangelical Lutheran Church (803 3rd Ave, Longmont, CO 80501)

Summary

A Short History of Dark Sky Activities around San Miguel County. By Dr. Bob Grossman, President Western Slope Dark Sky Coalition

Bio

Bob Grossman (BSEE Duke, MS and PhD Atmospheric Science, Colorado State Univ.) has had a fruitful and adventurous career as a field scientist participating in many atmospheric and oceanic expeditions, often taking long adventurous vacations afterwards. He was a USAF Weather Officer assigned to a forward Strategic Air Command base in England, participating in the Cuban Missile Crisis. After receiving his PhD from CSU in 1973, he was an Advanced Study Program Post-Doc at NCAR and afterwards a Staff Scientist. While at NCAR he was seconded to the United Nations World Meteorological Organization to become a consultant to the Government of India managing and directing an international expedition to study the monsoon of 1979 as part of WMO’s Global Atmospheric Research Program, spending almost four years at that task. Upon return he became a Visiting Fellow at the Univ. Colorado Cooperative Institute for Research in the Environment (CIRES) and was a research associate for a few years when he was invited to join a group of atmospheric scientists working in the Astrogeophysics Department. That group became the founding members of CU’s Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, the only department in the State granting B.A. through Ph.D degrees.

After 20+ years with CU he retired to a home he had built on Deer Mesa north of Norwood Colorado. Part-time on Wright’s Mesa since 2004, he moved from Boulder to Norwood in 2018. As will be described in the talk, serendipity introduced him to the Dark Sky movement and he led the effort that made Norwood the second Dark Sky Community in the State and first on the Western Slope. After creating the Western Slope Dark Sky Coalition, he is now leading the effort to make all of San Miguel County a Dark Sky Reserve, something never before attempted. If successful, the Reserve will become the 22nd in the world, 3rd in USA, and 1st in Colorado.