Call to Order: President Laurie Tamura
Flag Salute: Kerin Mase
Invocation: Jim Bray
VISITING ROTARIANS: Virginia SouzaGUESTS OF ROTARIANS: Bob Freidlien, Scott, Royer, Jim Byrne, Kurt Spry, Kathy Spry, Susan Moats, and Valero Derasio, an exchange students from Italy.
ANNOUNCEMENTS
1) Special Olympics Dinner and Sock Hop: February 4, @ Santa Maria Country Club
2) Gen Span Dinner, (Honoring Mr & Mrs Peter Sterling): February 4
3) Rotary Board Meeting, February 9
4) Women's Leadership Conference: February 23 @ Veteran's Memorial Center
5) Orcutt Children's Arts Foundation Gala: Saturday, March 4 @ Santa Maria Country Club
* Kate Ferguson announced that she has scheduled the rotating dinners, if you still want to participate, let her know.
* Laurie thanked the club for changing up where they sit during our meetings. This has allowed our new members to meet more rotarians.
* Shannon is working on Laurie's Step Down Party, there is a conflict with our normal date.
Foreign Exchange Student
Virginia Souza from the Noontime Club brought foreign exchange student, Valerio Derasio to speak to the club. He is from Sicily, and is enjoying his experience in the United States.
Rotarians of the Month
Mike Gibson & Dave Wright : Dave couldn't think of anything to brag about again this week, and Mike, also had no comment.
BRAGS
Chris Hastert recently took the visiting president of Mokulele Airlines to the Hitching Post for a great dinner. That equated to a $30 brag.
Dan Blough, recently went to a dinner purchased as an auction item. The dinner was at Kristine Mollenkopf’s house, and was fantastic. $50 Brag
Tim Staffel, will match the brag on the dinner, also for $50.
Mike Moats, was also at the dinner and bragged $50.
Mark Jackson, whose daughter recently graduated college, just got a job as at a cultural history museum in Santa Rosa bragged $30.
Fines
Teresa Reyburn was fined $30 for not introducing herself
These Rotarians were each fined $30 for the following reasons;
Carl DeRiso and Eddie Stanfield, didn’t know that today, February 2nd, was was groundhog day
Peter Sterling and Jack Gresser, didn’t know the significance of ground hog day
Michele Jensen and Jason Stillwell, knew that Groundhog Day was a movie, but didn’t know when it came out
Carol Bradfield because she didn’t know the names of the actors in the Groundhog Day movie. Craig Bernard, however, knew one of the actors, so his fine is only $15.
PROGRAM
Jim Byrne, the “Weather Guy”
Jim is a geo-scientist and meteorologist, who holds a degree in Broadcast Journalism. He has worked for the Weather Channel, KCOY, and done on camera forecasting in the Bay Area.
He presented interesting information on:
Weather and climate in Santa Maria; our average rainfall is typically 13 inches a year, February is the month that we tend to get the most rainfall
Notable weather events; we have had several notable weather related events which including The Gap Fire in July of 2008, which was caused by Sundowner winds, the Jesusita Fire in May 2009, and the 2015 lightening storm
Current climate data
State of the drought; the drought is officially over in Northern CA - 300% of normal, and January was the wettest on record since 1849. Locally we are also well above average for January, with rainfall being 157% of normal for the year in Santa Maria.
