NWS Director Hosts Employee Town Hall Meeting/Live
Webcast September 1

Brig. Gen. D.L. Johnson, USAF (Ret.), NWS Director, will host a town hall meeting carried live via a webcast for employees on September 1, 2004, from 2 to 3 p.m. Eastern Time.

Johnson will give a brief "State of the NWS" talk based on his observations over his past seven months on the job, and will follow his talk by taking questions from employees.

Open captioning will be provided on the webcast and a sign-language interpreter will be provided at the NOAA Auditorium in Silver Spring, MD, the site of the NWS town hall meeting and webcast.

The webcast will be available on http://www.nws.noaa.gov/com/webcast.htm on September 1.

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NWS Introduces New Coupled Atmosphere-Ocean Forecast System (CFS) Model

A new Climate Forecast System which recently became operational is providing part of the basis for NOAA's recent prediction that weak El Niño conditions are developing in the tropical Pacific.

The Climate Forecast System was developed at the Environmental Modeling Center in collaboration with NOAA Research. On August 24, 2004, the new global Coupled atmosphere-ocean Forecast System (CFS) became operational at NWS's National Centers for Environment Prediction (NCEP). This is the first system capable of producing skillful operational climate forecasts using a fully interactive computer model of the ocean-land atmosphere system. Historically, the operational seasonal forecast process has relied mostly on empirical methods that use knowledge of past conditions and trends to make projections about the future. These methods are based largely on statistical relationships rather than the actual physical laws that govern the behavior of the climate system. In the CFS model, the mathematical relationships that govern the future behavior of the climate system are solved with a computer to make forecasts of climate. Read the NOAA news story for more about the CFS model.

The CFS was developed by NCEP's Environmental Modeling Center in cooperation with a number of government, university, private, and international partners. Read more about these scientists behind the new model in the story below.

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Information Team Plays Beat the Clock to Divert Internet Resources During Hurricane Charley

On August 13, 2004, as Hurricane Charley barreled towards the Florida coast, the NWS Chief Information Officer (CIO) and a creative NOAA information team raced to divert Internet resources so as many people as possible could access hurricane-related information and images from NWS web sites. NWS headquarters sites logged 44 million hits before the day was over.

"The NWS is part of a NOAA agreement with Akamai, Inc. to host some high-traffic web pages," explained Paul Chan, NWS CIO. The NOAA web team executed that agreement and by 4:15 p.m., Akamai began hosting the National Hurricane Center (NHC) web pages.

But an attempt to host the entire weather.gov web site failed due to the complexity of the web site and the lack of preparation time. However, overall web access speed became normal once Akamai service began that afternoon.

Chan and his team worked on other ways around the problem and diverted some resources internally. "Central Region already hosts aviation weather and some Southern Region radar web pages," said Chan. He added, "Coordination between our office, the Eastern, Southern, Central regions, and the NOAA web team resulted in an arrangement where Southern Region transferred radar images to Central Region to improve Internet speed time. We also agreed to transfer radar images to the Central Region as the hurricane moved into the Eastern Region."

Below are preliminary performance numbers for the NWS web sites. The numbers of hits are in millions (a hit is a retrieval of an image or other content from a server). The first numbers in parentheses are data rates in gigabytes (GB). As of August 19, the estimate for NHC web hits between August 12 and August 15 is at least 175 million.

"To put these numbers in perspective," Chan said, "NWS headquarters had a peak of 16 million hits per day for Hurricane Isabel in 2003, and the web servers were saturated by the demand at that time." This time, Akamai only hosted the NHC site and not the entire headquarters site, so the headquarters web servers supported the 44 million hits on August 13 on their own. This is due to increased server capacity added in headquarters after Isabel.

The data rate from the Southern Region remained rather steady between August 12 and 15, while the number of hits decreased. "As Charley moved from over the ocean to over land and into the range of NWS radars, people began to retrieve radar loops and images, which are larger than text files," said Chan. "The larger files boost the data rate while the number of hits dropped. As the rain bands increased on the radar, the image sizes also increased."

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NWS Director Addresses NOAA Leadership Seminar Attendees

by Patricia Huff NWS Communications Office "You are the leaders of tomorrow and you must understand the importance of all sciences and demonstrate leadership by empowering others," said Brig. Gen. D. L. Johnson, USAF (Ret.) to a capacity filled room at the National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) in Camp Springs, MD, on August 24, 2004. During a day-long tour of NCEP centers, more than 50 NOAA Leadership seminar attendees heard from Center Directors and NWS leadership including NWS Chief Financial Officer Ted David and NCEP Director Louis Uccellini.

More than 50 employees toured NCEP centers and participated in interactive presentations with Center Directors and NWS leadership on August 24, 2004, as part of NOAA’s Leadership Seminar. Photo by Patricia Huff, NWS Communications Office.

"We need industrial-strength people to do important things. You are not only meteorologists, hydrologists, climatologists and physical scientists, but leaders who will be successful over time by seeing the bigger picture," said Johnson. His presentation (NOTE: link is to a 5MB file) to seminar attendees focused on how we work with NOAA and private sector partners to serve the public's needs.

Seminar attendees had a chance to ask questions during the presentations and the interactive format really got attendees involved.

"This seminar reminded me that we need to look at the big picture with respect to NOAA as a whole and not just my WFO - and the Nation as a whole, not just my County Warning Area," noted John Paul Martin, Warning Coordination Meteorologist, Bismarck, ND, Weather Forecast Office. "We need to think big and think openly - - outside the box! If we are going to continue to be successful, we need to be sure to change the paradigm right down to the grass roots level - the field personnel. This is where I can help the process move forward."

"NOAA's Leadership Seminar was an excellent opportunity for NWS employees to understand and effectively implement NOAA's Business Model by demonstrating our valuable relationship with NOAA, the Department, Congress, other federal agencies, and our partners and customers," said attendee Andy Horvitz of the Office of Climate, Water, and Weather Services.

The August 24-26 NOAA Leadership Seminar was the first and replaces the NOAA Mid-Level Retreat. Additional leadership seminars will be held twice each fiscal year. A total of 150 participant slots for this event with NWS allocated 30 slots for employees within the DC metropolitan area and 35 slots for employees in the field.

In his closing remarks, Johnson stressed the importance of leadership and how everyone's individual contributions add up to collective greatness.

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Rare Open Season Offered for Federal Life Insurance

The Federal Office of Personnel Management (OPM) is planning a special open season from September 1- September 30, 2004, to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Federal Employees' Group Life Insurance Program (FEGLI).

The FEGLI program consists of basic life insurance coverage and three options that include coverage for up to five times an employee's base salary plus coverage for family members. In most cases, a new Federal employee is automatically covered by basic life insurance. The types and amounts of coverages available are not changing.

During the open season, Federal and Postal employees in eligible positions will be able to enroll in the FEGLI program or increase or change current coverage without having a physical or answering any questions about their health. The earliest that newly elected coverage will be effective is September 1, 2005.

Visit www.fegli2004.opm.gov on September 1 for an election form and more information about the program.

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