Working Together to Save Lives: StormReady Label Proves Correct for Ohio County in Recent Tornado Outbreak

To earn a January 2002, NWS StormReady designation, Van Wert County, OH, placed a series of warning alert systems in public locations, including the movie theater recently destroyed in the November 10-11 storm outbreak which killed 35 people.

Following a warning, quick action by Van Wert Cinemas manager Scott Shaffer and his staff got more than 50 adults and children out of theaters in the multiplex and into safer conditions in a hallway and restrooms. Minutes later a tornado tore off the building's roof and tossed cars into the screen and front seats where minutes earlier kids and parents had been watching "The Santa Clause 2."

"This story illustrates a great success for the NWS, NOAA Weather Radio and StormReady programs," said NWS Headquarters Warning Coordination Meteorologist Program Manager Stephan Kuhl. "It also illustrates the importance of establishing a close working relationship between our local NWS offices, our emergency management partners, and ultimately the communities that we serve!"

The theater office was equipped with a Federal Signal Corporation local warning alert system called the "Informer." The "Informer" is activated via a digitally-encoded pager signal that automatically turns the unit on and sounds an alert. The theater's unit was tied directly into the Van Wert County siren system and activated immediately once the Van Wert County Emergency Operations Center (EOC) sounded the warning sirens. The unit then remains open for "live" broadcasts by the emergency manager until the reset button is hit.

The Van Wert County EOC received the NWS Tornado Warning via a NOAA Weather Radio (NWR) receiver tuned to the Fort Wayne, IN, NWR transmitter frequency. Van Wert County Emergency Manager, Rick McCoy, received the warning and immediately activated the city of Van Wert siren warning system. McCoy also broadcast the NWS Tornado Warning and action statement live over the "Informer."

Seventy of the alert units and a number of NWR receivers were purchased with grant money by Van Wert County Emergency Management as one of the requirements to become StormReady. Van Wert County was designated StormReady by WFO Northern Indiana on January 10, 2002.

"If we hadn't gone through the StormReady process and gotten our warning system in place before this storm, a lot of people would not have gotten the warning, and we could have lost many more lives," McCoy said. "All communities across the country need to look at becoming StormReady, because at some point they're going to have severe weather of some kind. People shouldn't say 'it can't happen here,' because it can."

The tornado touched down in Van Wert County with 13 minutes lead time. The tornado struck the movie theater 28 minutes after the warning was issued.

NWS Employee Resources and Best Practices Web Page Debuts

A new NWS web site offers "one-stop shopping" for timely and useful information to NWS employees. Contents of the site range from links to the new employee orientation and sites listing training opportunities, to best practices tools such as the Eastern Region Leader's Handbook, the Manager's Guide to Employee Morale, and an Office Evacuation Checklist.

The NWS Employee Resources and Best Practices web site is a result of employee feedback gathered through focus groups and other organizational-wide research which indicated the need for such a web site.

"We launched this web site to provide a single point for information for NWS employees," said Jackie Conyers of the Chief Financial Officer's (CFO's) Office. Conyers is responsible for managing the site. "This page helps employees identify and locate various resources available within the NWS, NOAA, and Department of Commerce with just a click or two," noted Conyers.

"The employee resources and best practices page provides links between Headquarters and regional/field offices," says Harriet Hartman from the CFO's office who works with Conyers to oversee the site. "This is a gateway for employees, right at their fingertips, that provides information of interest quickly and efficiently without having to search dozens of sites to get the answer to pay, benefit, organizational structure, or DOC questions."

Access to the site is limited to NWS employees using the first half of their e-mail login identifications (leave off the "@noaa.gov") and their existing passwords. The password-protected site (http://bestpractices.nws.noaa.gov) is managed by the Management and Organization Division of the Office of the Chief Financial Officer/Chief Administrative Officer.

Send your comments and suggestions about the new web site to: NWSHQAAEmployeeWebSiteStaff@noaa.gov.

National Data Buoy Center Reaches Out to Bring In Marine Observations

About twenty different universities and regional oceanographic consortiums make real-time marine observations, but few of them get widespread dissemination and use within the NWS, until recently. The National Data Buoy Center (NDBC) has partnered to receive data from two organizations - the Gulf of Maine Ocean Observing System (GoMOOS) and the Coastal Ocean Monitoring and Prediction System (COMPS) of the University of South Florida. NDBC performs data quality control, posts the observations on their web site, and disseminates these observations just as though they were NDBC stations.

"The wider dissemination benefits the providing organizations in several ways," said Dave Gilhousen of the NDBC. "We're giving greater public visibility to their programs because the observations are now posted on NDBC's web site which receives over 6 million hits a month and read over NDBC's Dial-A-Buoy telephone access system. NDBC performs data quality control on these observations using the same methods developed to monitor the government buoys. In fact, NDBC detected several misaligned anemometers that were producing incorrect wind directions and degraded wave measurements from a buoy that GoMOOS salvaged by correcting a software error."

On August 15, 2002, observations from eight GoMOOS buoys began to flow on the Advanced Weather Interactive Processing System (AWIPS) along side NDBC buoy observations. Similarly, observations began flowing on November 4 from eight coastal stations and four moored buoys that form COMPS.

A software kit developed by the National Data Buoy Center (NDBC) allows these providers to place their observations in the same meteorological codes that NDBC uses. The reports are sent via the Internet to NDBC for quality control and then to the NWS Telecommunications Gateway for dissemination to meteorologists. The reports may be plotted on AWIPS in the NWS offices for easy access and complete integration. It also enables similar dissemination and display to the Weather Channel, the U.S. Navy, and Canadian forecasters.

Gilhousen said GoMOOS buoys extend from Massachusetts Bay northward to the Bay of Fundy. Hourly measurements are similar to those measured by NDBC buoys, except they do not measure wave period or sea level pressure. GoMOOS is a regional consortium of over thirty different educational, maritime, and coastal planning organizations.

COMPS stations extend in the Gulf of Mexico from a coastal station just south of Tallahassee, FL, to a buoy west of Sarasota. Hourly measurements include everything that NDBC stations measure except waves. NDBC also sends observations from a station off the Georgia coast operated by the Skidaway Institute of Oceanography. Gilhousen said future plans include bringing in observations from other regional networks as well as providing the ability to encode salinity and current profiles. The NDBC web site continues to expand the number of real-time observations by incorporating these new sources as a means to better protect lives and property.

Emergency Management Leaders and NWS Exchange Ideas and Information

Leaders of two emergency management groups visited NWS Headquarters for the first time recently to strengthen partnerships and discuss NWS budget and legislative issues. As a result, both partners invited the NWS to provide their organizations with background and position papers and a summary of the Fiscal Year 2003 President's Budget for NOAA.

Kristin Cormier Robinson, Director of Government Relations for the National Emergency Management Association (NEMA) and Peter Casals, Deputy Director of the International Association of Emergency Managers (IAEM) visited NWS Headquarters on November 5, 2002.

"All of our warning coordination meteorologists (WCMs) in the field maintain close relationships with local emergency managers," said National WCM Program Manager Stephan Kuhl. "We want to establish the same close ties at NWS Headquarters. The better we know our emergency manager partners, the better we can serve them, and the better they can serve their communities."

In a series of briefings and discussions with Robinson and Casals, NWS experts shared details on the Presidents Budget Update, the Advanced Hydrologic Prediction Service, NOAA Weather Radio - All Hazard Emergency Messages, Cooperative Observer Network Modernization, NWS Drought Program, Fire Weather, and U.S. Weather Research Program."

Kuhl said IAEM and NEMA will inform their members about an emergency managers list server the NWS is operating to share information with this important constituency. Kuhl encouraged all field WCMs to pass on information about the emergency manager list server to their local contacts.

"The NWS emergency manager list server offers local, county, and state emergency managers a direct way to obtain information about NWS products and services," Kuhl said.

According to Kuhl, Robinson and Casals thought the meeting was extremely productive and gave them a better idea of what NWS does, how programs are interrelated, and how increased and/or decreased funding in one program can impact many other programs.

Aviation Services Branch Announces Quarterly Individual and Team Award Winners

The Aviation Services Branch (ASB) announced its quarterly individual and team award winners last week. The winners are, in the individual category, Christopher Strager from the Pittsburgh Weather Forecast Office (WFO); and in the team category, the NWS Team at the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Academy. The ASB Awards Program, which began in January 2002, rewards individuals (aviation weather forecasters, program analysts, etc.) and teams (aviation forecasting, computer programmers, budget and policy, etc.) for superior performance supporting an aviation forecast function, both quarterly and annually.

Christopher Strager performed a critical role in the development of the COMET Distance Learning Aviation Course (DLAC), scheduled for release in early 2003. The DLAC combines web-based and teletraining courses targeting WFO aviation focal points and Center Weather Service Unit meteorologists, with a goal of participation by all NWS forecasters. The DLAC's objectives include improving low cloud and fog forecasting, understanding the variety of aviation users NWS supports, and most importantly, how to produce and write better quality terminal aerodrome forecasts.

The NWS Team at the FAA Academy, comprised of Armando Garza, Teresa DeLand, Marco Bohorquez, Doug Streu, Mike Bender, Robert Prentice, and John Jarboe, excelled over the last three months. Specifically, they developed a database of over 1,500 Pilot Weather Briefing (PWB) written and oral examination records; provided the initial draft of the new NWS Instruction 10-809, support to FAA Pilot Weather Briefing Facilities; coordinated new PWB oral evaluation activities with FAA Headquarters; provided access to over 200 PowerPoint slide sets for WFO use in aviation outreach, while honoring individual office requests for additional aviation training materials; and received accolades from Flight Service Station managers on the new PWB certification procedures implemented by the NWS staff at the FAA Academy.

Greg Mandt, the Director of the Office of Climate, Water, and Weather Services, said of the winners, "Chris' achievements in the DLAC will go a long way in improving the quality and accuracy of Terminal Aerodrome Forecasts NWS forecasters produce. The FAA Academy team's hard work is a benchmark of how government agencies can interact and help each other achieve their organization's goals."

Congratulations to both category winners on their tremendous contributions to advancing the cause of aviation weather services.

Olympic Champion Gets the Word Out On Winter Dangers

The Weather Forecast Office in Riverton, Wyoming, has teamed with Olympic champion Rulon Gardner to ensure people are prepared and educated about the dangers of winter weather. The Wyoming native won a gold medal in Greco-Roman wrestling at the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney, Australia. However, his victory against winter elements may have been his most important.

In February 2002, Gardner went snowmobiling in the Salt River Range with friends and became separated from the group. He was stranded all night in sub-zero temperatures. The result was severe frostbite on all of his toes.

After Gardner's ordeal, he agreed to record a 30-second winter-safety public service announcement (PSA) when approached by Chris Jones, Warning Coordination Meteorologist (WCM) in Riverton. Three PSAs were made: one for Wyoming, another for Colorado, and a third for nationwide use. Other WCMs can download the audio files to CDs from Riverton's web page distribution to radio stations.

According to Jones, "We have distributed the PSA to every radio station and emergency manager in our County Warning Area. Feedback from emergency managers has been very good." Judy Valentine, emergency manager for Sweetwater County understands the message in the PSA since one of her family members suffered frostbite. She said "I know my sister is still struggling with her frostbite after two years. Getting the word out is so very important."

Have a Question for NWS Director Jack Kelly?

Director's Dialog is a column in NOAA's NWS Focus where Director Jack Kelly answers an employee question. The ground rules are as follows: All questions must be submitted to NWS.Focus@noaa.gov and include the sender's name and office. Questions should have organizational-wide implications. This column will not address personal questions relating to benefits, pay, supervision, or labor/management disputes. The Director will read all questions, but may not be able to answer all questions due to time and space constraints.

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