At the request of a constituent (actually a National Weather Service (NWS) retiree who served as the original NWS Industrial Meteorologist), we are creating an e-mail IM Alert list for future updates as well as important news items as they arise. Please feel free to subscribe on the preceding page.
I recently discovered The Disaster Recovery Journal On-line at http://www.drj.com. Vendor lists here may be of interest to the private meteorological sector. To subscribe go to http://www.drj.com/subscription/subindex.html. The latest (Winter 1999) issue contains a compilation of companies that disaster recovery services and a list of emergency contingency planning groups.
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Administrator, Dr. D. James Baker, and senior managers will brief constituents on the Fiscal 2000 proposed budget next Thursday February 4, 1999, at 9:30 a.m. in the Holeman Lounge at the National Press Club in downtown Washington. Since most IM readers will not be able to attend, you will be able to access the budget information on the NOAA Constituent Affairs homepage at http://www.constituentaffairs.noaa.gov. The information will be available beginning approximately February 8th.
New AWOS sites are available on Family of Service's DDS:
| AEG | Albuquerque/Double Eagle II Airport, New Mexico |
| VDI | Vidalia, Georgia |
| KMGG | Maple Lake, Minnesota |
| PAII | Egegik, Alaska |
FAA AWOS sites and ASOS sites are available on the web at http://www.faa.gov/asos/asos.htm. Be wary of the way this Automated Weather Systems page is constructed (poorly)! AWOS sites are not listed under Federal/Non/Federal AWOS sites. In fact when you point, there is nothing there. AWOS sites are instead merged with ASOS sites under ASOS Status Report. They are listed by state and include frequency and telephone numbers.
Sporadic METAR observations are now available from a platform in the Gulf of Mexico:
3B6- Eugene Island 330C:
Latitude 28o 14" North, Longitude 91o 41" West
METAR reports from the ASOS at the Tampa Bay Executive Airport in New Port Richey Florida (KRFF) ended recently. The ASOS unit is being moved to the new Northwest Arkansas Regional Airport (KXNA) in the Fayetteville/Springdale/Rogers Arkansas metroplex. Currently KNXA sends 24 hour manual METAR reports.
IM receives frequent inquiries on where to find complete listings of ASOS locations including latitude and longitude as well as commissioning date. The best web source I can find is the NWS modernization implementation status page http://www.nws.noaa.gov/modernize/implemnt.htm. The page also contains WSR-88D, field structure, and AWIPS updated information. Click on Tri-Agency Status:
Some things slip by IM's eagle eyes. A very important February 20, 1998, memo did just that. I can only apologize and spare you all the whining about astounding bureaucratic ineptitude. Suffice it to say, I have posted a memorandum that establishes NWS policy for missing climate data from ASOS stations. Point to:
The new Asian typhoon names for use beginning in 2000 are posted at the following web site:
The new names (not in alphabetical order) are largely the names of birds, flowers, and animals instead of personal names. Fourteen different nations or territories each contributed 10 names.
The new AWIPS/NOAAPORT data subsets have been posted at http://www.nws.noaa.gov/oso/dir_subset.shtml. These subsets are content-specific sets of data received at or sent from the NWS Telecommunications Gateway, identified for communication routing purposes by a WMO Abbreviated header.
NWS scientists are writing a paper for submission by the Department of State to the International Telecommunications Union meeting in February. The paper is a coordinated effort to document the potential impact on NEXRAD's due to the potential loss of bands 2700-3000 Mhz to industry. NEXRAD radars operate in this radio frequency range and the proposed relocation to 5600-5650 Mhz would have significant cost and meteorological impacts. Eusropeans will lead an effort titled International Mobile Telecommunications (IMT-2000) under which the threat to the NEXRAD spectrum will be studied as a "candidate expansion band."
NASA recently issued a press release on the CAMEX-3 hurricane study. Scientists have found that wind patterns flowing into and out of the hurricanes at upper levels are much more complicated than had been anticipated. NASA press release 99-4 can be ftp'd at ftp://ftp.hq.nasa.gov/pub/pao/pressrel/1999/99-004.txt.
You can find a complete list of 1999 NASA press releases at http://www.nasa.gov/releases/1999/index.html.
Instructions for submitting solicitations for NASA's Small Business Innovative Research grants as well as a list of recent awardees is posted at: http://sbir.nasa.gov/.
NOAA's Air Resources Laboratory web page has excellent display programs for model forecast meteograms and other products from the RUC, Eta, AVN, and MRF as well as the RAMS. Point to:
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