On May 6, 1998, the House and Senate Appropriations Committees delivered approval to the National Weather Service's (NWS) parent agency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), to proceed with closing 80 NWS offices. As required by law, NOAA Administrator Dr. Baker sent a letter to the House and Senate Authorization Committees certifying that no degradation of service will take place as a result of the closure of these offices. A Federal Register Notice will appear shortly.
NOAA is currently reviewing the next set of 47 proposed weather office closures approved by the Modernization and Transition Committee as part of the NWS modernization and restructuring.
On the Cooperative Institute for Mesoscale Meteorological Studies home page you can examine GOES-8 visible and IR imagery of smoke from Canadian fires entrained into the circulation of a cyclone over North Dakota. The narrow elevated smoke feature is evident on the visible and the 6.7 micron IR (water vapor) imagery. The web address is:
http://cimss.ssec.wisc.edu/goes/misc/980507.html
The latest satellite in the Polar Orbiting Environmental Satellite (POES) series is scheduled for launch on May 13, 1998, from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. NOAA K is slated to replace one of the two polar orbiting satellites currently in orbit, NOAA 12 or NOAA 14.
The satellite will be launched into a near polar orbit 516 miles above the earth. It will complete one orbit every 102 minutes. NOAA K is the first in a series of five satellites with improved imaging and sounding capabilities that will be launched over the next 12 years. The spacecraft also carries search and rescue instruments used internationally for locating ships and aircrafts in distress.
71876 (CYQW) North Battleford Saskatchewan (52o 46" North, 108o 15" West) elevation 548 meters is a new upper air site replacing Sasketoon (71866) as of May 1, 1998. Upper air operations occur once daily at 12 UTC. Parameters available include upper winds, pressure, temperature, and humidity.
Beginning Monday June 30th at 1200 Universal Time Coordinated (UTC) a slightly revised mass news disseminator format will precede severe thunderstorm and tornado watches. The changed format is consistent with changes made April 15th, 1998, to short fuse warnings.
In accordance with standards of mass news dissemination agencies, the word "URGENT" will replace the word "BULLETIN" in all severe thunderstorm and tornado watches. The word "BULLETIN" will only be used in short fuse warnings. An extensive public information statement on this change can be found at http://www.nws.noaa.gov/om/notif.htm.
You can find a list of all ASOS stations listed with longitude and latitude at:
http://www.nws.noaa.gov/pub/modernize/asos.txt.
An excellent home page to keep tabs on changes to the Advanced Weather Interactive Processing System can be found at:
http://www.nws.noaa.gov/oso/oso1/oso11/oso112/awips.html
How much skill is there in actually forecasting El Niño? According to one recent article, not much. Check out: http://typhoon.atmos.colostate.edu/~knaff/ENSO/Cliper.html.
An Internet web site has been developed for the Production Management Branch of NCEP at http://www.ncep.noaa.gov/NCO/PMB. Check this site for updates regarding the Y2K conversion effort and the transition of operations to the Class 8 Computer system.
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