Employee Spotlight: Greg Stumpf

The project combined several of Greg’s passions -- storm chasing, photography, electronic music composition, and--making a difference. Greg Stumpf and Jim LaDue, NWS Warning Decision Training Branch, collected videos of tornadic storms across the Great Plains during the spring of 2004 donated by storm chasers. Together they produced “Storms of 2004,” a compilation of those videos set to music, some composed by Greg. Their goal was to raise money for the American Red Cross Disaster Relief Fund -- “Storm Chasers Helping Storm Victims in their Time of Need.” The project was so successful they repeated the effort in “Storms of 2005.” In the first two years, over $17,000 (100% of the DVD profits) were donated to charity. The “Storms of 2005” DVD won first place in the First International Journal of Meteorology Film Festival, and the £1000 prize was also donated. But producing DVD’s for charity is not Greg’s day job.

Far away from his favorite place in the tall deciduous forests of New York’s Hudson Valley, Greg has been roaming the Plains in search of tornadoes since 1987. Even during high school in upstate New York he had a friend’s mom drive them around to “get in the better storm cores.” He had always been interested in many aspects of earth sciences, but meteorology seemed to draw him in. Greg earned his B.S. at the State University of New York College at Oswego, and worked as a student intern at The Weather Channel for a semester. He wanted a position that would benefit the public more, and after working at the New York Power Authority at their emergency operations facility, he knew he wanted to help warn people and protect assets in harm's way from a public/service/government perspective. His journey took him west, where he enjoyed the diversity of a bigger school, Colorado State University, for his M.S. degree.

Greg came to NSSL in March of 1989. His job grew from developing techniques for aviation wind shear alerts for the first few years, to developing NWS severe weather warning algorithms. A few years ago he moved into his current position with the NWS Meteorological Development Laboratory (MDL) Decision Assistance Branch (DAB) in a collaborative NSSL-MDL partnership, sponsored by CIMMS, to facilitate the transition of this research and technology into NWS operational systems for severe weather warning decision making. This is his day job. Knowing that some of the work he’s done has already made positive changes to NWS warning services is his favorite part of his job. Greg co-hosted the “2nd Workshop on Severe Weather Technology for NWS Decision Making” this past summer to bridge the gap between research and operations. Researchers presented their latest results to forecasters, and the forecasters shared stories “from the field” with researchers. Together they came up with a strategic list of findings and recommendations for fast-tracking emerging technologies through the NWS operations implementation process.

Greg is a firm believer in storm chasing to benefit others - to do his best to energize other chasers to give something back to the people affected by storms. The DVD projects came out of this effort. Storm-chasing has also enriched Greg’s understanding of storms. “The benefit of taking that in-situ experience with nature in its most violent state, and using that to learn more about storms.

In my case, seeing storms in person, and at the same time using the remote sensing devices (e.g., radar) to help me understand how NWS warning forecasters can make their decision without the added benefit of visuals, and to understand how these storms affect regular people, knowing we are making a difference.” The DVD project eventually became too consuming and now Greg has stepped back a little - to chapter producer and consultant.

Greg’s constant travel companion is his camera (see sample photos upper and lower right), but he hopes to take his six-year old daughter on chases when she gets a little older. A 48 state trip in an R.V. with his wife Julie is another aspiration - but maybe without their two cats and one salamander.