Welcome to the WCM Job Aid!

NOAA's National Weather Service is a highly visible federal agency. Each year, hundreds of Americans lose their lives while thousands are injured because of hydro-meteorological events. Billions of dollars are lost as a consequence of these events. Enter the NWS Warning Coordination Meteorologist. According to NOAA's Human Resource position description, the Warning Coordination Meteorologist:

"...serves as the principal interface between the WFO and the users of WFO products and services in leading the effort to insure their evaluation, adjustment, and improvement.

...Is fully responsible for planning, coordinating, and carrying out the WFO area-wide public awareness program designed to educate the public to ensure the mitigation of death, injury and property damage or loss caused by severe natural hydrometeorological events.

...also leads and coordinates WFO staff efforts and provides direction, guidance, instructions, and assistance to the staff in the conduct of weather service operations."

These are dynamic times. Change is a way of life. As the WCM of a field office, you must ensure your staff are ready for change and ready for the next big event. Is your office exercising best practices? Are your Emergency Managers trained, informed and knowledgeable about your services? Can your staff support a chemical or biological release if asked to do so? Are you and your staff prepared to host a NOAA/NWS Service Assessment or Quick Response Team? Will those groups find services and customer support exceeded expectations? Was your staff prepared? Were your customers prepared? Did your media partners receive and dissem-inate critical information easily and quickly? Was the general public prepared?

Your responsibilities as WCM go beyond giving talks to schools, clubs and Skywarn groups. They include ensuring staff are trained and prepared for situations like power outages, equipment malfunctions, communications failures, upset or irrational customers and routine and not so routine forecast and warning operations. This preparation involves working closely with your SOO, Service Hydrologist or hydrologic focal point and MIC. It also involves working closely with adjacent WFOs, emergency managers and all other customers, partners and stakeholders.

This Job Aid is designed to be a one-stop-shopping reference for you to better accomplish your job as a National Weather Service field office WCM. It is composed of this introduction, the 19 page detailed Job Aid, official position descriptions from NOAA's Human Resources, a much more brief description of major duties and a Directory of Useful Links.

To best take advantage of the information contained in this Job Aid, you should first read the position descriptions (GS-14 and GS-13 links included below). Then, take some time to read the official Job Aid. Once you have read these, you will know what is expected of you as a WCM. If you have been a WCM for a number of years, you can likely still gain benefit from reading the Job Aid and your position description as they may remind you of a segment of your job you may have perhaps not focused on in recent months or even years.

This Job Aid will remain "paperless" in that everything found within the aid can be downloaded via the links provided. Further, this aid will remain a "living" document which can be updated whenever information becomes outdated or new information and resources become available.

Finally, this Job Aid is for you. If you find a link not working properly or discover a useful web site you think should be included in this product, please send an E:Mail to rick.dittmann@noaa.gov.