National Weather Service Forecast Office
Austin/San Antonio, TX
Office Tour and Guest Speaker
Information
The National Weather Service Forecast Office in New Braunfels Texas offers guest
speakers and office tours to adults and school children.
The
National Weather Service Forecast Office here in New Braunfels is a small
facility, so tour groups of more than 15 people are discouraged and cannot be
handled without significant coordination. In the cases of large groups, we
suggest contacting our office to arrange for a speaker to come to your location
or meeting place. We can provide any length of presentation talking about a
wide variety of weather topics including severe weather, Skywarn, tornadoes,
hurricanes, flooding, weather preparedness, and careers in meteorology. We
provide this service free of charge and would love the opportunity to be a guest
speaker at club meetings, schools, civic organizations, etc. We do ask that you
call and request a guest speaker at least a month in advance so scheduling can
be arranged.
For a
school tour of our office, or for a meteorologist to come and present to a class
or grade level, the school kids must have already studied lessons in weather or
are currently studying weather. Elementary groups are discouraged from coming
and touring the Weather Service Office as the operations area is not "kid
friendly." Some exceptions could include scout troops when applying for
weather and safety badges. Instead we encourage the school to contact us and
set up a time for a meteorologist to come visit the class on the school campus.
The National Weather Service would be happy to participate in career days and
career fairs in order to encourage the students to study science. We usually
bring several "hands on" weather items such as a weather balloon, tornado
chamber, and can even present the kids with cloud charts and lightning
stickers. There is no fee for this service and no age or grade limit on having
a meteorologist come out and speak at the school. Weather study is a
prerequisite and requests need to be made at least a month in advance. Due to
staffing and scheduling, we regret that we will not be able to honor every
request.
As with
all our outreach efforts, public safety comes first. Weather and our other job
duties will occasionally mean that we may have to cancel the tour or speaking
engagement. We regret any inconvenience this may cause and we can usually give
at least 24 hour notice of such a cancellation. If you are interested in
arranging for a guest speaker, school visit, or an office tour, please contact
Paul Yura, Warning Coordination Meteorologist, 830-629-0130 ext 223 or send an
email to paul.yura@noaa.gov.
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