TOP NOAA AWARD HONORS RADAR SPECIALIST

The Commerce Department’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has awarded an Administrator’s Award to Tim D. Crum of NOAA’s Radar Operations Center. Crum is responsible for the operational data management aspects of the Weather Surveillance Radar - 1988 Doppler (WSR-88D) data.

The NOAA Administrator’s Award is the agency’s top personnel award, and is a combination honorary/monetary award given annually in recognition of employees who have made significant contributions to NOAA.

As a recipient of this award, Crum has been recognized for exhibiting consistent, high quality leadership, skill and innovation in revolutionizing the data management of weather radar data from the 120 National Weather Service, 12 Federal Aviation Administration and 26 Department of Defense radar sites. He directed the initiation, coordination and implementation of the concepts and procedures to migrate the WSR-88D data management from a partially manual tape (level II data) and optical disk (level III products) operational environment to a totally electronic process, significantly reducing the time from data observation to user access.

In addition to his regular duties, Crum was cited for his exemplary leadership and cooperation to vastly improve the ingest, archive and access to WSR-88D data by government and academic researchers as well as by the general public. The demand by researchers for rapid and complete access to the nation’s weather radar data inspired Crum to provide the best service possible.

“Crum’s leadership, diligence and ingenuity are definitive reasons for the successful development and implementation of NOAA’s Doppler radar data,” said Rich Vogt, interim director of the Radar Operations Center. “An outdated and inefficient ingest, archive, and access process that took several days to weeks to complete can now occur within minutes and hours. His efforts saved valuable resources and vastly improved access to the most comprehensive weather radar data library in the world.”

Stephen Del Greco, Data Processing Branch chief for the NOAA National Climatic Data Center, was also honored as a recipient of the Administrator’s Award.

The NEXRAD Radar Operations Center (ROC) provides centralized meteorological, computer software, maintenance and engineering support for all 158 NEXRAD (WSR-88D) radar systems deployed worldwide. Supported by the Departments of Commerce, Transportation and Defense, the ROC is responsible for modifying and enhancing the WSR-88D systems during their operational life to meet changing requirements and technology advances as well as improve understanding of the application of these systems to real-time weather operations.

The Commerce Department’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is dedicated to enhancing economic security and national safety through the prediction and research of weather and climate-related events and providing environmental stewardship of our nation’s coastal and marine resources.

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