Straight Talk:
Rare Disasters are Still Disasters

This summer marks the 10th anniversary of what has been called "one of the greatest and least-known American disasters in modern history." More than 1,000 people died during the 1995 heat wave that hit the Midwest and many cities along the East Coast. In a normal year, about 175 Americans succumb to the effects of summer heat. Our 1995 service assessment during this event concluded that NWS products and services were timely and accurate. So what went wrong?

Despite accurate NWS warnings and advisories and effective media coverage, the assessment concluded that people either failed to receive or didn't know how to use the information. In the cities hit hardest–Chicago and Milwaukee–extensive disaster preparedness plans for other weather events like floods or blizzards were in place. But due to the extremely rare nature of heat waves in this part of the country, neither city possessed an official plan for responding to heat emergencies. Of course they do now.

While the Heat Wave of July 2005 was less severe, municipal mitigation efforts played a major role this time. In Milwaukee and Chicago, there were no heat-related fatalities. This success story is an excellent example of coordination which begins with the forecast process, includes coordination and communication with municipal officials, and incorporates awareness provided by media partners as well as by NOAA's NWS Forecasts and NOAA Weather Radio All Hazards.

The 1995 heat wave was a wake up call for many communities to get ready for a rare event. Encourage your communities through programs such as StormReady and TsunamiReady to prepare for all events–even the rare ones. It just takes one event–rare or otherwise–to create a disaster.

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Colorado Office Hosts Visitors from Australian Bureau of Meteorology

The Pueblo, CO, Weather Forecast Office (WFO) recently hosted three visitors from the National Headquarters of the Australian Bureau of Meteorology.

The Australian Bureau of Meteorology, headquartered in Melbourne, Australia, has decided to include the Graphical Forecast Editor (GFE) developed by NOAA's Forecast System Laboratory (FSL) as part of its forecast preparation process and wanted to see how GFE was being used at a WFO. WFO Pueblo was chosen because of its close proximity to Boulder and the office's involvement in GFE development and beta testing.

Along with the Australian visitors were four staff members from FSL. The Australian team consisted of John Bally, Meteorologist, Joe Pitt, Information Technology Specialist, and Ian Senior, also an Information Technology Specialist. The FSL team consisted of Mark Mathewson, Tom Lefebvre, Tracey Hansen, and Mike Romberg.

Senior Meteorologist David Metze, IFPS/GFE Focal point, and Kathleen Torgerson, assistant focal point for IFPS/GFE, provided an extensive briefing and demonstration that included in-depth discussions about infrastructure, smart tools and forecast model ingest. A hands-on demonstration allowed the visitors to see GFE in action and how the GFE output fits into the National Digital Forecast Database. Meteorologist-In-Charge Bill Fortune discussed the organization and mission of NOAA and the National Weather Service and discussed issues related to workload, training, and resource allocation. The Australian team was very interested in forecaster acceptance, collaboration, consistency, integrity and verification of the digital forecast process and in how WFO Pueblo overcame the natural resistance to change and the shift to a new way of providing services.

The Australian team learned how support for fire weather site-specific spot requests has been integrated into GFE using the software developed by Virgil Middendorf, Information Technology Officer at WFO Billings, MT. The forecast office in Sidney, Australia, did over 3,000 site-specific spot forecasts last year during their fire season and GFE along with the spot forecast capability would help reduce some of that workload. The visitors were most impressed with the contributions that field offices make to improve capabilities and said it was great to see that the NWS encourages and utilizes field expertise when developing and deploying new systems.

"It is refreshing to see so many field offices jumping in to improve the process rather than waiting for higher ups to fix problems," said John Bally. They were very impressed with the smart tools and programs developed by people like Tim Barker, Science and Operations Officer at WFO Boise, ID and gridded verification efforts being developed by Chris Gibson and Larry Dunn in Western Region, according to Bally.

At the same time, WFO Pueblo got a glimpse of how another country handles meteorological and public safety issues. WFO employees found that both countries deal with similar issues and have many of the same concerns for public safety, resource limitations, and expanding responsibilities.

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Recent Deaths in the NWS Family

Peter Weiss of the NWS's Strategic Planning and Policy (SPP) Office died July 25, 2005. "Peter authored the OMB [Office of Management and Budget] circular that spells out federal policy for managing government information making him the expert on the subject," said colleague and friend Ed Johnson, SPP Office Director. Weiss worked at OMB from 1991 until joining NOAA's NWS and the SPP in March 2000.
Read more about Peter Weiss here.

Frederick Gale Shuman, a numerical weather prediction pioneer, died of congestive heart failure July 29, 2005, at the Fort Washington Hospital Center in Fort Washington, MD. Familiarly known as "Fred" to his many friends and associates, he was a Charter Member of the Joint Numerical Weather Prediction Unit formed in 1954 and served with distinction as Director of the National Meteorological Center (precursor of the National Centers for Environmental Prediction) from 1964 to 1981.
Read more about Shuman's life here.

Jack Schnabel, former Meteorologist-In-Charge, Jacksonville, FL, passed away June 20, 2005. Jack served in the USAF, the U.S. Weather Bureau (USWB), and the NWS. Jack's tours in the Air Force included time at Naha, Okinawa (with Neil Frank - who later became the National Hurricane Center Director), Kume-Jima, and Taiwan. While in the USWB/NWS Jack served in El Paso, Austin, Swan Island, and finally Jacksonville. His career spanned 40 years, the last 19 (1975-1994) as MIC of WSO Jacksonville. He retired on September 3, 1994. The Florida Times-Union ran a story about Jack on June 23, 2005. You can read the article here.

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New Edition of The Front Released

The NWS Aviation Branch released its second 2005 edition of The Front in July. The Front offers aviation weather tips to a broad community of NWS partners. Please feel free to download this edition and pass it on to co-workers and partners who work in aviation.

Articles in this edition include:

• U.S. Aviation Weather-Related Crashes and Fatalities in 2004
• Operational Use of NWS Aviation Products
• Record Wind Gust Damages at Raleigh Durham Airport

To receive e-mail notices when The Front is released, send an e-mail to nws.postmaster@noaa.gov.

To download the July edition, go to http://weather.gov/os/aviation/pdfs/front-june05.pdf.

If you have article suggestions, comments, etc., contact Michael Graf or Melody Magnus.

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Also On the Web...
USA Today Hosts Lightning Safety Web Chat

USA Today online hosted a web chat with WFO Portland, ME, Warning Coordination Meteorologist John Jensenius on the topic of lightning safety. Read the transcript of the chat here.

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Snapshots

Click here for a look at photos we've received from around the NWS.