President's Fiscal Year 2007 Budget Proposal Released

On February 7, 2006, Retired Navy Vice Adm. Conrad C. Lautenbacher, Under Secretary of Commerce for Oceans and Atmosphere and NOAA Administrator, outlined highlights of President Bush's proposed 2007 budget for NOAA.

Read the NOAA news story here, view the NWS one-page summary here, and view the complete NOAA FY 2007 Blue Book here.

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NOAA News Announced at AMS Meeting

NOAA made several news announcements at the recent annual meeting of the American Meteorological Society.

New Post-Storm Rating System for Big Northeast Snowstorms: For the remainder of the winter season, NOAA scientists will give the public a new, easy-to-understand scale to categorize major snowstorms after they effect the Northeast. The Northeast Snowfall Impact Scale, or NESIS, will quickly calculate the impact of a powerful snowstorm soon after it strikes, and give it a rank, similar to methods used to categorize the strength of tornadoes. Read more here.

NWS Improves Tornado Rating System: NOAA's NWS announced plans to implement the Enhanced Fujita Scale to rate tornadoes to replace the original Fujita Scale. The EF Scale will continue to rate tornadoes on a scale from zero to five, but ranges in wind speed will be more accurate with the improved rating scale. The National Weather Service has approved the EF Scale and expects it to be fully implemented by February 2007. Read more here.

NOAA Says La Niña Here as Predicted: The Climate Prediction Center announced the official return of La Niña. Agency forecasters predicted La Niña was forming nearly three weeks ago. Oceanic sea surface temperatures have met the operational definition of La Niña for the November through January period. La Niña is the periodic cooling of ocean waters in the east-central equatorial Pacific, which can impact the typical alignment of weather patterns around the globe. NOAA predicts this La Niña event will likely remain into late spring, and possibly into summer. Read more here.

NOAA Announces Forecasts Of Entire Atlantic Basin: NOAA's Environmental Modeling Center, Marine Modeling and Analysis Branch, has implemented a new revolutionary Real-Time Ocean Forecast System that will provide mariners with "nowcasts" and five-day forecasts for the entire North Atlantic Ocean. The Real-Time Ocean Forecast System generates applications that can support operations at sea such as search and rescue operations, containment of toxic spills, exploration of natural resources, fishing, recreation, and much more. Read more here.

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The Warning Decision Training Branch (WDTB) in Norman, OK, is incorporating an exciting new method for developing training.

The method is a type of distributed "virtual collaboration" involving a team of 25 subject matter experts (SMEs) in the field of winter weather forecasting and warning from the United States. The goal of the collaboration project is an upcoming release of the third track of the Advanced Warning Operations Course (AWOC) in the spring of 2006.

Collaboration is one of the most critical elements in achieving the mission of the WDTB: With SMEs located across the country and limited travel budgets, WDTB has initiated an innovative and cost-effective way to utilize training resources in designing a course that meets the needs of all forecasters. Development of the AWOC Winter Weather Track (AWWT) started in earnest in July 2005 with a three-day Developer's Workshop in Norman, OK.

Winter weather SMEs worked with WDTB instructors to develop learning and performance objectives, the curriculum outline, and delivery schedules. In addition, the AWWT Team utilized the resources of the WDTB laboratory to familiarize themselves with the latest version of the Weather Event Simulator (WES). A brand new WES case was selected for the AWWT and will be released in conjunction with the other instructional materials in June 2006. Following the workshop, the AWWT Team has continued to collaborate on the design of an impressive winter weather course, using synchronous and asynchronous tools such as Groove Virtual Office and Gotomeeting.

The AWWT will be composed of eight Instructional Components (ICs) with approximately 15-18 hours of online instruction. The course will be led off with a video presentation by National Centers for Environmental Prediction Director Louis Uccellini, on the importance of the course and its impacts on winter weather forecasting. The ICs will address the essential knowledge, skills, and abilities required for forecasters to make accurate and timely winter weather warnings. Topics in the AWWT include societal impacts, climatology, precipitation forcing mechanisms, forecasting snow amounts, and monitoring.

The AWOC Winter Weather Track is designed to improve the performance of NOAA's NWS offices in issuing winter weather watches and warnings. This training project utilizes the collective expertise of 25 subject matter experts across the country. It will incorporate effective instructional design techniques of previous AWOC tracks. Thus far, the process has proven quite promising with a new environment that fosters growth and innovation in collaboration.

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Large Crowds Gather for NOAA Weather Radio All-Hazards Campaigns

An extraordinary campaign to promote NOAA Weather Radio All Hazards (NWR) resulted in more than 40,000 weather radios being distributed in the lower Ohio Valley.

The campaign occurred during a period of about two months following a deadly tornado outbreak in the region on November 6, 2005, and again November 15, 2005. The massive distribution campaign was made possible as a result of several key groups uniting following the 2 a.m., November 6, 2005, tornado near Evansville, IN, that claimed two dozen lives.

Local TV affiliates in Evansville, IN (WEHT TV 25), and Paducah, KY (WPSD TV 6), united with several other entities including Buehler's Buy-Low grocery, Regent Communications, The Gleaner, the Evansville Courier & Press, and The Shadow Angel Foundation. In addition, these entities joined WFO Paducah, KY, staff at three mall outreach campaigns in Evansville, IN; Madisonville, KY; and Paducah.

The primary objective of these campaigns was to provide programming assistance to owners of new NOAA Weather Radio All-Hazards SAME receivers. The popularity of the events was quickly realized as long lines formed well before the official beginning of the events. Upon the completion of three weekend events that each spanned two days, more than 2,500 new radio owners visited the three campaign booths. More than a dozen different models of SAME receivers were programmed by the approximate 20 individuals that worked the campaign, including 10 from WFO Paducah, KY.

As a result of the successes of the campaigns and widespread interest of NWR in the lower Ohio Valley, follow-up campaigns are already planned in the early spring.

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One NOAA: Ships Provide Important Weather Observations at Sea

By Paula Campbell
NWS Port Meteorological Officer, New Orleans, LA

A little-known program within the National Weather Service is the Voluntary Observing Ship Program (VOS). The VOS program is a network of an ever-growing fleet of voluntary ships (both U.S. and Foreign flag vessels) across our oceans sending in marine weather observations every six hours, 24 hours a day, and seven days a week. In fact, the VOS program has been in existence since the 1948 Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS) agreement from the International Maritime Organization. The U.S. VOS program is just one of 48 countries that recruit and support marine observations across the globe.

This program is basically the backbone for any and all marine interests as well as providing vital data for preparation and issuance of all forecasts and warnings. Climatological studies would be nearly impossible without the data being provided by the voluntary vessels. These ship reports provide ground truth for the nation's most sophisticated weather/ocean monitoring satellites as well as all other automated weather/atmospheric measuring devices.

I am the Port Meteorological Officer (PMO) for the New Orleans area and I cover the territory from Florida to Texas and the Mississippi River up into Baton Rouge, as well as Lake Charles. There are 12 full-time PMOs and four part-time PMOs scattered across our coasts, Hawaii, and Alaska, who are dedicated to recruiting, training, retaining and maintaining these voluntary ships within this vital program. Some of our most dedicated marine observers within our fleet are the many men and women who wear the NOAA Corps uniform.

NOAA Corps Ensign Tony Perry uses a cloud chart to identify current cloud conditions aboard the NOAA Ship GORDON GUNTER. Several NOAA ships gather routine but vital weather observations at sea as part of the NOAA/NWS Voluntary Observing Ships program. Photo by Commander Jim Meigs, GORDON GUNTER.

NOAA operates a wide assortment of hydrographic survey, oceanographic research, and fisheries research vessels. These vessels are operated by NOAA Marine and Aviation Operations. Ships located in the Pacific are managed by the Marine Operations Center, Pacific located in Seattle, WA. Ships located in the Atlantic are managed by the Marine Operations Center located in Norfolk, VA. The NOAA Ships I work with are the NOAA Ship RONALD H. BROWN out of Charleston, SC; and NOAA Ships GORDON GUNTER, OREGON II and the HENRY B. BIGALOW located in Pascagoula, MS. I have just recently provided observing equipment and training for the crew of the newly built NOAA vessel, the OSCAR DYSON, now providing observations in the Alaskan waters.

In addition to their daily operational duties, the NOAA Corps Officers provide basic support services for the shipboard scientific missions, and provide additional assistance to the scientific complement for particular project activities when called upon. The officers who are already heavily tasked are also asked to provide marine weather observations for the VOS program. This entails the proper training and understanding of the recognized weather observing practices, putting these elements into proper synoptic code, and transmitting this code to the NWS for ingestion. Observations on the bridge are taken hourly in short form for their own use. Additionally, the required observations for VOS are taken every six hours around the clock. My ships, while out on a project, usually send observations every three hours. Rarely do the officers miss an observation.

In my time with the NWS I've established a good working relationship with the NOAA Corps officers. They are enthusiastic in their endeavor of producing quality observations, as well as quantity. My NOAA ships are among the top performers in the VOS program and each and every one has been repeatedly given an award for superior performance.

In conclusion, I would like to acknowledge the hard work and dedication that all in the NOAA Corps display. The NOAA ships are steadfast in the VOS program and I appreciate all of the work that they do.

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Engineering Manager Named NOAA Team Member of the Month

Lawrence Schinn was NOAA Team Member of the Month for January. He works for SI International, a contractor working with the Tri-agency NEXRAD Radar Operations Center (ROC) Engineering Branch in Norman, OK.

Read about Schinn in the January 2006 issue of NOAA Report.

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Recent NWS Obituary

Heidi E. F. Nelson, 38, January 31, 2006. She was the Services Support Specialist for the Administrative Management Division at National Weather Service Western Region Headquarters in Salt Lake City, UT. Heidi began her service with NWS in August 2002 after 16 years with the Internal Revenue Service and Bureau of Reclamation. She is survived by her husband, Eric Nelson; two daughters, Whitney and Brooke; two step-children, Erica and Marcus; her parents and step-parents, and her brother, sister-in-law, and niece. Published in the Salt Lake Tribune February 5, 2006.

Employee Milestones

• Click here to see NEW APPOINTMENTS/TRANSFERS to NWS through January 31, 2006.
• Click here to see RETIREMENTS/DEPARTURES from NWS through January 31, 2006.
• Click here to see NWS EMPLOYEES ACCOMPLISHMENTS through January 31, 2006.

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Snapshots

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