Overview of National Weather Service Forecast Office Operations

1
Overview of National Weather Service Forecast
Office Operations

• Richard H. Grumm
• Scientific Operations Officer
• NWS-State College

2
Introduction

• Mission and NWS Field Offices
• General Description of operations
• Forecasting
• Short-term Warning Operations
• Forecast Operations
• National Digital Forecast Database (NDFD)
• Example of operational implementation
• Other NWS offices

3
The NWS Mission

• The National Weather Service (NWS) provides
  weather, hydrologic and climate forecasts and
  warnings for the United States, its territories,
  adjacent waters and ocean areas for the
  protection of life and property and enhancement
  of the national economy. NWS data and products
  form a national informational data base and
  infrastructure, which can be used by other
  government agencies, the private sector, the
  public and the global community.

4
The National Weather Service

• Has
• 4,800 employees
• An annual operating budget of 800 million
• 122 field offices to meet its mission
• Within the US and territories
• Centralized Offices
• Regional and National HQ
• Predictions Centers

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WFOs and RFCcontinental US only
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NWS Field Offices
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WFO State College-Typical Office1 of 122 Field
Offices

• Except one of 13 office co-located with a River
  Forecast Center (RFC)
• Maintains
• and operates a NEXRAD radar
• ASOS sites at airports across central
  Pennsylvania
• NOAA Weather Radios across central Pennsylvania
• Cooperative data collection
• Daily climatic temperatures and precipitation
• Some river/stream data
• Forecasts
• For airports in central PA
• Watch-Warning-Advisory responsibility for central
  PA

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Typical County Warning AreaStaee College County
Warning Area
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Typical Short-term forecast toolsimmediacy and
protection of life/property
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Climate Record

• Important part of our overall mission
• COOPERATIVE observers across these United States
• Our PA network
• Goal
• Good base line
• Historical data for planning
• Programming getting a slow facelift.

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COOPERATIVE OBSERVERS
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Pennsylvania COOP Temperatues
13
National Digital Forecast Database (NDFD)
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Forecasting in NWS Field Offices

• NDFD
• No words about it!
• Forecaster makes grids.
• Gridded forecasts
• Of most sensible weather elements
• T,Td,Winds,Clouds, PoP, precipitation
• Wind gusts, qpf, snow
• Grids used to produce some text products.

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The selling points
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http//www.nws.noaa.gov/ndfd/)
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How do they do that?NDFD production for beginners

• The Graphical Forecast Editor (GFE).
• Has lots of buttons and tools
• To edit grids
• Copy grids in from a range of sources
• SmartTools
• Allow tweaking the GRIDS
• Manage one grid its contents to make another or
  as a basis for another grid.
• Requires Collaboration with surrounding offices
• Need consistent and somewhat seamless grids
• Not always practical due to human elements

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GFE upon opening with maximum temperature grid
exposed.
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Editable Grids
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Lots of menus and buttons

• Pull down menus
• Populate? allows user to pick MODELS or MOS
  grids.
• Lots of buttons
• Some simple editing tools
• Can get Complex by hitting the
• Then you get access to lots of tools? we will be
  simple and show one example only.

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Pencil Tool Example drag it to make changes.
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Edit Area exaggerated Example Pick area then
change values
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Initial Temperatures to MOS blended Temperatures.
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Initial Temperatures to MOS blended Temperatures.
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From PoP make reasonable weather
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Our Weather fields
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Smart tool? Weather from PoPs
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From PoP make reasonable weather
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GFE Windsedit with up/downorographic
effectsMOS/MODELS
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Edit actions

• Versatile
• Allow user to inc/dec values
• Changes by variable
• Can assign pick-up values? say you want to add
  FOG on top of weather
• Set default values? see all winds initially West
  at 10mph.

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NDFD? The short tour endsbest read with the Fen
Country as background music

• GFE has changed how we forecast the weather
• Text products are gone in the sense that the
  human makes text.
• The human makes grids
• The software makes words
• Software can make lots of words and lots of other
  products
• It aint your parents weather service any more!
• Can the human forecast such detail at some many
  periods?
• Can the human forecast so many weather elements?
• Where and when will stochastic and local
  mesoscale models take over?

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Back to NWS Structure

• We spoke about field offices
• The NWS has Headquarters in DC (next slide)
• Regional Headquarters in
• Eastern, Southern, Central and western United
  States
• Alaska and Pacific too
• Has Prediction Centers under the NCEP umberella
• NCEP as DC
• CPC,HPC,EMC
• SPC in OK
• TPC in Florida
• Aviation forecast units too.

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Head quarter OfficeSilver Spring, MD

• Office of Climate, Water, and Weather Services
  W/OS - Directs, plans, and establishes policies
  and procedures for weather, water, and climate
  warning and forecast services
• Office of Science Technology W/OST - Overall
  responsibility for science and technology plans,
  programs, and development activities
• Office of Hydrologic Development W/OHD -
  Directs hydrologic development, including funding
  resources, administration, and program direction
• Office of Operational Systems W/OPS - Manages
  systems, engineering software management,
  facilities, communications, and logistical
  services

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NWS Futurepartly to mostly fuzzy

• Leveraging technology in days of dwindling
  resources
• The NWS will become a smaller organization
• Focus over the long haul will be on Model,
  Ensemble, and derived statistical guidance
  products from these.
• Enhanced products from ensembles Models and
  guidance packages.
• Short-term warnings from smaller offices
• What does this mean to you?
• Most likely you will work for a private company
• Most likely you may use NWS products

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Conclusions

• We covered the basic mission
• Focus on protection life/property
• Enhancement national economy
• General Description of operations
• Field office perspective
• Forecasting
• Short-term Warning Operations
• Forecast Operations?NDFD
• How we use NDFD
• Other NWS offices
• Within the NWS
• Questions?