[californiadisasters] The Importance of WX Observers in the Modern WX Forecast Office

The Importance of Weather Observers in the Modern Weather Forecast Office

By Roger Pierce, Meteorologist in Charge

One year ago, when I first arrived as Meteorologist–in-Charge in San Diego, I was thinking a lot of things had modernized during the past 12 years, but within just a couple of days and some strong thunderstorms in the desert with damaging winds and flooding rains, I realized the im-portance of Weather Spotters and Coop Observers was as important as ever!

When I started my career in the NWS in the mid 1980s, the most likely reason we issue warnings and advisories for a severe thunderstorm, tornado, flash flood, strong wind, and winter weather was due to a phone call or HAM Radio report from a Storm Spotter or Coop Observer. These reports were critical then because of the very limited weather equipment we had in the field to observe the weather. Satellite data were very coarse in resolution, only available hourly at a few offices and most offices received the data daily or not at all; radars were low powered and analog systems crude by today‟s standards; surface weather observations at the 150 or so first order weather offices were taken manually; and all the electronic reporting systems were ex-tremely expensive ($1000‟s) so we could only afford a few stations scattered across the country. The eyes and ears of the Storm Spotter or Coop Observers were frequently providing the best data across vast sections of the country.

Today we have satellite data at ten times the resolution that can provide images as fre-quently as every two minutes, Automated Surface Observation Systems (ASOS) stations at over 1000 nationwide, and radars that cover virtually the entire nation with digital imagery, but still as I experienced in my first few days in the office the Storm Spotters and Coop Observers still fill in critical data gaps. The satellites are great at knowing where the clouds are, but observations of the rainfall amounts are still best take by a human observer. The 1000 weather stations with high quality weather are great, but we need Storm Spotters, Citizen Weather Observers, and Coop Ob-servers to fill in the gaps between these stations, to catch the myriad of microclimates and infor-mation on localized winds that occur in the coastal regions, to hills, foothills and mountains of the San Diego weather forecast area that describes best where we all live. The radar network is fan-tastic, but still really doesn‟t give all the details on the hail size, flooding rains, wind damage, and reports of what is really happening on the ground, the way Storm Spotters and Coop Observers can do it with a great set of well-trained eyes! Keep up the good work, we still desperately need you reports and will for many years to come!

Source: http://www.wrh.noaa.gov/sgx/newsletter/current-newsletter.pdf

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