Weather can kill you.
Making sure the chances of that happening are near to zero is at the heart of the National Weather Service’s mission, and the team of professionals at the agency’s office at Greenville-Spartanburg International Airport keep that in mind every time they come to work.
It may seem self-evident that weather happens to everyone, but it bears repeating to put into context how seriously the nearly 5,000 nationwide employees of the weather service take their jobs.
Most of those employees bring a passion and dedication to the job that is often under-appreciated, according to Trisha Palmer, the warning coordinator meteorologist at the National Weather Service office at GSP.
She and other meteorologists focus on the agency’s mission to protect life and property and to contribute to safeguarding the health of the national economy.
They accomplish it by providing weather forecasts and alerts across the 46 counties in Upstate South Carolina, Western North Carolina and northeastern Georgia monitored by the weather service at GSP. The meteorologists, technicians, administrative staff and other support personnel who make up the team of nearly 30 staff members at GSP use technology and experience to make those forecasts and alerts as accurate as possible.
“It takes everybody to make it work,” Palmer said.
Forecasting challenge at National Weather Service
While saying meteorologists might as well use a Ouija board is a common way to complain about forecast accuracy, there’s a small element of truth in the implication.
The mystery is not in the scientific understanding of the atmosphere, according to Bill Martin, science and operations officer at the weather service office at GSP.
“The processes are firmly understood,” Martin said. “We understand the physics of the atmosphere.”
The challenge is in the sheer volume of variables at play.
The atmosphere is an extraordinarily complex system with a mind-boggling number of moving parts, each interacting with and influencing other parts. Martin said each atom in the atmosphere plays an active role in producing weather.
Meteorologists understand how those processes work and can say with a high level of certainty what’s going on now and in the near future. Uncertainty increases the further they look ahead because the scope of interactions is so vast.
In practical terms, this complexity means forecast accuracy is reasonably reliable out to about seven days but falls to about zero reliability beyond two weeks. Gaining more reliability beyond two weeks is technically possible, Martin said, but deploying the additional hardware needed to generate the data required for that accuracy would be cost prohibitive.
Water hazards
While tornadoes and tropical storms may draw the most attention, rainfall and the flooding it can bring are the major hazard locally.
“Flash flooding is our biggest cause of (weather-related) death in this part of the country,” Palmer said.
Palmer pointed to two key factors, namely the population density and the wide variability of terrain across the nearly 50 counties the weather service office at GSP monitors. The region has the greatest change in elevation east of the Rockies and a section of temperate rain forest in western North Carolina that receives the second-highest amount of rain annually in the continental U.S. after the Pacific Northwest.
Timely warnings and educational outreach are an important part of the weather service’s mission. Palmer said outreach efforts at schools are about saving lives.
“We really try to hammer that point home,” she said.
Local weather service staff also work closely with emergency-preparedness agencies to mitigate risks to public safety from severe weather. Because the weather is monitored 24/7, they can reach out to officials whenever weather events pose a threat.
Weather tech
Maintaining all the gear meteorologists at the weather service office at GSP use to monitor the weather is the job of electronic systems analyst Joe Figueiredo and regional maintenance specialist Brian Campbell, among others.
They ensure the computer servers hum quietly in an air-conditioned equipment room and check that the backup generators needed to keep the office’s massive radar running are ready to go if the power fails. Every piece of equipment is critical to ensuring the center is always fully operational.
Figueiredo knows his work is vital to the local weather service mission.
“The electronics produce all the data that drives the science,” he said.
Campbell, who supports offices as far north as New England and as far west as Ohio, is one of two technical experts within the weather service who devises and tests new technologies to support the agency’s work.
In fact, Campbell developed the code behind the automated voice heard nationwide on the weather service’s weather alert radio system. He is currently working on a system that will use wireless cellular technology to replace traditional telephone lines as a more reliable connection to weather information collection and weather radio transmission sites.
If the new system proves reliable and cost effective, it will be deployed throughout the country, Campbell said.
Palmer said with its technology and highly trained staff, the weather service is one of the most cost-effective agencies of the federal government. It touches every county in the nation daily.
Meteorologist Clay Chaney is one of the youngest staff members at the weather service office at GSP but seemed to best sum up the mission.
“I feel like the work we do here means something and adds value to people’s lives,” he said.
For more information, visit weather.gov/gsp.
National Weather Service fast facts
- The National Weather Service is part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which is a division of the U.S. Department of Commerce.
- The weather service maintains 122 weather forecast offices, like the one at GSP, and 13 river forecast centers. Between these and other support centers, the agency employs nearly 5,000.
- There are three weather forecast offices in South Carolina: one each at GSP, Columbia Metropolitan Airport and Charleston International Airport. The Wilmington, North Carolina, weather forecast office serves a handful of counties along the coast near Myrtle Beach.
- The weather service collects and analyzes more than 6.3 billion observations every day. Those observations contribute to about a million forecasts and 50,000 warnings the service produces annually.
- The weather service operates on an average annual budget of about $1 billion, which translates to an annual cost for each American citizen of $3.54.
Big dish
The Doppler radar at the National Weather Service office at GSP has an effective range of about 186 miles. The radar’s distinctive dome houses a 39-foot, 1,200-pound dish which rotates to scan a full 360 degrees.
Good to know
According to the National Weather Service, most coastal drowning deaths happen to people who are from inland areas and may be unfamiliar with the perils of the ocean, particularly rip currents. A useful site to find information about such conditions can be found at ripcurrernts.noaa.gov.
