AOPA Turbine Pilot Magazine - August 2017 - 48

PILOT BRIEFING

Weather brewing
TOURS OF THE National Weather Center

Where forecasts come from

will be offered during the AOPA Fly-In in
Norman, Oklahoma, September 8 and 9,
2017. www.aopa.org/koun17

BY MIKE COLLINS

THE NATIONAL WEATHER CENTER (NWC)
in Norman, Oklahoma, is a partnership
between the University of Oklahoma,
the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration, and others to further
understanding of the Earth's atmosphere.
In addition to OU's School of Meteorology
and College of Atmospheric and Geographic
Sciences, it's home to NOAA's Storm
Prediction Center, forecasting hazardous
weather around the clock; the National
Severe Storms Laboratory, working to
improve forecasts and warnings of severe
weather; the Nexrad Radar Operations
Center; and the National Weather Service's
Norman forecast office, one of 122 such
regional facilities across the country.
In May, the NWC was testing GOES-R,
the next-generation geostationary
weather satellite, which could go live by
September. It updates every minute, versus 15-minute updates for the current
GOES East and West satellites. "Right now
we're seeing things experimentally that
we've never seen before from satellites,"

48 | AOPA PILOT August 2017

said Patrick Hyland, NWS coordinator of
external relations.
More than 500 people work in the
NWC's 244,000 square feet. That doesn't
include OU's Radar Innovations Laboratory
next door, where new radar technologies
are designed and fabricated.
Aviators would be fascinated by the
Storm Prediction Center, source of all tornado and severe thunderstorm watches in
the continental United States. Mesoscale
forecasters focus on dangerous weather up
to six hours in the future, covering about
half a state. Outlook forecasters prepare
such products as the convective outlook.
Everything gets funneled through the lead
forecaster's desk; he also prepares the Day
1 Convective Outlook, explained Joey Picca,
a National Weather Service meteorologist.
Some offices are testing terminal
forecasts from grids, instead of discrete
locations, he noted. "So if you're a helicopter
landing at a hospital, there's a TAF for you."
Nearby, Aaron Gleason is working the
mesoscale desk, tweaking the Enhanced

Thunder Product popular with meteorologists. He's looking closely at fronts
and surface pressure patterns. "Where
are the features that are going to trigger
thunderstorms?" he asks. "I'm looking for
upper-level troughs, fronts at the surface-
lift sources."
Picca has been looking into the capabilities of dual-polarization weather radar. "It
helps us better identify where the updrafts
are. They also tend to be very turbulent
areas." New updrafts pinpoint future storm
development, Picca added.
The NWC sees 35,000 visitors each year.
Public tours are offered at 1 p.m. Monday,
Wednesday, and Friday; larger group
tours are at 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. Tuesday and
Thursdays; and the public can visit the first
floor, including the Flying Cow Café-beside
Dorothy, the prop from the 1996 movie
Twister-during business hours.
EMAIL mike.collins@aopa.org

WEB

www.aopa.org/koun17
http://www.aopa.org/koun17 http://www.aopa.org/koun17
AOPA Turbine Pilot Magazine - August 2017

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