Working at the National Weather Service

I started my volunteer work with the National Weather Service July 1. By two weeks in I have gotten a good feel for how the NWS operates. I have meet several nice and smart people at the office. Basically, it reminds me a bit of the TV show The Office because everybody is working in the same room, so it is easy to pick up nit picky details about each individual person. I have helped launch a weather balloon, and discovered you have to be certified to do it alone, and to be certified you have to study and take a REALLY hard test. During the last couple of weeks the weather has been very active, so I have helped spot storms on the radar and issue warnings for them. I have also help make calls to desolate towns to find out information on storm damage. One town that I called only contained a Mexican Restaurant. Needless to say when I called and explained to them that I was calling for the National Weather Service we were both utterly confused.

The main activity that I am currently working on is research. I have never done research before so I am very excited to have this opportunity. Our current project is looking at past storm data on pulse type storms and finding cases that contain storms with rotation at the mid-levels. Then we are dissecting the storm and determining how strong the core is, and how strong the updraft is, and then discovering how severe the damage was. Once we have this information then we are comparing it to a storm without rotation at the mid-levels, but yet the same type of environment setting. All of this will hopefully lead to the discovery of which is the stronger storm ...the storm with rotation at the mid-levels or the one that doesn't contain the rotation. Therefore pinpointing the most severe storm and gaining more lead time for warnings. This will be an extensive project, but I am ready and more than willing to put forth the effort in doing it.

~Leah Dailey
X-Ray