The week of May 4-10, 2003, brought widespread tornado outbreaks affecting 19 states. The President declared four states as disaster areas (Missouri, Kansas, Tennessee, and Oklahoma).

About 395 tornadoes occurred during this period, according to Storm Prediction Center preliminary statistics on the center's web page. The week's total exceeds the previous most active week of May 12-18, 1995, when there were 173 tornadoes. More than 40 people were killed May 4 in Kansas, Missouri, and Tennessee. There were few fatalities in subsequent events, and warning lead times appear to be good for all of the past week's significant events.

Comments Sought on New NWS Strategic Plan

A draft National Weather Service Strategic Plan for FiscalYears 2003 through 2008 is ready for comment. The theme of this plan, "Working Together to Save Lives," reflects NWS's commitment to work closely with our external partners and internal Line Offices to help support NOAA's strategic goals.

"We are making the Plan available for NWS employee comments now - a public comment period on the NWS plan, along with the plans of all of our sister line offices in NOAA, will follow soon," said Ed Johnson, Director, NWS Strategic Planning and Policy Office.

Johnson said the NWS Strategic Plan was written to conform to the substance and structure of NOAA's recently completed Strategic Plan, "New Priorities for the 21^st Century." A copy of the NOAA plan can be found at http://www.osp.noaa.gov/docs/NOAA_Final_Strategic_Plan_March31st.pdf.

All NOAA Line and Staff offices were asked to present a plan which directly identifies how they will support and carry out NOAA's strategic goals and objectives. The NWS plan lists specific NWS activities supporting NOAA's goals, and also lists critical partners who help us carry out these activities.

"In writing the NWS plan, we considered all of the NWS input provided into the NOAA strategic planning process and all of the input that stakeholders provided at NOAA-sponsored meetings," Johnson explained. "Even so, now is the critical time when our draft is being made available both internally and externally for further comment."

You can view the new NWS Strategic Plan at www.weather.gov/sp/newNWSplan.htm . Send comments to john.sokich@noaa.gov by June 6, 2003.

NOAA, EPA Announce Plans for Air Quality Forecasts

NOAA and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced a partnership recently to develop a new forecasting model to establish a consistent national, numerical system of forecasting ozone and particular matter.

The tool will provide an Air Quality Index in daily weather forecasts, and will report a more accurate warning of the days in which outdoor activities could prove to be a health risk.

In the first phase of the collaboration, EPA and NOAA will produce a model that provides daily forecasts for ozone in the northeastern United States by September 2004. Within five years, following initial deployment and evaluation, the enhanced forecasting system will expand to the whole Nation. The air quality forecasting model should help forecasters make particulate matter predictions and provide a four-day forecast within 10 years.

Read the full NOAA-EPA news release here.

NWS Survey of Emergency Managers Yields High Marks

The NWS is doing a good job of meeting the needs of the emergency management community, according to a recently completed customer satisfaction survey.

A survey conducted with Emergency Managers yielded an NWS score of 80 (out of 100) for customer satisfaction. That score is ten points higher than the 2002 American Customer Satisfaction Index (ASCI) for the overall Federal Government. This web-based survey, conducted by The Claes Fornell International (CFI) Group, collected 479 interviews from January 29 - February 17, 2003.

"The NWS Emergency Management segment is performing very well," said Stephan Kuhl, the NWS National Warning Coordination Meteorologist (WCM) Program Manager. "This benchmark provides us with a snapshot of how we are doing and areas where we can improve. It's important to measure customer satisfaction and find ways to deliver the best products possible."

The NWS identified eight activities (called satisfaction drivers) for this survey. These are areas where the NWS regularly interfaces with Emergency Managers. The satisfaction drivers were: product delivery, local information, hazardous weather, public weather information, winter weather information, hydrologic information, fire weather information, and marine/tropical information. Each of these areas was measured by a series of questions or attributes that were specific to that particular area of service.

The categories of hazardous weather information and winter weather information both received a score of 82. However, scores for product delivery (72) and local information (75) were slightly lower than the other categories.

To improve the overall NWS customer satisfaction index score, CFI suggested that the NOAA's NWS Focus on improving local information weather products and services, particularly finding ways to improve perceptions of NWS zone and state weather forecasts' usefulness with Emergency Managers. CFI recommended soliciting suggestions from Emergency Mangers for ways to make the NWS area forecast discussions more useful in supporting their operations and decision-making.

Three other NWS segments are scheduled to be surveyed using agency-specific activities and outcomes: aviation, marine/tropical, and media.

ACSI uses a multi-equation, cause and effect econometric model to measure customer satisfaction. NWS's Customer Satisfaction Index score of 80 was derived from three questions in the survey:

1) How satisfied are you overall with the products and services provided by the NWS? 2) To what extent have the products and services provided by the NWS fallen short of or exceeded your expectations? 3) How well does the NWS compare with an ideal provider of weather products and services?

Scores for the most recent ACSI results, as well as bench marking information and other useful resources are available at www.customerservice.gov and www.theacsi.org.

NWS Testing Improved English and New Spanish Voices for NOAA Weather Radio Broadcasts

Three NWS Weather Forecast Offices (WFOs) are testing new NOAA Weather Radio (NWR) Console Replacement/Voice Improvement Processor software which introduces a Spanish voice and improves upon existing voices. The test is scheduled to conclude on May 23, 2003, and nationwide roll-out could occur during mid-summer if the new technology receives positive reviews, according to Lawrence Lehmann, Voice Improvement Project Manager.

The three WFO test sites are: Miami, FL; San Diego, CA; and San Juan, PR. Major changes to the new software include: adding a Spanish voice (Javier) for audio conversion of incoming Spanish text messages into voice files for NWR broadcast; a new male English voice (Tom replaces Craig), and an improved Female English voice (Donna); a new speech engine that improves the voice quality of all voices; the ability to customize word pronunciations by voice; and, the ability to adjust the speed of word pronunciation by voice.