May 1, 2009
Philip Ardanuy, Chief Scientist, Raytheon Company: The NWS mission will need to evolve from weather forecasting to providing services that enable achievement of National goals in energy efficiency, agriculture, transportation, health, etc. Accordingly, the demand for timely and tailored information will increase exponentially, and the tempo of NWS operations will also increase.

May 1, 2009
Joyce Flinn, Readiness and Response Bureau Chief, Iowa Homeland Security and Emergency Management Division: The relationship we have with our National Weather Service offices is invaluable. Continued support and partnership with them provides our office with important information that can be shared with partners at all levels.

April 30, 2009
Linda Miller, Community Services, UCAR/Unidata:

• We have had important collaborations with several groups within NWS, and we hope to continue this partnership for years to come.
• The NWS has become more inclusive in their planning activities. The communication and cooperation that stems from that goes far to serve the nation well into the future.
  

April 29, 2009
Eric Schenck, Vice President, Midland Radio Corporation: Reliability, accuracy, and timeliness will determine the long-term future, but the public's lack of understanding of what the NWS does to make lives better and safer will severely undermine its ability to maintain its continued effectiveness and could seriously limit its future capabilities. There are many, but public awareness of the capabilities of the NWS in general, and specifically of NWR, should be very high on the list.

April 27, 2009
Judith T. Krauthamer, Executive Director, MACOORA: The NWS, by example, provides important leadership in the effort to build, sustain and advance the necessary technical observational, modeling, and communications infrastructure needed for operational ocean forecasting. The applied ocean community looks to the NWS example for guidance as we build our infrastructure, which of course must operate on a very different set of spatial scales and for many different reasons than does the NWS.

April 14, 2009
Peter Manousos, Senior Scientist/Meteorologist, First Energy Corp: One significant overarching trend important for NOAA NWS is the trend of local computing power. As this ability continues to increase and becomes more widespread, there will be a corresponding increase in the number of what qualifies as high-end users of weather data. There will be a marked increase in users demanding data sets traditionally only requested by academia, meteorological centers, and a few large businesses. 

April 9, 2009
Carl Staton, Department of Energy: Weather and climate forecasts are becoming a recognized common denominator in more and more socio-economic issues as well as visible and high priority citizen-government initiatives. The benefit to citizens and the public and private sectors has been demonstrated:

• When things go right, and
• The forecasts are accurate.

The cost-benefit of investments to improve the accuracy (and get it right 100%?) ought to be one of the highest priority strategic goals. 

April 14, 2009
Robert A. Anspach, Executive Assistant to the Director, Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency

• Increasing support to emergency management by assigning an incident meteorologist to the State Emergency Operations Centers (SEOCs) during significant events as is done in wildfire situations.

April 20, 2009
Rainer Streib, Emergency Management Officer, Department of the Navy: Continue the superb outreach that is clearly developing relationships and producing well connected emergency response partnerships.

April 6, 2009
Paul Johnson, Director, DC EMA: NWS will hopefully move to the forefront in providing hazardous materials release air modeling services and do a better job of promoting this service to first responders and Emergency Managers.

April 17, 2009
Mark Slauter, IFLOWS Chief, Virginia Department of Emergency Management: RADAR has certain limitations in being able to capture precipitation that reaches the ground. This limitation is more acute in mountainous terrain due to the topography. First responders, the emergency management community and citizens rely on the precious minutes made available through an advanced flood observation and warning system.

April 2, 2009
Mike Hinerman, EMA Director, Washington County, said, "I see more and more people and objects moving into more and more weather sensitive areas along the coast and low lying areas. I see them changing the drainage flows and creating more problems that will increase the sensitivity to weather extremes and increasing the risk of damages and danger from weather that is now not an issue or is a minor issue. This will increase the need for accurate forecasting and information flow from the weather service to emergency management agencies and public safety. There will also be more construction on the ocean and along the shores for "green" power and fish farming activities. The challenges will be to have the knowledge to know what weather conditions will be causing damages to the above mentioned areas and how to alert them early and accurately."

April 1, 2009
Keith Jeffers, Bourbon County Emergency Manager, Bourbon County, Kansas, said "As the global climate changes, or is perceived to change, the funding for weather agencies may become strained."

April 1, 2009
Lynette Miller, Director, Special Projects, Maine Emergency Management Agency, said "Opportunities: Use evolving communications tools to connect with the public Challenges: Misunderstanding about the complexities about forecasting, when set against the growth of alternative information sources, may drive the public and policy-makers to devalue the service NWS provides (this is already happening)."

March 29, 2009
Kenneth Lehman, Emergency Operations Officer, Washington State, said "NWS has ISSUED.... NWS has continued.... NWS has canceled.... Currently your products are very confusing and do not support a quick scan of the product to understand them."

March 27, 2009
Paul Knight, Climatologist, Penn State, said "Advancing forecast skill into the 2-4 week period will be very important."

March 26, 2009
Nolan Deskin, President of the American Association of State Climatologists, Colorado State University, said "Your forecasts and timely information are critical at each particular moment -- but you leave a legacy of weather data that continue as the backbone for climate research and service. Please honor your data."

 

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