NWS Honolulu Forecast Office visit (3-25-06)

 

Text Box: We (MET 101, GEOG 101, GEOG 122, and 10 future students) visited the NWS Honolulu Forecast Office on March 25, 2006. Interest among us was very high because we were in the middle of the 5-week continuous stormy weather.

 

(left: Water vapor image on March 26, 2006)

 

Our guide was Ms. Nezette Rydell, the Warning Coordination Meteorologist (WCM) of the Weather Forecast Office Honolulu. You may be familiar with her face because she often appears on Hawai‘i’s local news, especially when bad weather is happening!

 

Text Box: We settled comfortably into the conference room, and Nezette showed us a PowerPoint presentation about the mission of NWS, tasks of the Honolulu Office, etc.

 

Nezette also shared with us many interesting recent events in Hawai’i: ¼” hail fell over Hilo; tornadoes are no longer rare in Hawai’i–11 other states got fewer tornadoes than us; and we may be experiencing an extreme weather condition this Winter.

 

During the last several weeks, we heard the warning, “Beep, beep, beep. The National Weather Service of Honolulu has issued a flash flood warning for the Island of O‘ahu……” almost every hour! These warnings are important because the damage from these dangerous events can be preventable if you receive the warning. Nezette said that the NWS has a great relationship with Hawai‘i’s media for the dissemination of information.

 

Text Box: Then we had a tour of the forecasting office. As you can guess with these severe weather conditions, a bunch of forecasters were working hard (while we were getting ready for the relaxing Spring Break!).

 

The booth visible behind Nezette is where the “Beep, beep beep!” comes from—a computerized broadcast system. For a weather forecast, you might have an image of some guy sitting in front of a microphone reading a note. That is not true anymore.

 

We were thankful that the people of the NWS working so hard to keep our lives safe. Nezette mentioned that every family in the US supporting the NWS with $5.41 per year. Definitely, I thought, we should support them more ($5.50? Sorry, I am a poor teacher).

 

For more information about the NWS Honolulu Forecast Office, please visit their web site at:

 

http://www.prh.noaa.gov/hnl/pages/about.php

 

For weather forecasting visit:

 

http://www.prh.noaa.gov/hnl/

 

 

Mahalo to Ms. Rydell and the NWS for their hospitality!

 

 

Reported by Toshi Ikagawa, Instructor

March 27, 2006