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Hi I am Ross Dickman and I�m Meteorologist in Charge for the National Weather Service
here in New York and this is where it all happens. This is our office. We have forecast,
watch, warning and advisory responsibility for more than 20 million people in the New
York City metropolitan area and that includes northeast New Jersey, Southeast New York all
of southern Connecticut, New York city and long island. Welcome to our office.
Welcome to your National Weather Service. Come on in. Let�s see what our Warning Coordination
Meteorologist has to say.
Hi my name is Gary Conte and I am the Warning Coordination Meteorologist. I am the customer
service representative for the local area. My job is to work together with all of our
customers, our partners, to save lives and minimize property damage. Welcome to our office.
Thanks Gary! Now, let�s continue on with our tour past the office awards and into operations,
where the forecast happens. The National Weather Service New York NY is
open 24 hours a day 7 days a week. We have almost 30 people here working to the keep
the office running. The operations floor houses 7 workstations,
each with 6 monitors to help the meteorologists with their forecasting. As well we have three
large TV�s that stay tuned to current weather or local news to help keep us aware of any
weather events that may be currently occurring. To help with forecasting, the forecasters
have a variety of tools at their disposal. One of those being the three monitors running
AWIPS, or Advanced Weather Interactive Processing System. Forecasters have access to a multitude
of model data, observations, radar and satellite information and other sources. These are what
we look at to help make the daily forecasts. Once we decide what we want to forecast, we
turn to our Graphical Forecast Editor, or GFE to input and edit the data using a variety
of tools. As you can see on the left, we have many forecast weather parameters we forecast
for! Once we are done, we ship the graphics to the web and your forecast is complete!
A unique tool we have here, which gives us real time data in Central Park, is a direct
feed to the NYC Central Park Surface Observing System. It allows us to access daily weather
observations such as temperature, moisture and wind. This observation is then re transmitted
around the world. Sometimes, it is our first and quickest notification of what is going
on in real time. Right next to the screen is our NOAA Weather
Radio system. All of our critical watches, warnings and advisories are played. Some of
you may have heard this sound before.
This system is where we make sure those warnings are sent to the public and are tone alerted to help everyone stay safe.
While doing our forecast, we cannot forget about our other NWS offices or our partners.
A dedicated set of phones are on the operations floor to directly speak to the National Hurricane
Center and the state operations centers for Connecticut, New York and New Jersey
But how do get all this data? First, and most commonly known is the radar, which sits at
100 feet tall next to our office. In the office, we have a dedicated computer
screen to constantly monitor the status of the WSR-88D. Here we can check if the radar
is having any problems, or we can change how the radar is running to help give us better
radar information and in turn, a better forecast. We can also watch where the radar is in its
current scan so we know when we will next get fresh data. The black line around the
circle tell us how far around the radar has turned and the number shows how high the radar
is point. With the radar as such an important part of operations, we must always stay up
to date on changes. The New York New York office also launches
weather balloons twice a day. We launch in every weather condition except lightning.
We prep the radionsonde, which gathers the data, here in the office to make sure it is
working properly. From there, we take it to our upper air building just down the road
and away it goes! This data is crucial for the weather models and to our local forecasting.
Hi my name is Jeff Tongue I am the science and operations officer here at the office.
You may know me from the Ask the SOO program with my friend here from the minions. What
we have seen so far is the tools the forecasters use, the graphical forecasting capabilities,
the AWIPS systems. But how do we keep all those things going? What makes sure our equipment
is working? What keeps the radar going? What keeps the radar sensors going at the airports?
That�s what we will see next. So how do we keep it running? Well, we have
four amazing electronic technicians that work to fix and keep running everything we have.
They are experts at the radar, the observing systems and the weather radio. To help keep
the techs organized and the office on the same page, we have a board that lists all
the current equipment issues. Next, let�s take a look at our equipment
room. With so many computers running across the office and data coming in, we have a room
dedicated to the servers that the computers run on. These are what are responsible for
making sure our forecasts, and especially our critical watches and warnings, get to
the web and get into your home. As this tour comes to a close, we want to
show you something special we have at our office. We have all the climate data books
from the official NYC observation dating back to 1869 even through the various locations
the observation was located at. Inside, many times you can find handwritten weather observations
or notes for each hour of a given day in a given month.
As we finish, we will give you one more look at our operations floor. We want to thank
you for coming on this journey with us and learning a little more about your National
Weather Service office in Upton, New York. Now, here is a final word from our Meteorologist
in Charge to send you on your way.
Well I hope you enjoyed your tour of the national weather service forecast office here in New
York. As you can see we are doing everything we can to help us build towards a ready weather
nation. If you have any questions or concerns, please give us a holler, you can do that through
social media or simply send us an email. Thank you very much.