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The National Weather Service Operations Center—the NOC—was established as one of the NWS pilot
projects. This brief presentation will provide you with some background on the NOC: the roles
and responsibilities of the NOC, as well as its relationship with the Western Region ROC.
NOC personnel work a nominal 16 hours a day, seven days a week. They will extend to 24
hour a day shifts should conditions warrant. Quite simply, the role of the NOC is to facilitate
the flow of information “up the chain.” Their responsibility is to keep NWS and NOAA
management aware of significant hydro-meteorological events, the impacts of those events on the
local population and infrastructure, and the forecast, warning, and decision support services
provided by the local offices related to those events. The NOC provides several types of
email and in-person briefings. Some are routine, but many are event driven. Additionally, the
NOC often must respond to short-fused requests from NWS or NOAA leadership for information.
We’ll talk a little bit about some of these types of reports, and the role the ROC plays
in supporting the NOC in the development of these reports, in subsequent slides.
An important part of the NOC responsibilities is to work closely with the ROC to gather
information. The NOC has established a Significant Event chat room for communication with the
regional ROCs. We often will exchange information with the NOC via this mechanism. This is also
a venue for the NOC to ask us questions about specific events. During the day, the ROC Duty
Office will have this chat room open at all times. Also, when the ROC Duty Officer is
monitoring during the evenings or on the weekend, we will often log into this chat room as a
way to monitor happenings and share information with the NOC.
The NOC is also responsible for establishing relationships and identifying the weather,
water, and climate-related needs of Federal partners. Of course, the big partner that
they currently have is FEMA. NOC personnel will conduct interviews with national media,
and are also responsible for updating the NWS Facebook and Twitter pages, as well as
writing the headlines that appear on the main weather.gov page.
The bottom line: the NOC activities are weather dependent. When something is happening, they
are often responding to requests for information from NWS and NOAA leadership. In many cases,
they will reach out to the appropriate regional ROC to help support their activities.
One of the daily responsibilities of the NOC is to support the morning “stand-up” briefing
attended by senior managers at NWS Headquarters, including the NWS Director and Deputy Director.
The NOC provides information on significant impacts from the previous day, as well as
a look ahead at upcoming significant events. The ROC supports this responsibility by providing
a daily situation report to the NOC. We deliver our report by the close of business. We use
existing products, information, and services already delivered by field offices to highlight
upcoming significant events, decision support activities engaged in by the field offices,
and a summary of significant impacts which may have already occurred. As the stand-up
takes place at 7:45 Eastern Time—5:45 AM Mountain Time—we deliver our input by the
close of business the previous day. However, the ROC Duty Officer does monitor conditions
during the evening. If there is a change in the forecast, or a new report of significant
impacts, we will update our situation report to the NOC in the evening, in time for them
to include the information in their morning briefing.
As I mentioned previously, NWS or NOAA leadership may request a briefing on an expected or on-going
event. Some examples include a land-falling hurricane or a larger severe weather outbreak.
When requested to deliver a briefing, the NOC will often reach out to the appropriate
regional ROC for support and information. From our perspective, we try and minimize
the impact to the field offices by using the existing products, information, and services
you have already delivered. Unfortunately, there are times when we cannot avoid asking
you for input. When the NOC is tasked to deliver such a briefing, they often have a very short
turn-around, and little time to prepare. So, when they come to us for information, we have
even less time to respond. As I said, we try and keep as much of that away from the field
offices as possible. The NOC has some routine responsibilities,
in addition to providing information at the daily, morning stand-up. Monday through Friday,
they issue a daily weather summary. This summary is delivered via email, and includes forecast
maps of surface features for “today” and “tomorrow.” Additionally, they include
bullet points regarding potential significant events for today, and a synopsis of significant
events which happened yesterday. The daily situation report that WR ROC issues is also
used by the NOC as input to this daily activity. The NOC is also responsible for developing
the headlines which appear on the weather.gov main page. Information delivered by the ROC
to the NOC in our daily situation reports, as well as information we may provide in anticipatory
or significant event reports, is used by the NOC to help develop these headlines.
The NOC also issues a series of event-based reports, via email, to NWS, NOAA, and Department
of Commerce leadership, as well as other federal agencies and even the White House. These event-based
reports may be for a single event—the traditional FTR-type information. Or, they may issue a
series of reports for a large significant event whose impacts span several days. In
both of these cases, the information the NOC uses in their reports are supplied in large
part by the ROC.
Similar to event briefing requests from NWS and NOAA Leadership, the NOC will sometimes
receive requests from management for an email report on a specific topic. Again, the NOC
often has little time to develop and deliver the requested report. They will reach out
to the regional ROCs for support. An example of this type of report occurred in July, when
the NOC was asked to put together an email report on drought impacts. They reached out
to the regional ROCs for supporting information, with a requested response time of about two
hours. In many cases, we try and develop information without impacting the field offices; sometimes
we need to reach down for additional information. Our short turn-around times are dictated by
the request from the NOC, who in turn is responding to a request from leadership.
If you have any questions about the NOC, or the relationship between the NOC and the WR
ROC, please don’t hesitate to contact the WR ROC. Thank you.