|Debra Smith|
We all drive by the National Weather Service’s (NWS) center on Route 231, and most of us have probably wondered what goes on there behind the scenes. I was privileged to be part of a tour group that got a glimpse inside on Sunday.
Andy Pohl, a meteorologist and Gray NWS’s information technology officer who has been at the Gray NWS for 19 years, is retiring at the end of June. Andy led a group of about 20 on a tour of the station, despite the storms in the region. Usually, on a Sunday evening, there would be two staff on duty. But because of the extreme weather, there were six, all focused on the five screens at each of their work stations, each looking at different aspects of the storms moving west to east across New England.
Why Gray, Maine? In 1995, Congress decided that to get better radar coverage, they needed centers outside of cities. Portland’s NWS then moved to Gray, and is one of four centers in New England. The others are based in Boston, Burlington and Caribou and report weather forecasts for their region.
The NWS uses a number of computer models for their forecasting, which they run on two of the fastest supercomputers in the world, that run at a speed of 8 petaflops per operation: that means 8 trillion operations per second. Mindboggling speed!
Andy noted that the severity and frequency of extreme weather events has increased dramatically. For example, Gray NWS forecasted an average of 18 flash floods a year historically. In 2023, that increased ten-fold to 180 flash floods.
At the end of our tour, we watched the launch of a weather balloon, schedule daily at 6PM (Eastern time). In a small building, a staff member filled a balloon with hydrogen, and released it outside with a GPS attached. These balloons are launched at weather stations around the world at the same time every day, and collect the data you see in your weather report: temperatures, pressure, wind speed, etc.
Most meteorologists know as kids that they want to do this, but some arrive in the field through other routes. Tours for school groups are a great way to introduce young people to an exciting STEM career possibility, from the hands-on weather simulator to the active radar images and ballon.
One last takeaway: we asked what weather app meteorologists use: Radarscope, which gives you detailed weather radar data and has a one-time cost of $10. I’m downloading it now.
