Maria M. Torres, National Hurricane Center-Tropical Analysis and Forecast Branch, Miami FL
The demand for Spanish social media services during high impact weather events during the last 5 years has not gone unnoticed. In 2016 Hurricane Matthew approaching the Florida peninsula, then 2017 brought major hurricanes Irma and Maria. Aside from tropical events, MAS has provided much needed support for other high-impact events such as flooding and winter weather storms in the US. The Multimedia Assistance in Spanish Team has greatly supported Weather Service Offices across the nation that do not have fluent Spanish-language personnel that could provide support to their local partners. In fact, even the Hurricane Center has been participating and added to the list of users.
The MAS activation during Tropical Storm Barry recently in 2019, and performing the official translation of the Wireless Emergency Alert (WEA) messages to Spanish are some examples where the team has been able to provide immediate support to the National Hurricane Center during the tropical season, along with more availability to provide interviews in Spanish. This has also prompted the need for having an additional media pool open just for Spanish interviews. Even when tropical systems may be marginal or a particular Potential Tropical Cyclone develops, having a Spanish-subset to the media pool provides a tremendous help to the Hurricane Center as these systems still bring great potential for flooding and mudslides in the Caribbean Islands and Central America. Since the majority of the MAS volunteers are operational forecasters and shift workers, they could be available 24 hours a day during certain events (although not guaranteed) through the chat room in NWSChat. As a result, this is not only bringing a more consistent message coming out of the NWS and the Hurricane Center, but most importantly, it provides the best possible support to keep the affected Hispanic communities well informed.
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