Broadcasters in the Warning Decision "Hot Seat": Strengthening Communication, Trust, & Teamwork Through Interaction with the Broadcast Media Community

Thirty-two broadcast meteorologists in the Baltimore, MD, Washington DC, and Charlottesville, VA, television markets recently participated in a “first ever” project to simulate issuing Severe Thunderstorm and Tornado Warnings. Meteorologists from the NOAA/NWS Baltimore/Washington DC Forecast Office (WFO) visited the TV stations, and guided the broadcasters through a simulation of an archived severe weather event using the Weather Event Simulator (WES)-in-the-Cloud system. WES-in-the-Cloud is a prototype version of a training tool that simulates hazardous weather events on an identical platform to what the NWS uses to evaluate storms and issue warnings. It is similar in concept to a flight-simulator for pilots. WES has typically only been able to be used in NWS WFOs, but it now has been deployed into a cloud computing system, allowing others to use it at their location with assistance from NWS staff.

The cloud simulation technology was jointly developed by the University of Oklahoma and the NWS Warning Decision Training Division. The broadcasters used the exact same Advanced Weather Interactive Processing System (AWIPS) tools that NWS forecasters use to analyze the severe weather threat, and to follow the actual process of issuing Tornado and Severe Thunderstorm Warnings.

Feedback from media partners and others regarding this project has increased collaboration and coordination between broadcasters and WFO Baltimore/Washington DC, while giving an “under-the-hood” interactive look into a WFO’s severe weather operations. The success of the project has led the WFO to pursue additional functional exercises for the upcoming year including additional severe thunderstorm and flash flood simulations.