During the last couple of years and stemming from the year 2000 fire plan, Land Management Agencies hired 20 meteorologists nationwide to develop fire weather programs at Geographic Area Coordination Centers and to introduce and implement new programs in support of the fire community. Early on, Coordination Center meteorologists recognized that valuable weather information crucial to the fire community wasn’t available in an adequate format, and was scattered and disorganized across multiple websites. In order to make educated decisions, fire personnel at national, regional, and field levels needed to be able to do a quick, but thorough analysis of a large and varied network of surface weather observations (RAWS, NWS and other miscellaneous networks such as DOT, FAA, etc.). The answer was to consolidate the network of observations into one web site. The format of this web site had to be concise, emphasizing weather elements most pertinent to fire weather/fire danger. As a result, GACC meteorologists in coordination with the University of Utah developed ROMAN (Real-time Observation Monitoring and Analysis Network). With ROMAN, the fire community can now get a quick and thorough view of available fire weather elements, without fumbling through a maze of websites with differing observation networks.

An overview of ROMAN, including applications of ROMAN to fire weather operations during the 2003 fire season, will be presented. See www.met.utah.edu/roman for further details.