Weather (and Decision Support) for Emergency Managers

Basic meteorological concepts and understanding play a big role in the response to this nation's natural and man-made disasters, as well as planned responses to terrorist threats against urban and rural areas. Issues such as land-sea breeze circulations, mountain and valley winds, coastal cloud cover, vertical and horizontal wind shear, normal diurnal fluctuations, and the impact of certain predictable and terrain enhanced wind storms all play crucial roles in determining who's at risk, and what strategies are most effective in minimizing harm to people and structures. The ability of the National Weather Service, with its Incident Meteorologists and decision support services, together with rapidly advancing technology in assimilating data over small time and spatial scales, provides the emergency manager or incident commander with a host of essential real-time support capabilities. This paper attempts to identify and highlight the value of this real-time support capability.