The Aviation Weather Center (AWC), a part of the National Center for Environmental Prediction (NCEP), is located in Kansas City, Missouri. We were formally known as the National Aviation Weather Advisory Unit (NAWAU) and we were working in the office of the National Severe Storms Forecast Center (NSSFC). The NSSFC unit moved to Norman, Oklahoma and in 1995 became the Storm Prediction Center (SPC) and we became the AWC. AWC has six operational desks; the high Level SigWx, the Low Level SigWx, the Convective Sigmet, the Central Area Forecast (FA), the East FA, and the West FA.
The NAWAU unit began operations in late 1982 with the three FA desks and the Convective Sigmet desk. In 1997 the SigWx Desks were transferred here from the Transition Aviation Project (TAP) at NCEP, in Silver Springs, Maryland. Now a major part of the national and international aviation responsibility of the National Weather Service (NWS) is under one roof. The three FA desks are responsible for the lower 48 states, the adjacent coastal waters and international responsibility over parts of the Atlantic and Pacific.
I will show you what a typical day is like in the life of a Central FA Forecaster. I will show you the type products that the forecaster is responsible for and the issue times of each product. You will see how model guidance products are used in the decision making process. You will see how model based algorithms are used in forecast preparation.
The 8th Conference on Aviation, Range, and Aerospace Meteorology