Weather Casters Find High-Tech Home

A map of western North America split into a trio of computer screens glowed in the face of meteorologist Bill Hirt.

A forecaster for the National Weather Service, Hirt scanned the display for hot spots of activity caused by a swell of cool air moving in from Canada.

As he slid his computer mouse left, the cursor skipped from screen to screen before settling on a section just outside Ketchum, Idaho.

“There’s going to be some high levels of turbulence in Idaho, and later here in Wyoming,” Hirt said, while drawing an on-screen box around the region. “There won’t be any in-service meals on those flights.”

Moments later, Hirt sent out a warning advisory called a SIGMET. The bulletin went to pilots, dispatchers and air traffic controllers, warning them to steer clear of the region for at least four hours.

Hirt is one of about 30 forecasters at the National Weather Service’s new Aviation Weather Center in Kansas City-- the only such facility in the country.

Meteorologists work around the clock at the building. At hand is the latest in forecasting technology, complete with seven satellite dishes, used to update pilots flying anywhere between the Pacific and Atlantic oceans about ever-changing weather risks.

“Weather is now the greatest threat to aircraft,” said David Rodenhuis, director of the aviation center. “It used to be engines and airplanes themselves, but as they got better, it became the weather.”

Flanked to Hirt’s left and right are two additional lead meteorologists, each surrounded by the same array of computer screens. Above their heads dangle signs reading “West,” “Central” and “East.”

Each meteorologist works a section of the country for a year before rotating to another zone. And each region presents its own potential weather catastrophes for pilots--from a volcanic ash cloud in Hawaii to a severe ice storm over Montana.

“The West is probably the busiest to work in the winter,” Hirt said. “Dealing with those mountain ranges can be interesting.”

In addition to advisories, meteorologists issue regional forecasts for six geographical areas every three hours. Used by pilots and dispatchers, they are a synopsis of the position and movement of weather fronts and surface pressures.

The goal, Rodenhuis said, is to reduce the number of flight delays and cancellations at commercial airports and to prevent weather-related airplane accidents.

“These are the cornerstones to why the weather service exists,” he said. “Every weather service person has that written on the lower parts of his eyelids.”

The $10-million aviation center opened in September, moving from an outdated building in downtown Kansas City. The new 15,000-square-foot center, which can operate for 72 hours on backup power in the event of an outage, is near Kansas City International Airport.

The aviation center is paired with the weather service’s National Training Center, where each meteorologist working for the weather service is trained before moving to a regional forecasting center.

“If you’re in the weather service, you’ve probably been to Kansas City,” said James Henderson, deputy director of the aviation center.

The move was a part of the National Weather Service’s recent completion of a 12-year, $4.5-billion modernization program. Its crowning achievement was the installation of the service’s new computer system, called the Advanced Weather Information Processing System.

The AWIPS system, used by forecasters like Hirt, is tied in with advanced Doppler radar and a series of Earth-observing satellites. The goal is to modernize and interconnect the weather service.

Despite the rapid advances in technology, forecasters are still limited in how they relay the information to airborne pilots.

Rodenhuis said pilots have always depended on dispatchers in the air traffic control tower to read them the weather updates while they’re manning the aircraft. The problem, Rodenhuis said, is that they still do.

“That’s a shame in a modern age with the Internet and so forth,” he said. “A picture is worth a thousand words. Often these messages are composed of 20 or 30 words which really do not explain things sufficiently. We’re trying to modernize that.”

Part of that modernization is being engineered by Honeywell, a Minneapolis-based company that makes guidance and control systems for aircraft, Rodenhuis said.

Although the system is still under development, Rodenhuis says the idea is to provide pilots a limited but constantly updated glimpse of the weather. Pilots wouldn’t have a weather radar in the cockpit but would have access to snapshot pictures of current weather threats, such as a fast-moving line of thunderstorms.

“It gets updated every minute so that if there’s a change, if the cloud ceiling drops from 5,000 to 500 feet, bingo. You’ll see it right there,” Rodenhuis said.

“It would be like a primitive graphic to emulate that current radar pattern, and color coded so it can have quick-glance value,” he said. “Something like red, don’t go there.”

Eventually, Rodenhuis said, all aircraft could implement such technology, from the smallest Cessna to jumbo commercial planes.

But for now, pilots still depend on the meteorologist. And even with the advancing technology, don’t expect that to change.

“It still has to be interpreted. We tell our forecasters that you’re always going to be needed,” Rodenhuis said.