Meteorologist Lonnie Fisher tracks last week’s winter storm.
Sophia Bryant | Collegian
While most people stayed at home last weekend bracing for a coming snow storm, meteorologists at the National Weather Service office in Syracuse, Indiana worked overtime.
The NWS Northern Indiana office serves Hillsdale County and several other counties in southwest Michigan, northern Indiana and northwest Ohio. Rachel Cobb manages 60 sites across the region that measure local temperature, rain, and snow. Cobb said meteorologists in their office coordinated with surrounding local offices and national offices to track the winter storm that hit last weekend.
The NWS recorded that the storm caused 4.1 inches of snowfall in Hillsdale by 8 a.m. on Jan. 26.
“The computer models showed the storm moving in for a week ahead of time,” Cobb said. “All the forecast offices were looking at it.”
The NWS office is situated in a one-story red brick building, located nearly two-hours from Hillsdale. A large white satellite dish is outside. Inside, six meteorologist’s desks sit side by side in an open room. Computers and screens on desks and walls display radars, maps, and graphs.
Cobb said the NWS sent out its hurricane hunter airplane to sample the winter storm’s atmospheric conditions as it developed over the Pacific Ocean.
“Normally the hurricane hunters are for hurricanes,” Cobb said. “But when there’s a big Pacific storm that’s going to come in and affect half the country like this one did, they’ll send it out there, because we’re not in hurricane season.”
No weather balloons are over the ocean, so they need the planes to gather temperature, humidity, and pressure samples in developing storms, according to Cobb.
“If we can get a good idea of what the storm is doing at that time, it’s easier, then, to predict how it will evolve over time,” Cobb said.
Meteorologists entered the samples into their computer models to understand how the storm would develop, according to Cobb. The NWS uses several computer models, which are composed of data from surface observations, weather balloons, satellites and radars.
Hillsdale Municipal Airport and other airports across the country have automated stations that take surface observations at ground level, which measure temperature, humidity, pressure, wind, sky cover, and solar radiation. Weather balloons measure temperature, humidity, and wind, and satellites take pictures and measure how much moisture and energy are in the atmosphere, according to Cobb.
The NWS uses a dual-polarization radar, which sends out a beam of energy that bounces off a raindrop or snowflake and comes back. Computers turn that into a three-dimensional picture that shows the characteristics of the raindrop or snowflake, such as its size and speed. This radar helps them see what’s happening inside storms.
“It’s fluid dynamics,” Cobb said. “If you think of the sky, think of how the ocean is, with currents. The atmosphere is the same way. We just can’t see it because it’s clear, but it really just flows the same way. It’s water vapor, so it’s the gas form of oceans.”
The NWS coordinates county-based severe weather watches with the Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Oklahoma, and surrounding offices, according to Cobb. It declares a winter storm watch two or three days in advance, since they know the storms are coming. The NWS issued a winter storm watch on Jan. 22 for the snow storm that hit Michigan Jan. 25. It tries to declare a thunderstorm watch in the morning if the conditions are right.
Cobb said within 24 hours of a winter storm’s arrival, the NWS decides to put out a warning if it expects six to eight inches of snow, or heavy impacts on civilians, like school or road closures. This past weekend, Hillsdale County was under a winter weather advisory.
“For thunderstorms, we watch the radar, and if a storm looks like it’s going to be severe, then we issue the severe warning,” Cobb said. “We can’t do that 24 hours ahead. Fifteen minutes to half an hour ahead of time is when we try to get those out.”
Two meteorologists are on shift 24 hours, 7 days per week, working in three different eight or nine hour shifts. They rotate through all three shifts throughout the year. More meteorologists come in when severe weather is expected, according to Cobb.
Several cubicles are situated beside the forecaster’s office space. Cobb’s desk is inside one of these cubicles. Outside the forecasters’ rooms are offices, a room for computer servers, and a room for electronics technicians. The office staffs 17 people, 10 of whom are forecasters, according to meteorologist Kyle Brown.
Cobb said one of the hardest parts of her job is working weekends, holidays, and nights.
“Sometimes you think your shift is over at four, but thunderstorms are breaking out. They need you to stay,” Cobb said.
The NWS also does a seven-day public forecast, monitors the temperature to issue cold weather advisories and extreme heat advisories, monitors rivers for flooding, tracks drought, and manages their automated equipment.
Hillsdale’s forecast as of Jan. 28 predicted a high of 15 and a wind chill around minus 10 for Thursday, Jan. 29, a high of 12 and a low of minus 6 for Friday, Jan. 30, a high around 14 and a low of minus 3 for Saturday, Jan. 31, and a high of 19 and a low of six on Sunday, Feb. 1, with a chance of snow after 1 a.m.
Meteorologist Lonnie Fisher works on making the forecast. He said they gather information in their grid graphically, then the computers give a text product or a forecast using that data.
“We’ve got offices in Michigan, Illinois, southern Indiana, and then over to Ohio that we all coordinate with for the forecast,” Fisher said.
As observing program leader, Cobb manages sites run by civilian volunteers and at water treatment plants that measure local temperature, rain, and snow by quality controlling their data, archiving it, and maintaining their equipment.
John Hinsberger, the information technology officer, is responsible for IT related to their Windows PC and other adjacent software, according to Brown.
“I’m responsible for a bunch of servers across the region, and make sure they have the latest updates,” Hinsberger said. “I respond to any trouble tickets that come in. There are about 50 servers.”
Cobb said she grew interested in meteorology in high school, when the 1996 movie “Twisters” came out.
Cobb attended Valparaiso University in Indiana for meteorology and took a storm chasing class in the summers. She thought she wanted to be a storm chaser, but she realized it was not a practical job.
“A lot of it was just sitting out in hot, dusty fields in the middle of the plains, just waiting for little clouds to turn into thunderstorms,” Cobb said. “And sometimes they did, sometimes they didn’t.”
Throughout her career, Cobb has worked on computer models and national forecasting maps in Maryland, forecasting and fire weather predictions for firefighters in California, Colorado, Idaho, Oregon, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming and studied hurricanes in South Carolina.
Cobb said while she worked in South Carolina, she learned about severe weather, like major thunderstorms and tornadoes, so she could get a job in the Midwest, where her family lives.
Forecasters know about winter storms days in advance, and people tend to be careful about them, but high winds during thunderstorms and tornadoes are the biggest hazard in this region, according to Cobb.
Cobb said the best part of working for the NWS is interacting with the public. She’s worked at public events like the Elkhart County Fair and boat shows on Lake Michigan by providing weather briefings for event organizers. She said the most challenging part of her job is the stress of forecasting the weather accurately.
“There’s the stress of trying to get it right, especially when there’s big events, because our main goal is protecting lives,” Cobb said. “So you want to make sure you get those thunderstorm warnings and tornado warnings, especially, and you want to make sure they’re right, so people take shelter and nobody gets hurt.”
