George N. Mathews

National Weather Service
Midland/Odessa, TX

Communications with other agencies has been a long-standing tradition in the National Weather Service, especially in the area of severe weather operations. In 1997 the Midland/Odessa, Texas National Weather Service Office staff saw an opportunity to vastly increase the communication between the weather office and external contacts. This project was undertaken to enhance many aspects of severe weather operations by giving much more information during events to our contacts and keep the communications flowing during relatively quiet times.

Microsoft Access97 software was utilized to build a comprehensive database of contacts for the office. Previously the contacts were in various binders around the office. Official severe weather contacts were in one binder, rainfall observers in another binder, and co-op observers in still another binder. A master database was started with two main themes in mind: to bring together the contacts into one electronic location, and to make accessing the information user-friendly. As of this writing there are about 920 contacts in the database. Each entry contains vital information used to contact these customers and other information that aids the user. The software uses information within these entries plus programming code to display subsets of data depending on the selections of the user.

Although the database could be used for many tasks, it was first used in an office-wide basis for severe weather operations in Spring 1999. This user-interface software allows you to find the desired contact very quickly, then the contact can be reached via telephone. There are three main choices on the main screen, referred to as the Switchboard (Fig. 1): "Activate Net Control"; a listing of counties; and the type of contact, e.g., "Official Contacts", "Media", etc.

A typical scenario follows of how the software has been used. The associated figures show examples of Brewster County with a storm headed toward the Terlingua area.

1. The Storm Prediction Center (SPC) issues a weather watch.
2. You decide to activate the amateur radio community:

1. start the database software,
2. the Switchboard displays (Fig. 1),
3. select the "Activate Net Control" button,
4. a screen loads containing amateur radio contacts that could run network control in the office (not shown).

1. You wish to notify Brewster County officials that a warning has been issued for their county:

1. return to the Switchboard,
2. select a county,
3. select "Warning Call",
4. a screen loads (Fig. 2) listing the agencies that should be called in that county (usually one call, sometimes up to three calls).

1. You wish to call a small community (Terlingua in this case) in the path of the storm:

1. return to the Switchboard,
2. select "Official Contacts" (Fig. 3)--a listing of all the official contacts in the county,
3. look for the desired contact(s) and notify them.

1. The storm is now passing through rural country (north of Study Butte), but is headed toward a General Public contact:

1. return to the Switchboard,
2. select "All County Contacts",
3. a screen with all the contacts in the county loads (Fig. 4) and you look for the desired contact,
4. give a brief notification about the expectations of the storm and tell them you will check back later.

1. Subsequent calls can be made to any of the above contacts to pass along the latest developments.
2. The Amateur Radio Net Control Operator wants to activate HAM spotters near the storm:

1. opens the database on the PC at the SKYWARN Net Control station,
2. from the Switchboard select Brewster County,
3. select HAMs,
4. the screen listing the HAMs for Brewster County (Fig. 5) displays,
5. calls the appropriate contact.

1. You receive a call from the Sheriffs Office that KVLF Radio in Alpine reported baseball size hail 10 miles south of Alpine:

1. you return to the Switchboard,
2. select "Media",
3. the screen listing all the media contacts (Fig. 6) displays,
4. call KVLF radio to verify the information

1. A final "all clear" call can be made to inform the local officials that the danger has passed. This would also serve as a final check for severe weather reports.

In situations having only a few severe weather events, this scenario has been carried out fairly consistently. In heavy to very heavy events, the primary warning contacts were called but some secondary calls had to be scrubbed. During warning operations, the Midland/Odessa NWS office has ten duties that are covered by three to ten people during an event. The "Verification Coordinator" (or Communication Specialist) is one of these duties and is tasked with operating the Severe Weather Database software and making the coordination calls.

Of the 26 counties the office serves, many require only one notification call when a warning is issued, but a few counties have up to three calls required. When "Warning Call" is pushed, the software loads all the calls (Fig. 2) needed in that county, whether one or three. This measure assures that all the needed calls were made. For a Warning in Midland, Ector, or Martin Counties a reminder to send out a pager message displays.

The software is also loaded on a PC at the SKYWARN Net Control station. The switchboard has a selection of "HAMs" that displays a listing of the SKYWARN trained HAMs (Fig. 5) in that needed county. The Net Control Operators use the software to activate HAMs in the counties where spotters are needed.

We try to call our contacts before the storm arrives. We feel it would not be fair to just use our contacts for verification purposes—it might seem uncaring. This is not intended as a special service, but rather as a way to get them ready to spot the storms for us. There are times when too many storms are occurring simultaneously and there is no time to call ahead, however.

Some of our official contacts receive the warnings via teletype, but our coordination calls confirm their receipt of the information. Our call is usually made as the warning is being issued, often several minutes before the warning prints on the teletype.

By using the software, our ability to make more calls allows us to do much more than just give brief coordination calls after a warning is issued. It allows us to get in touch with our official contacts several times to guide them through duration of the storm. One direct benefit of this abundance of information is that they realize we understand very much about many of the storms and they can confirm this from the field very quickly. It seems our reputation as a resource for quality information has also been recognized by some of our customers. In a recent edition of the Lovington, NM Daily Leader newspaper (Hatfield, 1999) included this passage:

These types of comments have not been noted in newspaper clippings over the past few years. Historically, articles that reference city officials rarely have mentioned the National Weather Service; rather, they usually mention other city officials. No one from the Midland/Odessa NWS was quoted in the article, but the office is mentioned twice. These city employees seem to like being associated with us. It is our belief that the office’s degree of information sharing during severe weather has assisted in getting this vote of confidence.

The database has many parameters in addition to what is used during warning operations. There are 16 different types of information in the database, such as mailing addresses, contact type, mailing status, etc. These 16 types are made up of 83 actual columns in the database. With 920 contacts, the total number of cells of possible information in the database stacks up to 76,360. To further enhance our customer relations, we use the database to print mailing labels for our quarterly newsletter, the Dust Devil Dispatch. Any mailings to user groups can be accomplished as well.

The newsletter and the warning operations calls appear to work hand-in-hand. The newsletter shows all the advancements in the office that we referenced the last time they talked to us on the phone. Then during an event, giving timely updates as to what the equipment is indicating may remind them that they read about the equipment in the newsletter. This scenario is simply synergy at work. All of this information is communicated through the same database.

With 50,000 square miles in our CWA (about the size of Alabama) and living along the dryline in the spring, it takes a great effort to keep our contacts informed. Without the assistance of the database we could not approach the amount of customer service that we enjoy today. In the modernized era, most NWS offices have a larger warning area and more contacts. An electronic database is probably the best way to handle this information. A Geographic Information System (GIS) would be the next logical step that would combine the contact data with the AWIPS mapping.

Hatfield, Sharon, "Big Weather—Lovington’s Skies Under Surveillance", Lovington Daily Leader, May 28, 1999, p 1-2.

I would like to thank fellow members of the NWS Midland/Odessa staff : Brian Francis, SOO and Ray Fagen, MIC, for their guidance and their review of this paper. I would also like to thank our WEB Master, Robert Boyd, for his help with the HTML conversion.

Figure 1. Switchboard (main screen) for Severe Weather Database.

Figure 2. Listing of calls to make when a warning is issued for Brewster County, Texas.

Figure 3. Listing of all official contacts for Brewster County, Texas.

Figure 4. Listing of all contacts contained in database for Brewster County, Texas. Phone numbers have been intentionally hidden in this figure since some private citizens are listed.

Figure 5. Listing of all SKYWARN-trained Amateur Radio operators in Brewster County, Texas. Phone numbers are hidden in this figure since private citizens are listed.

Figure 6. Listing of media contacts in Brewster County, Texas.