LITTLE ROCK — For Charles Dalton, a general forecaster at the National Weather Service office in North Little Rock, informing the public about severe weather is like a three-legged stool.
The weather service provides forecasts and warnings, he said. The media and emergency preparedness personnel then disperse those forecasts and warnings to the public. The public then takes the appropriate action based on the information they receive.
When severe weather rolls through the state, the National Weather Service office in North Little Rock is brimming with activity, with each person assigned to specific tasks.
“You definitely have to prioritize things,” Dalton said.
While forecasters and coordinators work at the office, briefings are also held with county emergency managers, and spotters are dispatched to report what is seen in the field.
That network of emergency personnel, including officials with the Arkansas Department of Emergency Management and the Arkansas Forestry Commission, was gathered at the weather service office Saturday for the first open house there in more than 20 years.
Dozens of residents took tours of the nondescript building off Remount Road at the North Little Rock Municipal Airport — where at least two forecasters are always on duty — in between weather balloon launches and raingauge giveaways Saturday.
Each forecaster faces an array of monitors, displaying about 15 maps at the same time, and computer models automatically generate storm warnings for specific areas and townships with a few clicks of a mouse.
Earlier this month, the weather service introduced a Doppler radar upgrade and new 27-foot antenna that cost $225,000. The new radar provides such a detailed image that meteorologists can see birds and swarms of mosquitoes, the weather service said.
Dalton said many people are aware of what the weather service is, but most are unfamiliar with its day-to-day operations. He said some people have no idea that the office does daily forecasts.
The tours “give people a chance to see that it’s not just a forecast coming from the ether,” Dalton said.
Among the emergencypreparedness groups at Saturday’s event was Arkansas Skywarn, a volunteer weather-spotting program created by the National Weather Service in the 1970s.
Daryl Stout, also known by the call sign AE5WX and one of the coordinators for Skywarn, said the spotters are not meteorologists and do not issue warnings.
He said the group mobilizes whenever inclement weather is seen in the state and reports the “ground truth” back to the weather service using phones or radios.
“We’re tracking the storm and saying this is where it is, this is where it’s going,” Stout said.
As the Skywarn volunteers reminisced about weather events they helped cover and the behavior of certain storms, Stout made a point to say that they stay online long after losing electricity.
“We just fire up our generators,” he said.
Arkansas, Pages 17 on 10/21/2012