My Visit to the National Hurricane Center

As many of you may know, my day job is the hotel business.  This week, a team of people from my company, Integral Hospitality Solutions, was in Miami for a Holiday Inn Hurricane Preparedness Seminar. 

The events of the last two years have made the hospitality industry rethink its role in hurricane zones.  Many hotels have traditionally decided to remain open in mandatory evacuation areas in order to make themselves available to evacuees.  Images of the Holiday Inn in Punta Gorda, Florida after Hurricane Charley and the Hyatt at the Superdome are making operators and local officials reconsider this position.

Sixty hotel General Managers from properties in Florida and the Caribbean convened at the Holiday Inn Miami Airport Thursday to review preparedness plans and share best practices.  It was an interesting and productive day.

When I found out about the conference, I scheduled a team of our Directors of Operation and General Managers to attend.  With me, I had Kenneth Stovall, Rusti Price and Mike Wurster from our company. 

Having never been to the National Hurricane Center, I emailed Director Max Mayfield and asked if we could tour the Center and take him to lunch.  Much to my delight, he said yes.  We planned it for Friday. 

The impressive facility is on the campus of Florida International University, about eight miles southwest of the Miami International Airport.  We arrived at 11 a.m., and signed in with security. 

Max came out to meet us with Frank Lepore, the Public Affairs Officer for the NHC.  Max told us that he had a few fires to put out and would join us for lunch.  Frank would be our tour guide, and an able one he was.  His job is to coordinate all of the media requests and activities at the Center. 

The facility was opened in 1994.  It was being designed in 1992 when Hurricane Andrew passed very near the previous facility which was in Coral Gables.  The Center was in a multi-story office building.  It had generators that powered lighting and the computer equipment and the air conditioning.  But there was no power for the pumps that moved water through the six story building and to the roof where the air conditioning system chillers were located.  It was starting to get warm, and the toilets would not work. 

Worried about their families, the specialists at the Hurricane Center were working under nearly impossible conditions as Hurricane Andrew crossed into the Gulf and headed toward Louisiana. 

Lessons learned from the situation were incorporated into the design of the new facility.  The building’s walls are ten inch thick concrete, designed to withstand a Category Five hurricane.   Frank showed up the various ways that the building had been hardened, including the thick walls.  There is an interior tornado shelter that has twenty inch thick concrete walls.  The glass windows are one and one half inch thick and are locked into thick steel frames.  The doors to the facility look like they belong on a bank vault. 

Frank Lepore, Public Affairs Officer at NHC shows us "Dr. Bob's Bunker"

There are triple redundant generators that power the entire two story building, including the air conditioning systems.  Two independent sets of telephone and fiber optic cables entire the building from different directions and exchanges.  The building is designed to withstand a hurricane that is stronger than Hurricane Andrew and its 170 mph winds. 

Next, Frank took us to the Media Room, a large auditorium with tables where the world’s media assembles when a hurricane threatens.  Individual cables for each position are in the floor, and allows each media outlet to directly get their feed out to their station or network.  Briefings are conducted here on a regular basis during storms. 

Frank Lepore shows us the Media Room at the NHC

Just on the other side of the room is the Forecasting Center.  At the front of this large open room is the desk where the Director or his Assistant does on camera feeds to the world.  The desk has a large plasma television you are very familiar with if you have ever seen broadcasts from the National Hurricane Center.  Any piece of data can be displayed on the monitor so that clear explanations can be given. 

You've seen this desk before...

The day is broken into 180 four minute segments.  It is Frank’s job to schedule the individual interviews as well as all other media requests. 

The room is dominated by the huge light blue and tan map that shows all of the expanses of the world for which the National Hurricane Center is responsible.  It includes all of the North Atlantic, the Caribbean, the Gulf of Mexico and eastern Pacific to about 1,000 miles east of Hawaii. 

The main forecasting room at NHC

Already there is one storm listed on the board on the right, which lists the Atlantic storms.  It is Alberto, which made landfall in the Florida Big Bend area a few weeks ago.  Friday there were two hurricanes in progress in the eastern Pacific.  One of the new, young Hurricane Specialists, Dr. Chris Landsea was working the Pacific desk.  The room is divided into Atlantic on the left and Pacific on the right. 

Dr. Chris Landsea working the Pacific desk

Both work areas are covered in flat screen computer monitors that display the latest satellite imagery, computer models and radar data.  Both feature full AWIPS (Advanced Weather Interactive Processing System) stations.  This puts a world of weather data at the Hurricane Specialist’s fingertips every second.

The amount of data is mind boggling.  The National Weather Service is now archiving enough weather data every single year to fill FOUR Libraries of Congress.  

We had the pleasure of meeting another one of the icons at the Hurricane Center, Dr. Lixion Avilia.  He was busy working, but took time to show us some impressive data displays. 

Next, we went over to the Tropical Analysis and Forecasting Bureau.  Along with the National Hurricane Center, the TAFB makes up the other half of the Tropical Prediction Center, the official name for the Miami facility.  The TAFB is responsible for producing marine forecasts, tropical weather discussions and surface analyses.  These forecasts are made available to mariners through a variety of sources, including radiofax. 

Tropical Analysis and Forecasting Bureau

The discussion turned to the density of surface reports along coastal areas, especially in the United States, as compared to the density over the open oceans.  Only a few ship reports and aircraft reports are available for map analysis.   Frank explained that satellites are cleared the most important innovation in tropical forecasting in the last fifty years, while computer modeling is the most vital in the past twenty. 

Explaining the Dvorak technique

Before satellites, ship and surface station reports were critical in identifying tropical storms and hurricanes.  By the late 1940s, aircraft were flying regular reconnaissance legs across the open oceans looking for disturbances that might advance into mature tropical cyclones.  Satellites, especially the arrival of the Polar Orbiting satellites in the mid 1960s, put an end to surprise storms. 

Frank explained the Dvorak technique, in which forecasters estimate the intensity of tropical cyclones by classifying the storms’ cloud patterns.  The technique is very effective and important, since aircraft reconnaissance missions are only run in the Atlantic now, and only when storms get within about 1,000 miles of the islands. 

Then we visited the parts of the facility that houses the Miami National Weather Service Forecast Office.  We saw the modern All-Hazards Radio equipment (what used to be known as NOAA Weather Radio.)  Frank explained how all of the modern technology allows the meteorologists to be much more efficient than in the old days.  As J.B. can attest, a meteorologist would have to go to the radar in one part of the room, check the latest surface conditions on a console and go type a message on an old-fashioned teletype machine, then record it manually on tapes on the NOAA Weatheradio. 

Now, the forecaster has everything that he or she needs at his or her AWIPS terminal.  Templates are pulled up to create warnings.  They are flashed around the system simply by hitting a button.   Now, the AHR terminal receives a warning message and instantly puts it into an automatically concatenated voice.  It may not be the most pleasant thing to listen to, but it is accurate and instantaneous.  Warnings are out in seconds, and seconds count. 

It is certainly more efficient, but as James mentioned on the Weather Brains podcast this week, it certainly misses J.B.'s personality.

Frank discussing advances in forecasting with Bill Murray and Rusti Price

Other tasks, such as creating hourly weather roundups of temperature, humidity, wind and sky cover are now automated. 

More tomorrow.  including some interesting thoughts from Max Mayfield...