As we are a month into the partial shutdown of the U.S. Government, I am sure that most of you have read about the hardships faced by U.S. Government employees who are furloughed. Then there are those whose jobs are deemed of a critical nature so they are working without pay during the shutdown. The focus of this article is about our friends at the National Weather Service who are working without pay during this partial U.S, Government shutdown.
If I have not said so before, I will say it now, I hold the National Weather Service in very high regard. They are my go to place for weather information. I have the website of my local NWS Weather Forecast Office at Mt. Holly bookmarked and have a special widget on my iPad for ease of access. I know other media outlets and weather sites on the internet use the NWS radar as a source for their radar, and I have a free radar app on my iPad. Yes, the NWS forecasts as well as their various advisories, watches, and warnings are used by many media outlets and other private weather corporations. Nothing against those, but I prefer getting my weather directly from the NWS. And I have learned about meteorology by following the NWS. I serve as a volunteer for the NWS at Mt. Holly as a skywarn spotter. It is fun, and I am glad to help out. I have been serving as a skywarn spotter since Super Storm Sandy, in fact I made my very first skywarn spotter report the morning after Super Storm Sandy hit, reporting on the wind damage, our power outage, and transformer fires.
Everyone, and I mean everyone from the NWS either for this blog, or at Mt. Holly in my role as a skywarn spotter has been very professional and always helpful. Who else can you laugh with when you are making a report of ice accretion at 4 AM or laugh together when I trudge through the snow to take a snow measurement only to lose track of my snowboard because I did not do a good job marking the location of my snow board? They are dedicated and care about what they do.
We have had one of those difficult to forecast coastal lows here in the east over the weekend, and before it hit us in NJ it hit the midwest with a lot of snow. I was lucky this time, but north of us, not so much. Some areas north of us, e.g. Connecticut saw an ice storm, with snow further north. Last week California experienced winter rains along with flash flooding and debris flows on burn scars. Through it all, our friends at the NWS were working hard, often putting in longer hous to give us the information that we needed to keep safe.
Writing this post to thank all of my friends at the NWS who are working during this partial shutdown feels wholly inadequate. But I write this to share my utmost respect for the NWS.
Here are two great articles that came across my electronic desk in the last couple of days about the NWS and the great work that they do:
CAL FIRE (CDF) S2T Tanker 71 working Sawtooth Complex Fire (2006)
Sawtooth Complex Fire (Sept. 2006), San Bernardino County CA. Photo Credit: U.S. Forest Service
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