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NOAA REPORT
Vol. XI, No. 12 www.publicaffairs.noaa.gov/nr December 2002
Early Warnings Stitches Help Heal Hearts, Preserve
Save Lives During Memories, Honor September 11 Heroes
—By Marilu Trainor
Rare November
Tornado Outbreak A beautiful, hand-crafted quilt
sewn by two NOAA employ-
ees and other volunteers from
quilters who sewed seven quilts to
honor the victims of the disaster.
Under the auspices of a group
—By Keli Tarp around the nation to honor victims known as “America’s 9-11 Memo-
T he deadliest tornado outbreak
in three years claimed 35 lives
and caused extensive property
of the World Trade Center disaster
was presented to victims’ families
and officials of the Port Authority
rial Quilts,” the volunteers began
work more than a year ago to
preserve the memories of the more
damage Nov. 10-11, but emer- of New York and New Jersey Police than 3,000 victims and bring
gency management officials said Department Nov. 15. healing to the hearts of the victims’
timely warnings saved more lives The quilt pays tribute to 38 families.
than were lost. officers who were killed in the line Andrea Bair, the Weather
A total of 92 tornadoes were of duty on Sept. 11, 2001, during Service’s western region climate
reported in 12 states, according to the attack on the center. program manager, was the team
NOAA’s National Weather Service. The two NOAA employees, leader for the port authority quilt.
Most of the deaths occurred in based at the National Weather She traveled to New York to
Tennessee, where 17 people were Service’s western region headquar- present the quilt to the families
killed. Eleven people died in ters in Salt Lake City, Utah, were and the port authority police
Alabama, five in Ohio and one each among a group of 400 volunteer continued on page 7
in Pennsylvania and Mississippi. A
total of 21 people—more than half
of those killed—died in mobile
homes. Early reports indicated
approximately 200 people sus-
tained injuries.
Tornadoes were also reported in
Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Illinois,
Indiana, Louisiana and South
Carolina.
However, it was clear the loss of
life could have been much greater.
Throughout the devastated com-
munities, officials commended
Weather Service forecasters for early
watches and warnings.
Monitoring the developing
storm system, the NOAA Storm
Prediction Center in Norman,
Okla., alerted officials, the media
and public to the high risk of
New York PAPD
severe weather. The forecasters went NOAA employee Andrea Bair presents a plaque and memorial quilt to representatives of the
on to issue 14 tornado watches and Port Authority of New York and New Jersey Police Department to honor port authority officers
continued on page 6 who lost their lives during the Sept. 11 attack on the World Trade Center.
Recycled
Paper
2 NOAA Report / December 2002
Observing Deepwater Rockfishes off Southern California
—By Lisa Wooninck cowcod, 60 centimeters long.” surface.
T he red-and-white-striped flag
rockfish stands its ground,
finding scant shelter among a bed
Imagine looking out a tiny
window on a busy intersection
recording for 15-minute periods
At the surface to greet me are
Mary Yoklavich and Milton Love,
long-time research collaborators
of waving brittlestar arms as the the model, number and year of cars from the NOAA Fisheries lab in
15-foot Delta submersible gently that drive by your limited view. Santa Cruz and the University of
glides past. That is the challenge of counting California in Santa Barbara. They
Small red fish scatter behind fish from a manned submersible. are the principal investigators of a
fields of vase-shaped sponges, while After only 50 minutes of skim- recently completed research cruise
a few solitary fish make failed ming the sea floor, Ijames tells me in the Cowcod Conservation Areas.
attempts at hiding their large it is time to surface. The 1,660-square-mile refuge, off
bodies by sticking their heads in “Already?” I plead. Everyone had the coast of southern California,
small crevices of the rocky outcrop. told me that I would not want to was created in 2001 in response to
Pilot Chris Ijames guides the sub return. I had not been convinced of intense overfishing of the economi-
across the rocky sea floor at 400- this prior to the dive, being preoc- cally important cowcod rockfish.
foot depth, while I scrunch into a cupied with fears of becoming sea- “There is a huge data gap in our
space the size of a steamer trunk. sick or claustrophobic. My col- understanding of how marine
This is my first dive, and the leagues were right though. Once refuges function,” said Love.
marine world at these depths is you leave the ocean’s surface and “Counting fishes and assessing the
more amazing and diverse than I begin the descent, thoughts of habitat both inside and outside the
could have possibly imagined. potential maladies are replaced by a conservation area will give us a
When I glance through the upper delight in the ever-changing view baseline from which to compare in
porthole, I am awed by the dark of surrounding marine life. the future. Without initial baseline
shapes of schooling fish backlit by I reluctantly bid farewell to the data and follow-up monitoring it
the down-welling surface light. rockfish paradise. Ijames turns the will be impossible to determine
The lower porthole grabs my lights off and we are enveloped in what, if any, changes occur in the
attention with an up-close view of darkness that turns from deep blue fish populations within and outside
tiny pink anemones and long to turquoise as we rise to the the refuge.”
spidery-armed crabs—so many
creatures waving and pulsing their
life force in so many directions. I
can almost feel all the fish identifi-
cation knowledge that I had been
cramming into my brain the night
before seep out of my ears from
sheer sensory overload. Quickly,
with my face plastered against the
center porthole, I attempt to
identify the fishes within six feet of
the submersible’s path, just as the
expert rockfish biologists had done
in dives before mine.
I use the lingo of rockfish
biologists when rattling off the
name, number and size of fish and
invertebrates into a microphone
linked to a digital camera. “About
50 pygmy and square spot rock-
fishes, five centimeters long. One
flag amongst brittlestars, 10 Mary Nishimoto/UCSB
centimeters long.” My voice rises A view through the submersible Delta’s porthole reveals a vermilion rockfish on rocks
with excitement, “Oh, great! One encrusted with colorful algae.
December 2002 / NOAA Report 3
nearly two decades of work with
the TAO Project, which is respon-
sible for the maintenance of an
array of moored buoys in the
equatorial Pacific that provides
early warnings of an El Niño.
This is not a task to be taken
lightly. There are 70 buoys in the
array, with 58 of them the respon-
sibility of the United States.
Called ATLAS buoys, for au-
tonomous temperature line acquisi-
tion system, they were initiated by
the lab’s Engineering Development
Division in 1984 as an inexpensive
way to learn about the climate
Lt. Cdr. Chris Beaverson/NOAA
patterns of the equatorial Pacific.
Carol Baldwin/NOAA
Andrew Shepherd. Standard ATLAS moorings Raymond Mitchell.
measure surface winds, air tempera-
Andrew Shepherd ture, relative humidity, sea surface
temperature and 10 subsurface Raymond Mitchell
Is the December temperatures from an approxi-
mately 1,500-foot-long thermistor Is the December
Employee of the cable. Daily-mean data are trans-
mitted to shore in near real time Team Member of
Month via NOAA’s polar-orbiting satel-
lites. the Month
—By Jana Goldman After testing and deploying —By Jeanne Kouhestani
W hen Andrew Shepherd was
finishing up his studies at
the University of Colorado, he
prototypes, the lab began monitor-
ing a large-scale TAO array in
November 1984. The full array was
A nyone who has experienced
computer problems can
appreciate how important it is to
thought it would be a fine idea to completed a decade later. have good technical support so
go to Alaska and build a log cabin. “Once the array started, technol- important projects can be com-
He got as far as Seattle, Wash., ogy changed,” said Shepherd, who pleted on time, e-mail can be read
and decided to stay there for the was nominated by Pacific Marine and responded to and life can go
next 30 years. Environmental Laboratory director on.
“Seattle was halfway there,” Eddie Bernard for his “exceptional The Silver Spring, Md., staff of
Shepherd said with the logic that contributions to the TAO project NOAA’s Marine and Aviation
one would expect from a person in managing the recent transition.” Operations has counted its bless-
who deals with precise measure- The lab started a re-engineering ings since Raymond Mitchell, the
ments. effort in the mid-90s to modernize December Team Member of the
Shepherd, a supervisory opera- the just-completed array. The Month, joined its information
tions specialist with NOAA’s Pacific upgrades included improving data technology team four years ago.
Marine Environmental Laboratory, quality, adding new sensors, Mitchell is a contract employee
is the NOAA Employee of the increasing temporal resolution of who works for RS Information
Month. internally recorded data, improving Systems. Since May 1998 he has
“The award was a surprise,” he reliability to extend system life, provided top-notch service to
said. “I received the notice and simplifying fabrication proce- Marine and Aviation Operations
thought it was for the other Andy dures—and doing it all less expen- headquarters and Commissioned
Shepherd at the University of sively. Personnel Center, and about a year
North Carolina-Wilmington. We Shepherd was instrumental in ago began supporting the staff of
often get each other’s e-mails. I just identifying the problems with the the newly created Fisheries Survey
assumed it was a mistake.” old moorings and working with the Vessel Acquisition Program as well.
Shepherd was nominated for his continued on page 8 continued on page 8
4 NOAA Report / December 2002
A s with all great projects,
Focus On…
Science on a Sphere started
with a question. “Why can’t NOAA
present it’s science more effec-
tively?”
Science on a Sphere
The question led to experiments
on the deck of Sandy MacDonald’s
house in Boulder, Colo., projecting
—By Barbara McGehan images onto a beach ball.
MacDonald, the director of
NOAA’s Forecast Systems Labora-
tory, is known as an innovative
thinker, but even he didn’t fully
anticipate the results.
“I knew that putting NOAA
climate, weather, geophysical and
ocean data on a sphere would be a
spectacular tool for explaining
NOAA’s science to a vast audi-
ence,” MacDonald said. “It was
just a question of working out the
logistics,” which MacDonald and
his team began doing in the
summer of 2001.
By the summer of 2002, Science
on a Sphere was ready to use as a
teaching tool, using images from
Wilfred Von Dauster/NOAA
environmental satellites, output
David Himes (on ladder), senior software engineer for Science on a Sphere, attaches a from computer models of the
suspension cable from the sphere to the ceiling girder in the science lab of Broomfield Heights atmosphere and data on land-
(Colo.) Middle School. surface and ocean-bottom topogra-
phy projected onto the 200-pound,
five-foot-diameter, white fiberglass
sphere.
Beverly Meier, an eighth-grade
teacher at Broomfield Heights
Middle School in Broomfield,
Colo., who has worked at the
Forecast Systems Laboratory during
summers, began work on some
lesson plans that would be appro-
priate for middle school students.
The sphere was then transported
to Broomfield Heights Middle
School to see if students would be
as captivated with it as were the
adults who had seen it.
Meier arranged for over 500
students to view the sphere and
participate in the lessons she
Wilfred Von Dauster/NOAA developed. Fourteen scientific and
David Himes (left) and Russ Chadwick, senior engineer from NOAA’s Forecast Systems technical staff from the Forecast
Laboratory, synchronize watches before Chadwick presents a lesson to Broomfield Heights System Lab and two representatives
middle schoolers on Science on a Sphere. continued on page 5
December 2002 / NOAA Report 5
grow, collapse and disperse. The going out into space to view and
prevailing westerly winds and the study the Earth.”
easterly trade winds materialized The students also looked at
before their eyes. infrared satellite images and
The students were wide-eyed discussed temperature.
and enthusiastic about the displays. One of the most popular activi-
As they looked at the sphere ties was dividing up each group of
through 3-D glasses, the Earth’s students into teams, then giving
topography and bathymetry students from each team a laser
emerged and they saw enormous pointer to see who could locate an
ridges, canyons and crustal plates area on the globe first. Each
beneath the oceans. student had a turn and had to look
Students walked clockwise at the nighttime lights on the
around the sphere to observe Earth Earth to determine the correct
by night and day. They were location of various cities, countries
handed flat maps and asked, “How and other cultural and physical
are the globe and map similar and features.
different? How does Antarctica Eighth grader Tom Romaine
Wilfred Von Dauster/NOAA appear different on the map said, “Science On a Sphere in-
David Himes helps a student calculate the compared to the globe?” The trigued me and made me wonder
distance between a geostationary satellite
questions and answers went on and about our Earth and the ways in
and the Earth using the Science on a
on. which we can make our planet a
Sphere as a model.
The sphere turned out to be a better place to live.”
hit with teachers too. Robert Croft, a sixth grade
continued from page 4 Teacher Neida Gross said, teacher at Broomfield Heights
of NOAA’s Oceanic and Atmo- “Science On a Sphere is an awe- Middle School, said, “It is wonder-
spheric Research outreach program some learning tool. Being able to ful to know that there are still
conducted the lessons at the look at a large, three-dimensional people out there who are willing to
middle school using the sphere Earth with real satellite images invest their time and effort in our
suspended from the science lab’s projected on it is almost as good as youth.”
ceiling struts, four projectors
positioned at 90-degree spacing
around the sphere, and a custom-
ized software package to correctly
position the images on the sphere.
The students were brought into
the darkened science lab in groups
of 20 to 30.
The images projected onto the
sphere allowed the students to
imagine gazing upon Earth as if
they were suspended in orbit
22,000 miles above the planet’s
surface. As the students watched,
infrared satellite imagery was
projected onto the movie screen-
like surface of the sphere to show
Earth’s dynamic atmosphere.
The students could watch a
hurricane form, slowly gather
strength and travel westward from Wilfred Von Dauster/NOAA
Africa across the Atlantic Ocean. An infrared image from seven satellites above Earth is projected onto Science on a Sphere to
They could see the colorful infrared observe weather patterns, while Beverly Meier, the teacher who developed the NOAA
images of cloud tops meet, join, Science on a Sphere lesson plans, instructs her students.
6 NOAA Report / December 2002
Early Warnings pager signal that automatically
turns the unit on and sounds an
StormReady. Van Wert County was
designated StormReady by the
continued from page 1 alert. The theater’s unit was tied NOAA weather forecast office in
a severe thunderstorm watch. directly into the Van Wert County northern Indiana this past Jan. 10.
More than two dozen Weather siren system and activated immedi- “If we hadn’t gone through the
Service forecast offices issued ately once the Van Wert County StormReady process and gotten our
dozens of tornado warnings, giving emergency operations center warning system in place before this
valuable advance notice to the sounded the warning sirens. The storm, a lot of people would not
public of the devastation sweeping unit then remained open for live have gotten the warning, and we
across the South, Midwest and broadcasts by the emergency could have lost many more lives,”
Ohio River Valley. manager. McCoy said.
Following a tornado warning, an The Van Wert County emer- “All communities across the
alert theater manager in Van Wert, gency operations center received country need to look at becoming
Ohio, and his staff got more than the NOAA tornado warning via a StormReady, because at some point
50 adults and children out of NOAA Weather Radio receiver they’re going to have severe weather
theaters in the multiplex and into tuned to the Fort Wayne, Ind., of some kind. People shouldn’t say
safer conditions in a hallway and weather radio transmitter fre- ‘it can’t happen here,’ because it
restrooms. Minutes later a tornado quency. Van Wert County emer- can,” he said.
tore off the building’s roof and gency manager Rick McCoy The tornado touched down in
tossed cars into the screen and received the warning and immedi- Van Wert County with 13 minutes
front seats where children and ately activated the city of Van Wert lead time. The tornado struck the
parents had been watching “The siren warning system. McCoy also movie theater 28 minutes after the
Santa Clause 2.” While surveying broadcast the Weather Service warning was issued.
the ruined theater, Lt. Gov. tornado warning and action state- In Alabama, local emergency
Maureen O’Connor said, “There is ment live over the Informer. managers praised the Weather
no doubt in my mind that he saved Seventy of the alert units and a Service staff in Birmingham for the
many lives.” number of NOAA Weather Radio advance warning lead times.
The National Weather Service’s receivers were purchased with grant Fayette County emergency
StormReady program helped Van money by the Van Wert County management director Theresa
Wert County be prepared for emergency management office as Willcutt said, “The information
disaster. To earn a StormReady one of the requirements to become continued on page 7
designation, county officials placed
a series of warning alert systems in
public locations, including the
movie theater.
“This story illustrates a great
success for the National Weather
Service, NOAA Weather Radio and
StormReady programs,” said
Stephan Kuhl, the Weather
Service’s national warning coordi-
nation program manager.
“It also illustrates the impor-
tance of establishing a close work-
ing relationship between our local
NWS offices, our emergency
management partners and ulti-
mately the communities that we
serve.”
The theater office was equipped
with a Federal Signal Corporation Ron Trumbla/NOAA
local warning alert system called Residents reported they had ample warning of a powerful F3 tornado that damaged a
the “Informer.” The Informer is women’s university and numerous businesses in Columbus, Miss., before moving through a
activated via a digitally encoded residential neighborhood.
December 2002 / NOAA Report 7
Sept. 11 Quilt and affection that is displayed in
the quilt gives the families a sense
loved one. To say the least, the
event was very emotional for me,
continued from page 1 of the appreciation that is felt by and for the families who were
department at the former World all of us.” present at the dedication.”
Trade Center site. The quilt in- On accepting the quilt, port
cludes fabric patches Bair made
with photographs of all 38 fallen
authority police superintendent
Charles D. DeRienzoin said, “This Early Warnings
officers and the port authority’s K- is an extraordinary gift that comes continued from page 6
9 dog. from the heart and soul of America. you provided beforehand and as the
Bair said, “Working on the quilt On behalf of our police force and storms were occurring was superb.
has been such a personal privilege. the families of our heroic brothers We always knew exactly what was
We began work by designing our and sisters who made the ultimate happening.”
layout within one month of the sacrifice to save lives on Sept. 11, I Walker County emergency
tragedy. Sewing began in February would like to express our profound management director Johnny
2002 and involved hundreds of gratitude.” Burnette concurred. “The flow of
hours of work by quilters from five Bair said the port authority information was more than anyone
states. More than 150 different plans to display the quilt publicly could ever hope to have in a
fabrics were used to create the at its headquarters in Jersey City. situation like last night [Nov. 10].”
patchwork, [which] was designed She said another gigantic quilt, Ken Graham, NOAA meteorolo-
in the traditional style known as known as the “Victims’ Quilt,” will gist in charge at the Birmingham
the ‘courthouse log cabin’ style.” feature photos of every known forecast office, surveyed the tornado
The quilt is adorned with victim of the terror attacks. That damage from a helicopter. He was
mementos of the port authority quilt will measure 10 feet by 60 impressed with how well the entire
police department, including feet and will contain all 3,000+ warning process worked. “We
badges, buttons from police faces and names. The quilters hope monitored the radar images and got
uniforms and the department it will be preserved and displayed the warnings out early. The media
slogan, “Pride, Service, Distinc- for the families at the proposed did a terrific job of relaying the
tion.” The quilt also includes an World Trade Center memorial park information to the public. The
appliquéd rendering of the New in New York City or an appropriate emergency management people
York skyline, in which each build- museum to permanently safeguard were providing critical information
ing is made from a separate piece of the memory of all who perished in and, most important, the citizens
fabric, plus two hand-stiched New York, Washington and Penn- heeded the warnings and took
poems. Photos of the fallen officers sylvania. appropriate actions,” Graham said.
are mounted on a red field and are Weather Service western region “It just all came together the
surrounded by contrasting blue director Vickie Nadolski added, way it’s supposed to,” Graham
and red fabric strips with hand- “Andrea and Karen have dedicated added. “Despite the 11 fatalities in
embroidered names and ranks of all their hearts to this project. They Alabama, a lot of lives were saved
the officers. created a fabric of love that will by the watch and warning process.”
The centerpiece of the quilt, a become part of American history. While a tornado outbreak of this
port authority police shield, was They chose to memorialize those size is unusual any time of the year,
cross-stitched by Karen St. Clair, workers who perished for knowing it is especially rare in November.
the Weather Service’s western what they had to do to protect The last major November outbreak
region budget officer. It took her others.” was in 1992.
three months to create the large Following the dedication Bair This outbreak is the biggest to
shield and another two months to said, “After visiting Ground Zero occur during what had previously
make a similar depiction of the and meeting several of the families, been a quiet year for tornadoes. In
Statue of Liberty. St. Clair recruited I knew every hour I spent working fact, the total tornado count for the
her mother, Joan Foltz, also of Salt on the quilt was more than worth year had been as low as 50 percent
Lake City, to create an embroidered it. I was truly overwhelmed and of average. Through October, 670
American flag. touched by their reaction to seeing tornadoes had been reported
“Working on the symbol gave the quilt for the first time. I was during 2002, according to the
me a special connection to the speechless when three of the Storm Prediction Center. The
families and their sacrifices,” St. families gave me special pins that three-year average for tornadoes
Clair said. “I hope that the love they had made in honor of their during that same time is 1,068.
8 NOAA Report / December 2002
Shepherd 1,146 module temperature calibra-
tions.
system and an Oracle database.
His many achievements include
continued from page 3 Shepherd has spent his entire migrating the Marine and Aviation
lab’s engineering development career at NOAA’s Pacific Marine Operations headquarters and
division to solve them. Environmental Laboratory. “You NOAA Corps Commissioned
“Andy managed this transition, couldn’t ask for a better job,” he Personnel Center offices from
including development of new said. “It’s a complex challenge that Banyan to Windows, migrating e-
calibration procedures, production changes daily.” mail from BeyondMail to the
of new sensors and design and As for that cabin in the wilds of NOAA Enterprise Messaging
construction of a new sensor test Alaska, well, Shepherd visited the System and keeping the office
facility, with no increase in budget forty-ninth state a while back. “It’s running smoothly from an informa-
or personnel,” Bernard wrote in his too cold,” he said. tion technology perspective.
nomination. “Ray single-handedly got all 45
“Although funds for running the
TAO array have been essentially Mitchell users off the Banyan network one at
a time. We were pleased it did not
flat since 1996, through efforts like continued from page 3 interrupt anyone’s work, because a
Andy’s, the TAO project continues “More than once I’ve received shift like this would usually bring
to sustain a high level of efficiency feedback from the people that Ray the system down for half a day or
in the delivery of high-quality has helped, and I’m always pleased more,” Bass said. “He was able to
oceanographic and surface meteoro- to hear this well-deserved recogni- do this because of his planning
logical data to NOAA forecasting tion for him,” said Greg Bass, who capabilities and resourcefulness,
centers, NOAA researchers and to oversees Mitchell’s work. and because he took the time to
the scientific community,” Bernard “Ray is a real people person who research solutions to problems and
wrote. never keeps a customer waiting. He was able to respond to surprises
Depending on sea conditions, has resolved many issues for Marine when the system didn’t work the
the 12-foot aluminum TAO tower, and Aviation Operations manage- way it was supposed to.”
secured atop an orange and white ment and staff, often in hours or Mitchell can be recognized by
doughnut-shaped buoy, can been days instead of the weeks some- his “can do” attitude and cheerful
seen by radar from four to eight times taken by others. His trade- willingness to serve. His motto is,
miles away. marks are prompt response, “If I do not have the solution to a
Pieces of the buoys are loaded attention to detail, insight to the problem, I do know how to get it.”
onto ships and assembled aboard inner workings of IT systems, And he does, consistently.
the moving vessel at sea. The ease providing solutions quickly and in Mitchell’s friendly smile and
of deploying or installing these general keeping the users satis- genuine approach go a long way in
systems depends on sea conditions. fied—all with a smile,” Bass said. dealing with his customers and
With each buoy having a life- Mitchell came to NOAA with truly make him an asset to NOAA
time of a year, it’s steady work for excellent credentials. After retiring Marine and Aviation Operations.
Ka’imimoana (ocean seeker), the from the Navy, he worked for the
NOAA ship dedicated to the State Department and White The NOAA Report is a monthly publi-
service of the array in the Pacific. House from 1995 to 1997. cation for NOAA employees from the
“In a research environment, few When he began working for Office of Public and Constituent Affairs,
things are purchased off the shelf,” NOAA Marine and Aviation Washington, D.C.
Shepherd said. “The people who Operations, he was responsible for Address comments to:
work at PMEL are creative and arranging for the migration of the Editor, The NOAA Report
flexible.” mail system to Netscape. 1315 East-West Highway
In addition to the moorings, Mitchell now manages the SSMC3, room 10853
Silver Spring, MD 20910
Shepherd also supervises the network and provides software and
301-713-9042 (voice)
checkout and preparation for hardware installation with up- 301-713-9049 (fax)
deployment of about 900 tempera- grades and configurations. He Email: dane.konop@noaa.gov
ture and conductivity sensor works closely with the NOAA NOAA Report Online: http://
modules and the calibration of 114 Network Operations Center and www.publicaffairs.noaa.gov/nr
air temperature sensors, 185 coordinates information with other Jordan St. John, director, OPCA
relative humidity sensors, 200 NOAA offices. He also administers Dane Konop, editor
wind sensors, 105 rain gauges and a personnel document imaging
