How the Fire Service Can Get Involved with Weather Forecasting
If the recent tornado outbreak and ferocious winds in the Midwest have demonstrated one thing, it’s that we will continue to experience these violent forces of nature. Regardless of the arguments for climate change — and they are significant — the United States will continue to be the playground for severe storms, especially certain parts of the country where the battle of airmasses, pushed by the jet stream, has been occurring for centuries. It comes with the territory.
Some months ago, an associate of mine, the city manager of Cedar Rapids, IA, and president of the Center for Public Safety Excellence — the organization that accredits fire departments through a rigorous quality improvement process — experienced the destructive power of another violent weather event known as a derecho. This phenomenon is a straight line of ferocious wind with the destructive power of a violent tornado, uprooting hundreds of trees and causing millions of dollars in damage.
A growing part of the mission
The fire service is certainly no stranger to the emergency preparation and management of severe weather events. It’s a critical part of the sworn mission. These events range from hurricanes to floods, blizzards to tornadoes; lightning-ignited house fires to myriad less dynamic phenomena, such as extreme temperatures from heat waves and cold snaps, that certainly affect the communities we serve.
The role of professional meteorologists in the urban wildland interface is well-known, and within the last few years their importance has become ever more critical.
Daniel Byrne was on target in his Community Risk Reduction column in the November 2021 issue of Firehouse: Outside of the Box: Increasing CRR Efforts. He spoke about the confluence of emergency management (EM) and the fire service in dealing with severe weather events. Considering the cumulative effects of apparent climate change creating more dynamic, severe weather phenomenon, the fire service is in a unique position to play a role in its mitigation. I mean the entire fire service — every department, every station; not just those agencies fighting fires in the wildland/urban interface. Besides the obvious actions we take for serious weather events such as the recent ones in the Midwest, there are some simple things we could do, specifically with weather data, literally in the backyards of our stations. First, a quick weather lesson.
What is a numerical weather model?
Some of you are familiar with the various mechanisms and tools meteorologists use to predict the weather, especially mathematical models to project the future movement of weather systems and atmospheric patterns. It’s fairly familiar for most of us as we tune in to our local TV meteorologist talking about the “European Model” or the Global Forecast System (GFS) or the North American Mesoscale Model (NAM).
In fact, this is one of those modern man-made miracles that most of us take for granted: numerical weather prediction through computer power. These models are based on a set of seven partially differential equations, which were created just after the turn of the 20th century by a Norwegian physicist, Wilhelm Bjerknes. Back then, of course, we did not have the computer power for these equations to create useful numerical prediction models. The accuracy of these equations is only as good as the observations received. The observations are taken from global grids. Some of these grids are quite dense and some are sparser depending on the geography and placement of observation stations. In the United States, the density of the network dictates different models, as well as how some of the equations are computed over time.
The opportunity for the fire service
There are approximately 18,000 fire departments with more than 50,000 fire stations in the United States. If each fire station could report weather observations to a central network, inputting the information for weather modeling, can you imagine how much more accurate the forecasts might be? Well, that possibility is available now, and our participation in this process can only enhance our value to the community.
In addition to my responsibilities in the fire service, I have been a Cooperative Weather Observer (COOP) for the National Weather Service for many years. I use instruments that report measurements like temperature, humidity, pressure, wind, and precipitation electronically every few minutes around the clock. These instruments are of varying quality and do an adequate job. The folks who sell them are technical/marketing professionals, but they are not meteorologists.
Recently, I found a company, Weatherflow, producing an advanced yet simplified measuring system. This company is led by meteorologists who are creating more precise and accurate numerical models. Their instruments are more sophisticated, with the capability to contribute to much more accurate numerical models through a disciplined rigor for crowdsourcing.
With 50,000 fire stations, we could increase the accuracy of the models in a big way, making significant contributions to local forecasts for their communities. In the case of Mayfield, KY, or the derecho in Cedar Rapids, IA, perhaps a more accurate numerical forecast might have provided a margin of enhanced safety for the community. It’s difficult to say because a derecho, in particular, is a unique phenomenon.
More precise forecasts make for safer communities
Nonetheless, more pinpoint-accurate forecasts will certainly make for a safer community, providing a greater margin of time for our citizens to protect themselves in the case of approaching severe weather, and for us to protect them more efficiently with our resources. Using local fire stations as the hub for behavior change in communities is a natural evolution of the fire service’s role in life safety protection not just for immediate emergency preparedness, but in moving communities from being observers of climate change and immediate weather phenomena, to an active partner with the government to understand and monitor the local weather at a more granular level.
This would allow local and national agencies to use this knowledge and interest to galvanize local community efforts to understand the effect of climate change occurring now and in the near future. The ultimate goal is to understand the causes of climate change; how it affects their local community. The concept of creating a weather concern involving every fire station, including volunteer stations, is the natural progression of the fire service’s application of CRR. The brand premise and concept could be highly attractive to:
- The first responder community, enhancing its relevance in the 21st century, strengthening its connection with its community, especially younger Americans who grasp the relevancy and immediacy of severe weather phenomena.
- The insurance community, as a risk reduction and risk awareness initiative, thereby reducing insured loss.
- The corporate community as it provides a number of opportunities for brand partnership and cause-related marketing alliances.
- The political community. This would be the first community-based weather initiative with a positive brand association around the fire service. It is also a homeland security initiative, widening perception of homeland security, and moving the security concept more towards community resilience, not just counterterrorism.
- Any agency or company seeking accurate local weather or environmental data to ensure safety of the public
The enabling technology
In a search of some new, more accurate and precise weather instruments, I stumbled upon WeatherFlow. It is a leader in the private sector weather industry, with more than three decades of experience in applying the latest in observational, modeling, and forecasting technology to its clients’ most challenging problems. The company has brought a steady stream of innovative value-added products and services to market, filling highly specific needs in many sectors, including plume dispersion, emergency management, and hazardous weather alerting.
The Tempest weather system is the technology that unlocks the power of data-driven weather observation precision, enabling an understanding of the local weather by location. The system is a revolutionary design with no moving parts, nearly zero maintenance, instant online data, a free personal webpage, and a rich API powering a growing list of third-party applications. The system can be installed in less than five minutes.
There are other weather observation systems/instruments and companies, but I have not seen any that are able to create numerical models by staff meteorologists from a kind of crowd sourcing of what we might call citizen scientists from a home base. Most companies just sell the weather instruments. There are also weather companies with staff meteorologists such as Accuweather. They do not sell instruments. However, these companies slice and dice weather data from the National Weather Service, creating their own customized forecasts, many of them quite accurate and quite expensive through subscriptions.
Fire service can contribute to quality forecasts
Accurate measurements with data from other Tempest Systems flow to a data processing center. This data is integrated with other relevant weather data, including measurements from satellites, aircraft, radars, and other surface weather stations. The process ultimately yields standardized data and a real-time analysis product. Not every measurement is of equal value (ex: wind "shadows" affect how wind data is utilized) but big data analytics adjust accordingly, meaning every Tempest System can make a difference. Tempest data, along with all our real-time useful information, is part of data sets which are shared with the National Weather Service (NWS-NOAA) and other meteorological agencies across the world, supporting their mission of predicting dangerous weather and warning the public of potential risks.
As forecasting becomes more difficult and weather patterns increasingly unpredictable, each Tempest helps contribute to a more precise forecast, which in turn, drives more accurate real-time local predictions. There are a number of weather instrument companies in the U.S. and a few globally. WeatherFlow is an organization of meteorologists by meteorologists who create numerical prediction models through their own instruments available to the public. While there are a number of companies that produce an array of very high-quality weather instruments, my experience is that Weatherflow’s system and forecasts are more precise in this context.
The fire service is now in position to make a significant contribution to this critical part to the safety of the community we are sworn to protect. What do you think?
Ben May
Ben May is a Board Director of the Center for Public Safety Excellence. A graduate of the Montgomery, MD, Public Service Training Academy, he was a firefighter for Hillandale, MD, Fire and Rescue and fire commissioner for Woodinville, WA, Fire & Rescue. May served as a marketing consultant to Fire Service Publications (IFSTA) of Oklahoma State University’s School of Fire Protection Technology, to the U.S. Fire Administration and to numerous metropolitan fire departments in the creation of strategic marketing communications plans. He is a member of the National Society of Executive Fire Officers and the Institution of Fire Engineers. May holds a bachelor’s degree in public affairs and Russian from the University of Oklahoma and a master’ degree in international communication and Russian from American University.
