A hot one!

It was August 8, 1981, and the Willamette Valley was toasty. I was trying to finish up my PhD prospectus at Oregon State, as I recall, and the non-air conditioned Ag Hall was just too hot. I headed home after a long day, and we decided to head up to Silver Falls State Park the next morning with our camping gear and our (then) 3 kids to escape the heat. The campground, and all Cascades-area campgrounds were already full. But a kindly park ranger told us there were some spots open on the coast, so off we went.

By the time we arrived, the coast campsites were full (traffic was awful!) so they were letting valley refugees set up camp at waysides. Tents were everywhere! And it was a glorious 58°F almost round-the-clock. Many non-weather-ready people had no sweatshirts or jackets with them so I imagine the shops did a brisk business.

And they'll do so this week, too, as the exodus occurs. Forecasts are for 3-5 days of 100°F or greater across the lowlands in western Oregon this week, so it will be a nice dry run to see if the east-west highways are ready for the eclipse in 3 weeks.  For those of you in Eugene, here are the observations for that week in August when it was so hot, and which set some records which may fall:

It remains to be seen how competitive this week's event will be across the valley compared to that one. Mainly I post this just to remind people that heat waves are not just occurring due to human-caused global warming. They are not unprecedented. However, they will likely be more commonplace as warming takes hold. And as always, use the National Weather Service for your forecast guidance - no hype, just taxpayer funded forecasts from the professionals.  

Is a NWS Reorganization Coming?

To all my friends and former students in the National Weather Service (NWS), I want to wish you good luck in your negotiations. To NWS management, I hope that negotiations will not be conducted following President Reagan's strategy used with air traffic controllers. According to the Seattle Times, the NWS has canceled its union contract.

Dan Sobien, President of NWSEO, and crew do fine work for this nation. The weather "enterprise" is changing for sure, but you won't be able to replace the human element, and NWS management should be (and probably is) exceptionally mindful of social science research related to high stress (and often rather boring) jobs that require community connections, local and scientific expertise.

Think about triage at a hospital that requires minimal staffing levels. Let's try to be realistic here.

And how's that search for NOAA leadership coming? Seems important at the moment.

I've long been a member of educational unions myself, first in Florida and then in Oregon, but find myself for the last two years a member of middle management. In this role I've been both frustrated by and honored by the role that union management at my institution plays in securing employee rights of both the #LCCEA and #LCCEF.  I grew up in New York, and as a teenager worked for my father and uncle in their non-union sheet metal factory and learned how to appreciate the idea of labor rights by seeing how employees were not necessarily treated well. I still worry about how former Senator Rick Santorum's efforts to largely privatize the NWS a few decades ago, aided by some large private weather corporations, may be back on the table.

I've been a proud supporter of both NWS management and employees over the years, and was proud to work with so many great individuals in collaborative projects involving NWS/NOAA employees in  education, satellite and data services, and line employees in collaborative research projects in Oregon, Colorado, Washington DC, and the Southern Region. The telling situation of nearly 700 vacancies across the NWS puts a strain on workforce. What is the breaking point, I ask as an outsider?

Collaboration is required for unions and management to work together. I hope that these coming negotiations will be good for the NWS, its employees, and the mission of the NWS which is designed to help protect the public. That's all of us.