May 17, 2019 Southwest Kansas Tornadic Supercell
Part II: Applying Modern Interrogation Principles to Anticipate Tornadogenesis
As part of the trilogy of related talks, we will be examining the off-site Continuity of Operations Plan (CoOP) activation in March of 2019 due to historic flooding that forced the Omaha National Weather Service Forecast Office (WFO OAX) to evacuate. We will review the impacts these unprecedented events had on the local and regional management teams decision making and how we dealt with those challenges. The view will be from the management of the host site, Hastings National Weather Service Forecast Office (WFO GID), as we were quickly faced with a very dire situation that demanded immediate action and presented brand new challenges that come with hosting another office, in an already very busy time due to the ongoing flooding. We will focus on how the management teams from WFO OAX, WFO GID and Central Region Headquarters worked together to tackle numerous issues the staff ‘s were facing through this historic event. In short, we will look at some of the planning, discussions and resulting decisions that were required to support operations so the suite of products and services required to meet the very high demand of IDSS for our partners would continue seamlessly. We hope to share a quick overview that will give a snapshot of the amount of hard work and complexity required to not only support the people, but to maintain the functional integrity of the agency through this never-before experienced event.