NWS Meteorologists and Partner Agencies Train Together in Severe Weather Briefing Exercise

NWS Jackson meteorologists trained with several partner agencies who make up the East Kentucky Weather Preparedness Committee and Integrated Warning Team during a Severe Weather Briefing Exercise held on Friday April 21st. The goal of the exercise was to better understand the impact of our forecasts on partner agency decision making leading up to a potential severe weather event and improve our ability to communicate actionable and decision-relevant information to our partners.

Leading up to the exercise date, forecasters independently developed a briefing for a past severe weather event using our Weather Event Simulator. On exercise day, the forecasters delivered their briefings individually to a group of emergency managers, first responders and media representatives. After all of the briefings were completed, partners and forecasters convened for a "hot wash" on the operations floor and discussed the impacts that the briefed weather event would have on our partners operations followed by a discussion on what criteria and information was important to them. Tips and feedback were also given on how improvement can be made with our briefings.

"While internal training takes place almost continually in our office, exercises such as this are a major benefit to our forecasters as they allow us to get more familiar with the needs of our partners but also allow our partners to get more familiar with what we do," said NWS Jackson, KY Warning Coordination Meteorologist Tony Edwards. "The exercise also allowed our partners to attach faces to names and voices they often hear over the phone when they call for decision support."

The skills gained from these exercises and relationships strengthened between forecasters and partners is invaluable and will continue to pay dividends long into the future.

We want to thank the following people and agencies for participating in our exercise:

Sam Stacy, City of Hazard Fire Chief
Chase Deaton, KY Transportation Cabinet Incident Management Coordinator for eastern Kentucky
Chris Hecker, KY Emergency Management Area 8 Manager
Nathan Frisby, Loss Control Supervisor Big Sandy RECC
Jason York, Bath County Emergency Management Director
Gary McClure, Johnson County Emergency Management Director
Jeannie Kennard, Johnson County Emergency Management Deputy Director
Michael Woods, Lawrence County Emergency Management Director
Timothy Cooley, Captain Floyd County Emergency and Rescue Squad
Bobby Carpenter, KY Emergency Management Area 7 Manager
Brandon Robinson, WYMT Producer/Forecaster
John Sikora, Service Hydrologist NWS Charleston, WV


Forecaster Jane Marie Wix briefs partners	Senior Forecaster Pete Geogerian briefs partners


"Hot wash" following the briefings takes place on NWS Jackson Operations Floor