D
o n B u r g e s s
My name is Don Burgess and I am a meteorologist who trains other meteorologists. I was born in Okmulgee, OK (a small town south of Tulsa) in 1947. In 1952, our family moved to Stillwater, OK, and, in 1957, we moved to Oklahoma City where I attended high school. I grew up interested in the weather, and there was always plenty of it to see in our state! I got up each morning and looked out the window to observe the weather; I would come in from the playground to watch the weather on television (once my family got a television); and I read everything I could find on weather. My favorite book was Tornadoes of the United States, by Snowden D. Flora. I read and reread it many times. My younger-years fear of storms and tornadoes changed to interest and fascination with them. When I graduated from high school, I knew that I wanted to be a meteorologist and learn more about weather and storms/tornadoes. I began attending college at the University of Oklahoma (OU, in Norman) in 1967. While in high school, I was alone in my liking of weather and pursuit of information about it. After I began at OU, I learned that there were other people as fascinated with weather as I was. We called ourselves "weather freaks" because we wanted to be around weather observations and weather forecasting 24-hours-a-day.
In 1970, before I graduated with a BS in Engineering (meteorology was in the School of Engineering in those days), I had the good fortune of getting a part-time student job at the National Severe Storms laboratory (NSSL), a Federal Government lab that had been established in the early 1960’s to study thunderstorms and tornadoes. It was truly an event that changed my life. I was assigned to the newly-formed Doppler Radar Group, a group tasked with learning about warning/forecast applications of Doppler radar, a type of radar that had, up to that time, only been used in the United States for defense from missile and airplane attacks. I was able to grow and learn with the group of other eager young scientists.
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I
am Chief of the Operations Training Branch of the NEXRAD Operational
Support Facility (OSF) in Norman, Oklahoma. NEXRAD is the acronym for
the "NEXt generation weather RADar" program, a new United
States Government network of 160 weather radars around the United States
and at military bases in other parts of the world. NEXRAD Weather Surveillance
Radars, 1988, Doppler (WSR-88Ds) supply radar information to three government
agencies: the National Weather Service (NWS), the Federal Aviation Agency
(FAA), and the Department of Defense (DOD; Air Force and Navy). Our
branch trains NWS forecasters to operate the radars and to use the radar
data (with other weather data) in the issuance of weather warnings and
forecasts. Previously, we trained the forecasters only in residence
courses here in Norman. Since 1998, we have begun using distance learning
techniques (CD-ROMs, Teletraining, and the Internet) to train forecasters
faster and with less interruption to their jobs: they now can stay at
their forecast offices and receive the training during their normal
workdays. Our challenge is to better train more forecasters, but with
less available resources, money and people for training. I like being
involved in training the forecasters, and then observing the excellent
warnings and forecasts they issue, in part, from the training we gave
them.
After
receiving my BS in 1971, I became a full-time NSSL employee in 1972
while studying for my MS in Meteorology, which I received in 1974. During
the early and mid-1970s, our group collected the first Doppler radar
data on tornadic storms, most notably in the Union City, OK tornado
of 1973. We discovered that the NSSL research Doppler radar could see
signatures for storm rotation (mesocyclone signatures) and signatures
for tornadoes (Tornadic Vortex Signatures, TVSs), sometimes 20 to 30
minutes before the tornadoes formed and began doing damage. I was fascinated
with the signatures and the thought that maybe they could provide better
and more timely tornado warnings.