National Weather Service’s Eureka office to take over Lake County forecasts
- Elizabeth Larson
- Posted On
LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – The National Weather Service is preparing to transfer responsibility for Lake County’s forecast service area from its Sacramento to Eureka office.
The transition will take effect on Tuesday, March 3.
The National Weather Service said the transition will necessitate reconfiguring nearby public and fire weather zones.
The agency said both its Eureka and Sacramento offices currently provide fire weather forecasts for different portions of Lake County.
The transition will allow the Eureka office to provide forecast services to all of Caltrans District 1’s service area. In addition, it will give Lake County more focused support for weather emergencies from one National Weather Service office versus having to coordinate with two of them for forecasts and fire weather, the agency reported.
Michelle Mead, warning coordination meteorologist in the National Weather Service’s Sacramento office, said forecasts will continue to published as before at www.weather.gov, with the Eureka office not just handling the main forecasts but also taking charge of issuing flood and storm warnings.
Community members who have followed the National Weather Service’s Sacramento office on Facebook will now also want to follow Eureka, which will share weather updates there.
“We started the discussion last summer with all of the emergency management personnel in Lake County,” Mead said.
Mead said it was an idea that had been “kicked around” for some time, and then Dale Carnathan, the emergency services manager for the Lake County Office of Emergency Services, expressed interest pursuing it.
At that point, Mead said she told him about the option of moving the forecast responsibility from Sacramento to Eureka if it would serve the county better, and eventually the request was made formally.
“There wasn’t any dissatisfaction with the services that we were receiving from Sacramento,” said Teresa Stewart, assistant to the Lake County Office of Emergency Service.
Stewart explained that the agency felt that there were benefits to transferring to Eureka, including being in the same forecast area as Mendocino County, which it works with often. Lake County also shares the same emergency alert system plan with Mendocino County.
She said the emergency alert system for Lake County already is activated by the Eureka office through its weather radio transmitter in Ukiah.
Moving operations to Eureka also will streamline operations. Stewart said there is a small portion of northern Lake County’s forecast coming from Eureka in addition to the rest of the county’s forecast coming from Sacramento.
Stewart and Mead both pointed out that Mendocino and Lake counties have similar weather, and that Lake County is in the California Office of Emergency Services’ 16-county Coastal Region, which the National Weather Service’s Eureka office serves.
Mead said that, weatherwise, Lake County is more in line with the Coastal Range and the west side of the mountains.
Stewart said the county requested a change over in an Aug. 30 letter.
The Lake County Disaster Council would begin discussing the proposal in the fall, according to a meeting agenda.
Mead said National Weather Service representatives attended local meetings and presented the proposal, and everyone was in agreement with it for all of the reasons she explained.
She said it was then open for a 90-day period which concludes with the Tuesday transition.
“We continue to have a great working relationship with Lake County,” said Mead.
Ryan Aylward, Mead’s counterpart in Eureka, where he is a warning coordination meteorologist, has been working with Mead on the transition. That work has included moving over operations and interacting with weather spotters.
This week, Lake County’s weather spotters were notified of the changeover and directed to contact the Eureka office as of March 3.
“It won’t be an extremely large additional workload because we’re already doing a forecast for Mendocino County,” which has an extremely similar climate, Aylward said.
A major concern through the summer is fire weather, an area where Aylward said they are placing a lot of concentration.
When considering Lake County’s membership in the Coastal OES Region, its similar climate and the fact that it’s also a part of Caltrans District 1, headquartered in Eureka, “It makes sense to be with us,” Aylward said.
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