Hello everyone. This will most likely be the first of many different snippets about me. So I guess I'll start at the beginning. At least the beginning of my attraction to weather.
I moved to Traverse City, Michigan (KTVC) in the fall of 1990 in order to go to school at Northwestern Michigan College. My course of study was aviation. This was my second attempt at college, the first one had ended poorly, but that's a story for another day.
I quickly took to all things aviation and weather was a very large part of that. My first flight was a windy day with overcast skies. My instructor warned me that it might be a bumpy ride but there was no waiting, I wanted to start flying now. We took off into a light rain and the ride was bumpy as promised but neither of those things bothered me. The first thing that really startled me was the realization that I was in an environment that had three dimensions. I was no longer in a car that went left or right and forward or backward. I had now added up and down. As we flew away from the airport I looked around and the first question I asked my instructor was, "how do we get back?" He smiled and told me to look back over my shoulder where I could see the airport nestled at the bottom of the two bays of Traverse City.
After that initial flight I dove into the books and ended up on the correct Dean's list. I would spend hours at the airport in the general aviation terminal because they had a computer where you could get the basic weather information like METARs, TAFs and the maps. It was just black and white but I would watch the weather and print the new map every hour watching it move from Wisconsin across Lake Michigan and into the Traverse City area. The windows faced to the west-northwest over the field so I could see the weather from miles away. I took a class in weather and we actually hand plotted on Skew-T charts. Boy does that take some patience! Operating an aircraft that only weighs about 1600 pounds you quickly develop a healthy respect for mother nature.
Well, that's a little introduction for now, I'll definitely add more as we go along.
I work in the FAA Command Center, also known as the Air Traffic Control System Command Center (ATCSCC.) There are numerous Air Route Traffic Control Centers (ARTCC) located through-out the country. The ARTCCs are the ones who actually control the enroute air traffic. Each one has its own special needs and requirements depending on the amount of traffic and the weather. If one of the ARTCCs, or Centers, gets too busy, they can request different things to help them out with that situation. Every two hours the Command Center holds a phone conference (Telcon) to get everyone together and discuss the issues or trouble spots in the National Airspace System. During this Telcon different Traffic Management Initiatives may be discussed. These may range from the simple, such as miles in trail between aircraft departing a certain airport or passing through a certain area of airspace, to the more complex initiatives such as a Ground Delay Program (GDP.)
Our job is to make sure that the General Aviation aircraft get a fair shake in the National Airspace System. We advise our subscribers where the trouble spots are and how to get around them if possible. Saturdays are usually nice easy days where I can work on projects and getting caught up. Recently on a Saturday the only Traffic Management Initiatives were for San Francisco due to low ceilings as well as Cabo San Lucas and Cancun due to volume.
As you might imagine, the weather plays a huge role in the National Airspace System. I have been interested in weather for a long time now, starting with getting my Private Pilot's license and learning to fly a small airplane. Later, after I decided to pursue life on the ground, I had to master all of the weather reports that would be used in the safe dispatch of an aircraft as I worked to receive my FAA Dispatch license. The first class in this course was great review for me along with the introduction of some new concepts. I am now beginning to understand where the forecasts that I have read come from and hope to be able to make solid forecasting part of my knowledge base.
For a little more on what I do: GA Desk Description at the NBAA web page.
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