Dr. Nick Bassill discusses the newly established State Weather Risk Communication Center (SWRCC) at the University at Albany, a first-of-its-kind partnership between the University and the New York State Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Services that leverages UAlbany’s expertise in atmospheric sciences to help state and local emergency managers prepare for and respond to severe weather.
Dr. Nick Bassill, director of the State Weather Risk Communication Center
State Weather Risk Communication Center website
The New York State Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Services (DHSES) website
Center of Excellence in Weather & Climate Analytics at UAlbany website
Nick Bassill's Center of Excellence webpage
The Engagement Ring, Episode 19: Something’s New Under the Sun – the State Weather Risk Communication Center
[Lively, upbeat theme music plays as program host Mary Hunt introduces the program and plays excerpts from the program.]
ANNOUNCER/MARY HUNT:
Welcome to the Engagement Ring, your connection to an ever-widening network of higher education professionals, scholars, and community partners, working to make the world a better place. I'm Mary Hunt. Today on the podcast…
NICK BASSILL:
I really firmly believe that New York is probably among the most challenging, if not the most challenging state to forecast the weather for.
ANNOUNCER/MARY HUNT:
Dr. Nick Bassill discusses the newly established State Weather Risk Communication Center, or S-W-R-C-C, at the University at Albany.
NICK BASSILL:
There are very few meteorologists in state government. And so when it comes to interpreting complex weather data or trying to look up information or understand what's being communicated to them, sometimes that can be difficult for the state. And the Center is here to help address those needs.
ANNOUNCER/MARY HUNT:
Here’s my conversation with S-W-R-C-C director and meteorologist Nick Bassill…
MARY HUNT:
Welcome back to the podcast. Nick.
NICK BASSILL:
Thank you for having me.
MARY HUNT:
Nice to have you. The last time you were herewe talked about improved weather forecasting and power outage prediction and how the University was working with utility companies throughout the state to achieve those goals. Now you're heading up a new initiative that I expect can contribute to those goals and probably do a whole lot more as well.
NICK BASSILL:
Yeah, that's right. It's something we're really excited about.
MARY HUNT:
What is the state weather risk communication center, otherwise known as S-W-R-C-C? We also may also refer to it as S-W-R-C-C. So tell us what it is.
NICK BASSILL:
So it is a center located here at UAlbany in the ETEC building, that is designed to serve the state's public sector weather needs, and it specifically is here to kind of fill in the gaps of where the National Weather Service might leave off. But the state's needs continue in terms of weather support. So you may or may not know, and I did not know even as meteorologists until recently, that there are very few meteorologists in state government. And so when it comes to interpreting complex weather data or trying to look up information or understand what's being communicated to them, sometimes that can be difficult for the state, and the center is here to help address those needs.
MARY HUNT:
Why is S-W-R-C-C necessary? Don't we already have tools and institutions in place that can deal with what I might call severe weather, but I know you refer to it as impactful weather or high impact weather?
NICK BASSILL:
Yeah, that's a that's a really good question. I'll address the first part of that to start. And, obviously, we have the National Weather Service already; that's a federal organization. They have offices across New York, and they're excellent. They're kind of the go-to for most weather-related inquiries. And we're not here to replace them. But one of the things that they may struggle with at times is assisting the state in very state-specific things. So, the federal government obviously is here to you know, to do as much as they can. But if the state is say preparing a disaster request, and they need some really specific weather data to help fulfill that disaster request, that may fall outside the bounds of what the National Weather Service traditionally does. And believe it or not, there are even some federal laws that limit the types of activities that the weather service can do. I think those are holdovers from prior advocacy by private sector organizations, but the federal government's National Weather Service is not allowed to forecast road surface temperatures. Believe it or not, there are a couple other things kind of like that that they aren't as able to do. And those kinds of things are really important when you think of, you know, should I get a plow out for the snow. Should I salt the road in advance, you know. Is the snow going to stick to the grass and the road or just the grass? Those are sort of maybe seemingly small decisions, but when you think of over the whole state, and over a whole winter, for example, those sorts of decisions add up quickly in terms of resources and manpower.
MARY HUNT:
Where did the idea for the center come from? And how long has it been in development?
NICK BASSILL:
It's been a slowly evolving idea. The center where I first started working here, the Center of Excellence, is tasked with helping solve weather problems for New York's private sector. So we typically used, you know, weather data to help solve problems for the utilities or other private companies that had big weather problems. But as we were doing that, we realized more and more that we were either being approached by or ended up working with state agencies and authorities who had very similar problems. So, you know, weather doesn't discriminate and only effect the private sector or public sector, obviously, right? If there's a really big windstorm, a utility is going to care if the power lines get blown down, but at the same time, our state's emergency management is going to care if people lose power, so that, you know, it's the same, it's kind of the same side of the coin there. So as we kept kind of doing these projects, we realized that, you know, there's clearly a demand here in the state for this kind of work. And at the time, we had been doing sort of small, what I would call one-off projects that were generally year-to-year or even six months at a time, with different agencies. And there was a lot of, you know, I might even call it duplicated work there. And it just seemed like there could be a better way to do that. And so we started soliciting support for what became this new center and began advocating for it to state government and, and this past budget cycle, they funded it.
MARY HUNT:
Who were your key partners from the state in this endeavor?
NICK BASSILL:
We have a variety of partners, but I would probably say our most key partner is D-S-H-E-S, which is the Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Services. They are helpfully located at least, the place we visit the most often is located literally directly across from ETEC. We can walk there in about five to 10 minutes. And so we work with them very closely. As their name implies, they're kind of the umbrella organization when it comes to how do we plan and respond for weather disasters, big and small, or even just nuisance events here in New York, and they're kind of a glue that helps other agencies and authorities and other public sector organizations collaborate and all of that. So they're our primary partner and their commissioner, Commissioner Bray, helped us secure this funding. So we're very appreciative to them for helping us get here. But our other partners are pretty much any of the big agencies or authorities you might think of when it comes to interacting with the public in any sort of emergency fashion. So that'd be transportation. So think of the Department of Transportation, the Thruway, the MTA, so basically organizations that are really important for travel, because weather snarls travel so easily. Maybe when you might not think about that the Port Authority, they're very important. Now they handle the airports in New York City, obviously, travel into and out of the Port of New York tunnels, bridges, so they're important. When you move away from transportation, you could think of all sorts of other organizations that we might work with as well. So all the way down from, you know, maybe a school superintendent. They have certainly no access to their own meteorologists or anything like that. I'd like to eventually start helping them make more informed school closing decisions. I know that that is maybe less of a priority now in the post-COVID world since there's a lot of online learning opportunities. But that was one of our very first, if not the first, project that we did along these lines with the state. That was a school closing project. I would like to kind of continue that. Then all the way up to energy. You know, I mentioned utilities care about weather, whether or not there's going to be strong winds or heavy snow. This new center doesn't directly work with utilities because that's still the purview of the old center that I mentioned, but there are state organizations in government who are kind of the state version of utilities. So there's New York Power Authority. There's organizations like the PSC, the Public Service Commission, and others that are the stateside kind of interaction with the private sector… the electrical grid and will probably work with them as well.
MARY HUNT:
I want to go back to that notion of what is it severe weather. I mean, you're the one that pointed out to me that a lot of people refer to it as “severe weather,” but you like to refer to it, I think you said as high impact weather. Can you explain why?
MARY HUNT:
I think every time I hear that term now, Nick, I think of you, and I start to think that's really, really not quite the way to phrase it, but please explain why.
NICK BASSILL:
Yeah, I feel like I always have kind of a friendly rivalry with some of the speech and press release writers because they always put “severe” and I always change it to “impactful,” and so why I do that is for two reasons. One, meteorologists when we hear “severe weather,” that conjures up a very specific image in our head, you know, say really strong winds from a thunderstorm or something along those lines. But secondarily, you know, the public hears “severe weather” and is probably thinking a hurricane, a blizzard, you know, tornado. Something like that is probably what you're thinking when you hear “severe weather.” And I prefer “impactful” weather, if only because I feel like if we refer to things as severe weather, that gives the wrong impression that, you know, it takes something like a hurricane or it takes something like a blizzard to really disrupt our lives. And that's not true, you know. Even nuisance events can be really impactful. And so, you know, I use the example of an inch of snow. If you ask a random person on the street in New York is an inch of snow a big deal, they will probably say no, it's not a big deal. But if an inch of snow happened during rush hour in New York City, that would be highly impactful, especially if it was the first snow of the year where people are still not quite used to driving in snow. That would be a really big deal. And so I like to use “impactful weather” just because it distinguishes the amount of snow or the strength of the wind. It separates the weather part of it from how it impacts people's lives. And our center here is to focus on that impact to people's lives, and to the economy and anything else impact-related, not as much as focused on what was the wind speed -- 42 miles an hour or 45 miles an hour. That difference is maybe not useful to the people who are being impacted by that strong wind.
MARY HUNT
But have to think that as you were planning for S-W-R-C-C, in your mind, as you're imagining the center and the work that it could do, were recent events such as the devastating storm that hit Buffalo last winter. You probably saw that weather event and thought if S-W-R-C-C were up and running, these are the ways that we could implement it or we could operationalize so we could have been of service or you know, help prevent, or mitigate some of the damage from that storm. Can you refresh our recollection about what happened last winter in Buffalo and how having S-W-R-C-C, might have been able to address or work with a weather disaster like that? Though, as you say, impactful weather is impactful weather, but maybe it's these major events that really helped the layman understand why something like this is an important tool.
NICK BASSILL:
And I think that is really where our value will shine is when we have these really big events where everyone is stretched thin and scrambling for information and trying to understand what's happening. So last year, Buffalo had two really major lake effect events. There was one in November that was I think our state's all-time snowfall record for a predetermined period of time. It was like three days or something like that, where I think they had up to seven feet of snow, which is really kind of crazy to think about. And then just a month later, we have a really devastating Buffalo blizzard, which occurred right before and during Christmas, and in which unfortunately, about 50 people lost their lives. That was a storm that yes had lots of snow, but it was really characterized by the very strong winds and whiteout conditions and really rapid temperature drops where people literally froze to death in their house because they lost power, and they couldn't heat their house. And no one could get to them because the roads were so impassable. So that was a really tragic event. And at the time we were doing a pilot project of what became our new center. And while we certainly didn't have the resources that we expect to have now back then, with the resources we did have we were able to send someone over to the Emergency Operations Center in our state's emergency management division and help them. In kind of real time we were getting questions like you know, is the lake effect snow going to shift south or is it going to shift north because I want to pre-stage my resources so that once it moves, we can go in and help rescue people as fast as we can. Where would be the best spot to put those resources now, so that I can be ready to start helping people when we get there? And those were the kind of questions we were getting. After the event is over, whether or not it's you know, a major snowstorm or something else, if it's really that damaging and causes that much loss of human life, you know, the state will try to get federal disaster money. And you may not know, and I certainly didn't know before a couple of years ago, but we need to meet certain benchmarks to receive that money. So in the case of a blizzard, believe it or not those benchmarks are did any county in New York exceed their one or two or three day record snowfall total. And when an event like this happens, the state will reach out to us and you know, kind of say like, wow, that is hard information to find, right? Because we need to know both what the records were, and we also need to know what the snowfall was. And we may get… we may have a server report, that is, you know 40 inches of snow. But we don't know for what period that fell in. Was it 24 hours? Two days? Was it three days? So, you know, it's our job to help the state with those and say we've looked up the data. Here's how it works. Here’s what the record was. Here's what we think happened. You know, we believe that you have broken a record in this place, or this other place, or you did not in this place. And so that's potentially millions of dollars of money that the state could or cannot be bringing in, depending on whether or not they can satisfactorily meet those benchmarks.
MARY HUNT:
And S-W-R-C-C is not only going to be a tool in terms of response, I take it. Again, I go back to the layman's point of view because that's what I am. I think of this as being able to assist with response to the storm or to the weather event, but it isn't necessarily just that. It's the prediction, it's the pre management, or the preparation for. It's the management during the storm, and then the recovery, I would imagine. Is S-W-R-C-C involved in all those phases?
NICK BASSILL:
Absolutely. You know, I think one of our other kind of core functions is what I would just call colloquially giving people a heads-up, you know. If you are trying to respond, or prepare for a potential disaster, you want as much lead time as possible, right? You don't want to find out two days in advance -- surprise, there's going to be the Buffalo blizzard because then you know, people are on vacation, your assets are in one half of the state and you’re in the other half. And it's very complicated. So one of the things that we are in charge of is giving a longer lead time notification that certain events can happen. And so one of the tricks here is that if we're talking about an event that could happen a week from now, we, you know, we don't really have much confidence in the weather a week from now, right? So we can't say definitively that thing A, B and C will definitely happen one week from now. But we can communicate to partners that, you know, we see this on the horizon. Based on what we're seeing, here's a reasonable worst case scenario. So if you want to plan for the worst case scenario, here's what it could be. Here's what maybe a more likely eventual scenario will be. And then here's what may be the least impactful scenario would be so they have a range of possibilities they can understand okay, my worst case scenario is still not a bad one. I don't have to worry about that then, or okay, my worst case scenario is maybe unlikely to happen. But if that were to happen, that would be very impactful. So I will prepare now for that scenario. So we can do that sort of activity, too.
MARY HUNT:
So it sounds like you'll be in regular communication with agencies. It's not just when you anticipate an event, there's just ongoing communication?
NICK BASSILL:
Yeah, we will be sending daily and probably even twice daily communications to all our key partners in the state.
MARY HUNT:
And one of the reasons the University is qualified or positioned to do this, I take it is because of the New York State Mesonet. Is that an important tool in S-W-R-C-C’s activity?
NICK BASSILL:
Yeah, absolutely. And it was another one of the impetuses for pushing for the State Weather Center, not the main one. But what the Mesonet is a collection of really high quality weather stations in New York. And if you are trying to find out what happened yesterday, in terms of the weather, or you're trying to look up, you know, what the winds are right now, or whatever you're trying to do with the weather, in terms of what's happening now, or what just happened, the Mesonet is really the best resource you could possibly ask for. And so for someone like me, who's in charge of trying to translate some of this data to the state, it's such an invaluable resource to me and other people like me. And so one of the things that we're doing for the state is, you know, kind of pushing for a broader use of the Mesonet within the state because as I mentioned, there are no meteorologists or very few meteorologists in the state. And so if you're not a meteorologist, you may struggle to understand the difference between say a backyard temperature sensor and a really, you know, high quality multimillion dollar network. And so, that's one of the things that we can help do. But I think that the center being located here at UAlbany is really perfect because we have that Mesonet, that observing network. We have sort of twin departments here. There's a teaching and a research department in terms of meteorology, and that's just an excellent resource for expertise, a pipeline for employees at the State Weather Risk Communication Center. It’s also here for helping students, you know, kind of kind of learn, get some on-the-ground training, do some internships. And then aside from a weather perspective, you know, I've mentioned homeland security, emergency management. I've used those kinds of words a lot here. The building where we're located, ETEC, also houses C-E-H-C, the College of Emergency Preparedness, Homeland Security and Cybersecurity. And they have a lot of expertise and goes to how we communicate during a disaster, how we best prepare ourselves and respond to a disaster in perhaps a non-weather sense, but that is still very important when you're thinking about disasters. And so I really expect to rely on them quite a bit as well when it comes to their expertise in those in those fields.
MARY HUNT:
You have mentioned this before in our conversations. I think this is a really interesting point. I mean, obviously, we're in New York State. We're in the northeast. We expect bad weather and severe weather, or high impact weather. But you say there are particular things about New York State that make its weather patterns unique. Can you talk a little bit about that?
NICK BASSILL:
I really firmly believe that New York is probably among the most challenging, if not the most challenging state, to forecast the weather for, especially if you are not in a meteorologist. And the reason why I say that is that New York can be impacted by pretty much every single kind of weather condition you can possibly think of. So, you know, literally whatever you would think of in terms of the weather, we can be impacted by it. We get hurricane landfalls, we get big lake effects, storms, you know, we get thunderstorms, we get freezing rain events. We've had a couple of those lately. We don't commonly get wildfires, but we can get wildfires. We still have those a couple times a year in certain spots. Certainly drought flooding, you know. Pretty much any kind of thing out there we can get. And I think that differentiates us from other states that maybe can get hit harder by any individual one of those. So you know, maybe Florida has worse hurricanes. I don't think anyone would dispute that. But Florida is not going to get freezing rainstorms, right.
MARY HUNT:
You never know these days.
[Laughter]
NICK BASSILL:
But they're not going to get a lake effect snowstorm, right and blizzard. So the range of possible weather that we have here is very large. And I think if you're not a meteorologist, and you get thrown a different weather event every other week, and you're trying to respond to it, it can be really tough trying to keep up with okay, you know, what are the hazards from the storm now. So that's why I think New York is really, really in need of something like the center. And I think that there's a lot of room to provide value.
MARY HUNT:
And there’s a lot riding on it. It sounds obvious, but until it happens, you don't realize how much --- people's lives, property, infrastructure. It's important to get as close to right and accurate as you can.
NICK BASSILL:
Yeah. And you know, we take it personally if you make a bad forecast, right. Like I said, this thing was going to happen. And then this other thing happened. And I got it wrong. And people take that personally when they're meteorologists.
MARY HUNT:
And people feel real tied to the meteorologists. They’re like doctors. We really, really listen when they speak.
NICK BASSILL:
Exactly. They're just people who, you know, the public can make a connection with, you know, they like one TV meteorologist, but not another one. And it's not that one is better than the other; they just have that connection with that particular member of the public. And so yeah, it can be a really personal thing.
MARY HUNT:
In terms of the decision making, is S-W-R-C-C the provider of the data, and then the state agencies will make the decisions? Or are you involved in the conversations about when to deploy resources? Or how does that work?
NICK BASSILL:
I would say we're best an interpreter of the data. And maybe this is a little bit nitpicky in terms of how you define creating data or something like that. But if we're trying to collect as much weather data as possible, so those could be National Weather Service forecasts… they could be Mesonet surface observations, you know… they could be weather models. And we're trying to take that data, and then do our best to synthesize it and condense it and apply it towards something that the state cares about, and, even better, if there's a way that we can incorporate it into how they make decisions, that would just make the data more relatable. So I'll give you an example of that. We know that we saw devastating flooding during the remnants of Hurricane Ida in New York City, and we have a lot of weather stations that are very high quality in New York City. Thankfully, we also know what the capacity, at least the theoretical capacity, of sewers in New York City is. And that is 1.75 inches of rain per hour. And so if you know what the sewer can handle, and you know how much rain is falling, you could put those two things together to let emergency managers know in real time, are we exceeding this. Because if we are, that probably means flooding. And so one of the types of tools that we'd like to do, in fact, we already are doing it with this particular example, but is just make a real time product that says are we exceeding our sewer capacity, and if so, how many hours have we exceeded that, because if it's, you know, if it's five hours, that's probably a much bigger flood than if it's one hour. And those are the types of tools that I want to create more of here, because I think they kind of cut out the middleman, so to speak for an emergency manager; they don't have to take the weather data and try to figure out how to apply it to the infrastructure data. They can just know, okay, weather isn't impacting infrastructure in this way and now I know there's flooding. And I think we can do similar things like that when it comes to, you know, maybe snowfall rate on roadways; plows can clear roads if it's up to about two inches per hour. After they get to three inches per hour or more than more or less roads become unclear, well, because the snow rate is too high. You know, those sorts of things, if you're trying to pretreat the roads… so if you know there's going be a storm coming, and you say, well, let's get the salt out on the roads now, it matters if it's going to rain before it snows, right. So if it's going to rain, all the salt would wash off, and you would just harm the environment and not help yourself and you’d waste money and time. But if it's going to snow before, or not rain at all, then you could pretreat and get a lot more value out of that. So believe it or not, there's not to my knowledge a product out there that says in a given winter storm, will it rain first or will it snow first. It's a very simple concept, something that's very low hanging fruit. And that does not exist. And I think our center is ideally suited to make something like that to help us see.
MARY HUNT:
That brings me to the center itself and how you will be staffed. What do you envision in terms of staff and number of meteorologists, researchers or students, and when will it be up and running?
NICK BASSILL:
We are anticipating about 10 staff give or take where we're still kind of finalizing how the budget will shake out. But just to break it down, think about one director and then about four meteorologists. So those would be one lead meteorologist and probably three or four general meteorologists, and those people would be tasked with sort of being the operational arm of what we do responding to real time inquiries, creating forecasts, sending emails, responding to phone calls, that sort of thing. And then we have an administrator as well. So just a person to help keep all the paperwork in line and be the sort of a glue person. So those people, I would say, make up the operational side of things. So six people that I mentioned, then we have another four people. And we want at least one or two of them to be a software engineer, so someone who can make those sorts of web products that we really need those nice interactive visualizations, the kind of things that the state needs… a product developer, who maybe is not a web expert but knows how to go and grab that weather data. You know, they know, okay, here's how I need to manipulate this model to get it into something that is usable for me. So I anticipate that person and the web developer to work very closely with one another. One thing that I haven't talked a lot about, but which is really important to the center is the social science of kind of how we communicate and how people interpret data. So I want a dedicated expert who has that social science of communication expertise. So that gets us up to nine and the tenth person is a little bit more to be determined. But our plan there is someone who can kind of slot in with existing projects that are going ongoing in the state that have a weather component. So maybe the state is building a map of where power outages happen, and they want to know how can we tie this into the weather, you know, this person could help out with finding the best weather sources out there to help them plug into that data set, or maybe the Department of Health is doing a project where they're trying to understand heat impacts and, you know, urban centers, and they're looking for temperature data, and they don't know how to interpret it. Now this person can help with that. So I really just want us to be sort of a weather grease, if you will, for the state and just help them function smoothly when it comes to anything that relies on the weather.
MARY HUNT:
And when will you be fully operational? Are you rolling this out over certain phases?
NICK BASSILL:
Yeah, it's running. It’s probably going to take about two years until we feel like we're in a smooth, normal, you know, baseline operating mode. We have about four people right now. We'll be hiring imminently, to bring our full complement of meteorologists up to what we expect. And then once we have that operational side down, we'll start slowly hiring those kinds of specialty positions -- the software engineer, product developers, social scientists -- those types of positions. We want to stagger things, because, you know, I have in my head, what I think the center should be or what I think the state wants us to be but ultimately, this is going to be kind of a moving target a little bit, you know, what I think we should be is going to be modulated by what the state expects out of us, and we will you now change what we're going to do to meet there to meet their needs. So what I think we might need is maybe going to be a little bit different from what we eventually need, you know, a year from now. So as we get going, we'll steadily add folks, and then hopefully end up around 10 people. But what I didn't mention in those 10 Is that we're ready hiring students and graduate students to be paid interns here so they can develop the expertise to maybe be our future employees or future National Weather Service employees or whatever they want to do when they graduate. And it helps us fill in that gap while we're seeking out those full time people.
MARY HUNT:
You had the opportunity to talk about this on the Today Show with Al Roker. What was that experience like?
NICK BASSILL:
Yeah, it was quite a whirlwind day because we had both Al Roker visiting and Governor Hochul visiting because our announcement was made on the Today Show. And that sort of served as the kickoff of the state weather center. And so there are press releases afterward and all that stuff that goes along with that. But when Al Roker and the governor were here, you know, it was just kind of a whirlwind, because they interviewed for about an hour across multiple spots within ETEC. And the governor, you know, I have to say was, was extremely good at answering complex weather questions from Al Roker about both New York in general, but also what she expects out of the state Weather Center. She made it really clear. And this is exciting and frightening for me, but I'm very clear that she wants us to be a nation leader in this, that she expects this to be a success story and that she expects it to be something that other states could learn from. So, you know, I like that pressure. It's good, but it's also a little scary, right. But the governor is always very friendly, and Al was obviously very friendly as well. I have not had the opportunity to meet him before, but he was great to chat with. And one of the things that I think he was really excited about is we scheduled a weather balloon launch for his time here. So the weather balloon launch is not really directly related to anything that a state weather risk communications center does, but we knew it was something that he would get a lot of enjoyment out of, so we were able to get an undergraduate, a graduate student and a postdoc altogether to represent kind of the different levels of students here. And they did a balloon launch for him right after the governor left and he participated in that, and I could tell he was really excited because he got his phone out and he was taking pictures and videos of it, and I think it really was a highlight for the students as well. So that was a really nice thing.
MARY HUNT:
Yeah, really nice way to kick off an important project. Nick, you know because you've been here before on The Engagement Ring. We always ask our guests for a gem but I'm going to ask you for a gem that's related to high impact weather. What should people know maybe about high impact weather that they don't know or that will serve them well going forward? What's your best advice or what experience would you relate to them?
NICK BASSILL:
The easiest answer to this would just be make sure that you are weather aware. If you hear that there might be a snowstorm five days from now or something like that, just make sure you check in every day leading up to it. I'm not saying you need to devote, you know, half an hour to looking at weather maps but just checking on your National Weather Service, just to see what the forecast is. But, you know, one of the things that I often say is that the biggest high impact events are often almost by definition the ones that catch us by surprise, you know. It’s a flash flood, and we didn't know we were going to have a flash flood 30 minutes before and now we do because a thunderstorm popped up and, and so it's probably also best to just kind of have their mental checklist of time… in a flood I know I get to higher ground. I don't drive through flooded roads. It's uh, you know, if a tree falls down on the powerlines out front, what do I do? I don't go into the powerlines. I just kind of have that mental rolodex of here's what I do or don't do in these kinds of bad weather scenarios.
MARY HUNT:
Listen to the experts. It seems, often as you said, we listen and we're disappointed if the weather isn't what they predicted. But really, it’s no big loss. If it isn't what they predicted, it’s better to be safe than sorry.
NICK BASSILL:
You know, I'm often kind of dismayed. Dismayed may be strong word, but, and I hear… and I know, a lot of these comments are politically motivated and other kinds of things. But I often hear members of the public being kind of dismissive when it comes to say the governor talking about an upcoming snowstorm like, “Oh, so you're a weather lady now.” Like really dismissive comments. And, you know, I just think that's really the wrong attitude, right.
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NICK BASSILL:
We have public officials here to help us make it through our daily lives, and to help make sure that the state is successful. And one of the ways that we do that is to make sure that we are weather aware. And so, you know, weather is so impactful for a number of reasons for the general population. I think it really is important to make sure that we're listening to people when they're trying to communicate that sort of information to us.
MARY HUNT:
Nick, thanks so much.
NICK BASSILL:
Thank you.
MARY HUNT:
I wish you best of luck with S-W-R-C-C.
NICK BASSILL:
Thanks.
MARY HUNT:
Sounds like it's going to have wonderful benefits for all of us.
NICK BASSILL:
I can't wait to really get going in earnest.
MARY HUNT:
Well, thanks for joining us.
NICK BASSILL:
Thank you.
ANNOUNCER/MARY HUNT:
Dr. Nick Bassill is the director of the State Weather Risk Communication Center at the University at Albany, a first-of-its-kind partnership between the University and the New York State Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Services that leverages UAlbany’s expertise in atmospheric sciences to help state and local emergency managers prepare for and respond to severe weather. Formore information on Dr. Bassill’s work and the new center, visit the resource page for this podcast on Simplecast. The Engagement Ring is produced by the University at Albany's Office for Public Engagement. If you have questions or comments or want to share an idea for an upcoming podcast, email us at UAlbany O-P-E at Albany dot E-D-U.
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