Field Trip Report

On Thursday 27th of May 12 lucky MWACS members got to take the tour and see how the Bureau really operates.

The first stop was the Victorian Regional Office (VRO) for the morinig chart discussion. It was encouraging to note how similar our Chart Discusssions are to those held by the pros. The main thing item of note was a large cold pool which had been sitting over the state the day before and had moved north-east overnight. Jane (who wishes to work at the Bureau) managed to cause offence by asking how seriously they took alpine forecasts given the inaccuracy she had experienced. Meteorologists seem to have thick skins and she received a diplomatic answer!

The next stop was to see Tony Bannister from the Bureau of Meteorology Research Center. Some of you may remember him from a presentation he gave MWACS on the alpine fires from a couple of summers ago. He is currently playing with some new radar technologies, some of which have not yet been seen by forecasters. New computer algorithms such as TITAN have allowed unprecendented control of access to radar data. 3D slices of the image can be taken and dangerous storms are automatically picked up and tracked. This data can be superimposed onto a 3D map of Australia and the mouse can be used to 'fly through' a storm system. This is all done in real time and is world beating technology.

The next stop on the grand tour was to the National Meteorological Operations Centre (NMOC). From there all data to and from the Regional Offices is co-ordinated. The NMOC is also in charge of running the Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP) models such as LAPS and GASP. We were given a tour of the offices and a briefing on how NWP operates and the NMOC's role in the Bureau. It was at this stage that we managed to lose Tony!

After a quick stop at the Bureau of Meteorology Training Centre (BMTC) to see some familiar faces, our final stop was the National Meteorology Library. They have the largest collection of Meteorological literature in Australia, ranging from journals to magazines to books. They also have a preservation room where everything the Bureau has every published is preserved.

Thanks must go to Andrew Ballinger for organising the trip and all the staff at the Bureau who gave up their time to talk to us. This was especially difficult in light of the Bureau being in the process of their move to the new Collins Street building.