Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, December 16, 1994                   TAG: 9412160043
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: B-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: STEPHEN FOSTER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG                                LENGTH: Medium

WEATHER FORECASTS NOW STATE-OF-THE-ART

But while the Weather Service began using the new $5million station in July, building dedication rites were delayed until a cold and dreary day in mid-December so the facility's computers would be up and running for the ceremony.

Technology and the weather - in whatever form - are the raison d'etre of the station, built in Virginia Tech's Corporate Research Center as part of the federal agency's $4.4billion modernization and restructuring plan. In the years to come, its state-of-the-art Doppler radar will provide much more precise data on weather happenings in the Roanoke and New River valleys.

Heretofore, the Weather Service's closest radar reports have originated in Volens, a tiny town about 25 miles southwest of Lynchburg. And even then, the reports aren't as detailed as those that will come from Blacksburg - or actually Floyd County, where the radar is located. Conventional radar, such as Volens', cannot estimate the speed or direction of weather movements, as can the Doppler variety, which the Weather Service is adopting across the country.

"We expect big things to happen ... and we expect the forecast to get a helluva lot better," said James Belville, the Weather Service's area manager for Virginia.

By the end of the century, the Blacksburg station, which employs 17 workers and will increase that eventually to 24, will have the responsibility of generating area forecasts, which now are pieced together from offices in Charleston, W.Va., and Sterling, where Belville works.

The station also will launch weather balloons from the Virginia Tech airport just across the road, and its radar will help detect wind shears around airports in Roanoke and the New River Valley, said Michael Emlaw, a meteorologist at the station. That ability could prevent accidents like July's crash of DC-9 near Charlotte, N.C., that killed 37.

The station's opening, however, means the phaseout of the existing weather station at Roanoke Regional Airport.

Harry McIntosh, a 17-year veteran of the service and the head meteorologist in Roanoke, said he has mixed feelings about the new station, because it means the end of his career. But he said the station's capabilities mean forecasters will be better equipped to predict flash floods and other weather problems.

In Roanoke, "we were doing what you call adaptive forecasting," said McIntosh, who began his weather forecasting career nearly 37 years ago in the Navy. "People are going to be well-served by the radar."

Robin Reed, WDBJ (Channel 7) meteorologist, said: "There was never anybody really watching our back yard."

The station's opening is a coup of sorts for Tech's economic development effort. The Weather Service is the first federal agency to operate in the Corporate Research Center, which for the first time constructed a building to suit a tenant's specific needs.

Blacksburg Mayor Roger Hedgepeth said the station could be appreciated by all political and environmental interests.

"It isn't a correctional facility or a landfill ... or a nuclear plant," Hedgepeth said. "It's the National Weather Service."