THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, May 28, 1996 TAG: 9605280054
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA
SOURCE: BY MASON PETERS, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: NEWPORT LENGTH: 106 lines
It's been two years since Bonnie and Frank Terrizzi Jr. left their sandy home on Hatteras Island for a new $2.5 million operation in this hamlet near Morehead City.
When the National Weather Service shut down the obsolete weather station at Buxton in 1994, the Terrizzis and three other forecasters all transferred to a new storm-tracking facility at Newport, on U.S. Route 70 near Morehead City.
The $2.5 million Newport weather radar stands guard over most of the North Carolina coast, and it will be a first line of defense against hurricanes moving toward Cape Hatteras.
A round white dome encloses the WSR-88-D Doppler radar antenna that warns of approaching storms within a radius of 125 miles.
It's state-of-the-art stuff, but ``leaving the old place at Buxton wasn't easy,'' Bonnie Terrizzi said. ``At least I still talk to a lot of old friends.''
Does she ever.
Bonnie is the no-nonsense voice of the National Weather Service, and her forecasts and emergency storm warnings are heard around-the-clock on marine radio frequencies along the mid-Atlantic coast.
For thousands of commercial and sport fishermen, Bonnie's calm weather words are as indespensible as morning coffee, particularly when a great storm threatens the Outer Banks.
At Newport, Bonnie has her own transmitting studio where two microphones send out marine forecasts for rebroadcasting at Cape Hatteras and New Bern. Bonnie's marine weather frequency is 162.475 megahertz from Albemarle Sound south along Pamlico Sound. North of Albemarle Sound, marine weather broadcasts are transmitted on 162.55 megahertz from another National Weather Service facility at Wakefield, Va., west of Norfolk.
When the old Weather Service station at Buxton was ordered decommissioned in 1994, the Terrizzis were among weather personnel who chose to transfer to the new facility at Newport.
``We were lucky,'' said Bonnie, ``Married couples aren't supposed to work at the same Weather Service installation.''
But Bonnie and Frank Terrizzi are veteran meteorological technicians with a lot of hard time on the books riding out hurricanes homing in on Cape Hatteras. And Frank, at 55, has retirement in sight, so National Weather Service managers decided to bend the rules and let the Terrizzis transfer to Newport and work together.
Actually, the Terrizzis and other weather shellbacks who originally volunteered for the difficult duty at Cape Hatteras, long ago acquired a special luster within the National Weather Service.
``They're all the best in the business,'' said Wallace H. Demaurice, the last officer in charge of the old Buxton installation on The Cape. ``It took a special talent and temperament to enjoy working on Hatteras Island.''
Demaurice ought to know.
When word got around that the Buxton weather station was being downsized, Hatteras Island residents blew up in a protest squall of their own. Demaurice and other Weather Service personnel had become ``family'' and nobody wanted them to leave.
Finally, the Weather Service decided to keep the retiring Demaurice ``on duty'' at the old Buxton facility. And there he remains, a solitary meteorologist incharge of an empty Buxton block house where the wind still shrieks around the eaves like remnants of long-gone storms.
And every day Bonnie Terrizzi's relayed marine weather forecast radiates loud and clear from a Buxton radio transmitter that, like Demaurice, is still on line.
Al Purdy is another Hatteras Island weather veteran who moved down to Newport. Purdy, appropriately, is a hydrologist who keeps track of the water that falls or splashes or roars ashore along the coast. If Purdy thinks flood conditions could make coastal areas dangerous, newspapers, TV and radio stations are quick to send out Purdy's alarms.
But memories of his life of lonely splendor on Hatteras Island still shape Purdy's existence at the new Weather station at Newport.
``Al finally found a place to live over on Harker's Island closer to the ocean,'' said Bonnie. ``It's almost as remote as Buxton and it takes Al an hour and a half to drive one way. He loves it.''
Terry Lowe and James Ireland are the other members of the quintet of Buxton forecasters who came to Newport.
Altogether, Thomas E. Kriehn, the meteorologist-in-charge of the Newport facility, has 18 technicians and forecasters on his staff to operate the station around the clock.
Kriehn is one of the new breed of Weather Service scientists who are installing $4.2 billion worth of WSR-88-D storm radars at 800 weather stations around the country. All will be hooked together in an electronic net that allows each station to pass radar pictures back and forth. Ultimately the field stations will feed radar data into supercomputers at the National Weather Service headquarters near Washington.
Little by little the computers are stretching out the predictive lead time for weather that hasn't arrived yet from the far Pacific.
And the wonderful new WSR-88-D Doppler radars like the one in the big white ball at Newport can pinpoint tornados and hurricane winds in time to get humans out of the way.
``The technical ability of these new installations is such that each facility has to operate with more autonomy,'' Kriehn said.
``It used to be that several weather facilities, including Washington, would jointly participate in warnings,'' he said. ``With our new capability, we can respond to rapid weather developments and immediately get emergency information on the air.'' ILLUSTRATION: DREW C. WILSON
The Virginian-Pilot
Frank Terrizzi, above, updates weather information from a modern
$2.5 million facility in Newport that NASA would envy. Bonnie
Terrizzi's calm voice has delivered good and bad news to
weather-conscious commercial and sport fishermen all along the North
Carolina coast for years. Though miles apart, old friends can hear
her voice on marine frequencies. by CNB