THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1997, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, January 15, 1997 TAG: 9701140352
SECTION: MILITARY NEWS PAGE: A12 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY CHARLENE CASON, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: 92 lines
Every time a hurricane threatens to strike the East Coast - which can be a dozen times or more each season, from June 1 through Nov. 30 - the Navy must decide what to do with the 70-plus ships it usually has in port: keep them moored alongside the piers at Norfolk Naval Station and Little Creek Naval Amphibious Base, or move them all out to sea?
It amounts to a wager with mountains of money at stake: If the Navy opts to leave the ships at the piers, it risks seeing its seagoing muscle, and its docks, damaged by a storm's high winds and seas.
Moving the ships to the relative safety of open water, on the other hand, costs millions of dollars: When ships sortie, they're dispatched at least 100 miles east into the Atlantic Ocean.
But this past storm season the Navy's bet was an educated one, based on predictions from 130 sailors and civilians who staff the Naval Atlantic Meteorology and Oceanography Center at Norfolk Naval Air Station.
The center's experts advised the Atlantic Fleet to stay put through hurricanes Edouard, Fran and Hortense - counsel that saved the service $15.7 million in fuel. Only with Hurricane Bertha bearing down on Hampton Roads did the fleet bolt from the piers.
On average, nine to 11 tropical storms and hurricanes head this way each season; in 1996, there were 13 potential hurricanes.
Thanks to the center and its counsel, however, the Navy has decided to sortie in the face of only three storms over the past seven years.
Its decision isn't based on a hurricane's strength, or ``category,'' but on a risk assessment of the damage that might befall the fleet's ships if they remain tied up.
``Navy weather is tailored to the customer,'' said Lt. Marc Steiner, a Meteorology and Oceanography Center spokesman. ``That means we focus on the impact to the fleet, rather than to all the counties everywhere around it.''
The Navy takes the lead in assessing risks for maritime interests when it comes to tropical storms and hurricanes, he said. And here in Hampton Roads, accurate weather forecasting is essential because of the constant deploying and returning of naval vessels.
``We're the ones who are most interested in what a storm will do,'' Steiner said, ``because we're routing ships back and forth across the Atlantic.''
When the carrier America deployed for the Mediterranean Sea in the summer of 1995, for instance, there were four active tropical storms brewing in the Atlantic.
``The crews (of the battle group) had to sortie from Felix, then they came back and said goodbye to their families,'' Steiner said. ``When they finally got underway, at least two hurricanes chased them across the Atlantic.''
The Norfolk center forecasts weather for the Atlantic Basin, or from pole to pole on this half of the world. The federal government's National Hurricane Center in Miami is technically in charge of keeping the country up to the minute on storms' movements, but Navy experts ``have a lot of input,'' Steiner said.
While the Navy first developed weather forecasting techniques during World War I, the modern Naval Meteorology and Oceanography Command really took off in the mid-1960s. Since 1972 the command has maintained the local center at Norfolk Naval Air Station; other facilities are scattered around the world, in such far-flung locales as Guam, Spain, Iceland and Maine.
With the advent of the Internet there has been ``an explosion in technology'' at the Norfolk center, Steiner said, noting that he has seen remarkable changes in the two years he's been stationed there.
``Now we can connect up with university, military and research meteorology centers anywhere,'' he said. ``We can produce superior satellite interpretations and color imagery, when all we had was black-and-white a couple of years ago.''
Better technology means better results in studying the effects of winds that aren't associated with a hurricane, but affect its steering, Steiner said.
The result: Ever-more accurate judgments about the likelihood of storms veering toward, and striking, Hampton Roads.
The Naval Atlantic Meteorology and Oceanography Center has a staff roughly equal to that of the National Hurricane Center, he said. But in addition to meteorology, or weather forecasting, the Navy's responsibilities also include oceanography - primarily to support submarines - and geodesy, or the mapping and charting of the earth's surface beneath the water. ILLUSTRATION: Photos
MOTOYA NAKAMURA/The Virginian-Pilot
Chief Petty Officer Roland Skala, duty forecaster at the Navy
Atlantic Meteorological and Oceanographic Center, draws weather
charts to track high wind warning areas in the Atlantic Ocean.
Highly specialized weather forecasts are the center's specialty.
From left, Petty Officer 2nd Class Douglas Pearman, Petty Officer
2nd Class Shawn Toner and Petty Officer 3rd Class David Geelhoed
work on a project.