and with that i am going to turn it over to berrien. >> thank you. appreciate that. >> i >> thank you. appreciate that. >> i am delighted to be here. as you can tell from the introduction of the panel we are going to range from noaa's role on the observation that forecast to the role of the forecaster and then to the role of what do people do with the information. so having eddie hicks here to be able to tell us what it's like to be at ground zero is a particular important part of this panel. i had some experience with that this past year in norman oklahoma. as the director of the national weather center this was my first year and my first day on the job if you will in tornado season. in fact that almost indicates my east coast bias that i had never really been in a tornado alley, and so the white had joined the university in june in 2010 my first spring in normandy and on may 24 for kavanagh and others from the production center and the national laboratory called me at 8:30 and said the models are converging and we need to brief the vice president t

and with that i am going to turn it over to berrien. >> thank you. appreciate th. >> i >> thank you. appreciate that. >> i am delighted to be here. as you can tell from the introduction of the panel we are going to range from noaa's role on the observation that forecast to the role of the forecaster and then to the role of what do people do with the information. so having eddie hicks here to be able to tell us what it's like to be at ground zero is a particular important part of this panel. i had some experience with that this past year in norman oklahoma. as the director of the national weather center this was my first year and my first day on the job if you will in tornado season. in fact that almost indicates my east coast bias that i hadnever really been in a tornado alley, and so the white had joined the university in june in 2010 my first spring in normandy and on may 24 for kavanagh and others from the production center and the national laboratory called me at 8:30 and said the models are converging and we need to brief the vice president that

and with that i am going to turn it over to berrien. >> thank you. appreciate that. >> i >> thank you. appreciate that. >> i am delighted to be here. as you can tell from the introduction of the panel we are going to range from noaa's role on the observation that forecast to the role of the forecaster and then to the role of what do people do with the information. so having eddie hicks here to be able to tell us what it's like to be at ground zero is a particular important part of this panel. i had some experience with that this past year in norman oklahoma. as the director of the national weather center this was my first year and my first day on the job if you will in tornado season. in fact that almost indicates my east coast bias that i had never really been in a tornado alley, and so the white had joined the university in june in 2010 my first spring in normandy and on may 24 for kavanagh and others from the production center and the national laboratory called me at 8:30 and said the models are converging and we need to brief the vice president t

so i was in kansas city arriving in kansas city on the day berrien just told you about. i was on route to a couple places on was to kansas city to visit our central region forecast office which is the central control and coorinating authority for all of the weather forecast offices that had just been experiencing and pparing people for what berrien described and about ten days earlier had been serving in a similar role as tornadoes last for joplin missouri, quite a devastating in that community 115i believe the final count was lives lost, thousands of structures at 1800-acre fields that is to be people's homes and hospitals. it was quite an experience and in fact the day that we were driving from kansas city down to springfield a the joplin area tornadoes were running through the sutheastern part of kansas city and we were relying on the same forecast skills, the san chain berrien described to the models, the expert forecasters to provide the guidance and in the media from the apple on our iphone to the radio and television to get the word out that last mile so that we a