Celebrating the 50th Anniversary of the Tropical Analysis and Forecast Branch (credit: NOAA HRD)

DISCUSSION: Within the last couple of days, many people across the atmospheric community and even people who are enthusiastic about it all were reminded about a fairly history day in United Weather history.  More specifically, this past week marked the 50th anniversary of the formation of the Tropical Analysis Center which is a sub-division of the National Weather Service's National Hurricane Center.  This marked a momentous occasion in United States weather history since this event allowed United States-based tropical forecasting to become elevated to new and greater heights with the help of tropical researchers such as Dr. Bob Simpson, David Shideler, and Miles Lawrence.

"The Tropical Analysis Center’s duties included analyzing the weather across the tropical belt (40°N to 35°S) of the Atlantic and eastern Pacific and forecasting the movement of disturbances in the normal trade-wind patterns.  This was a daunting task, since there were very few weather observations over vast stretches of this region.  To supplement the sparse island and ship reports, the Tropical Analysis Center meteorologists had to rely on the new technology of satellite picture analysis.  To add to their difficulties, they also had to analyze the upper troposphere from a handful of radiosonde stations."

To learn more about this neat period of United Weather history and improvements thereof, click on the following link!

To learn more about other past historic weather events from around the world, be sure to click here!

©2017 Meteorologist Jordan Rabinowitz