Every Spring and Fall, the National Weather Service office in Sterling, VA hosts members of the media to come and take a look at their operations and meet with them to talk about different aspects of the weather.  Topics addressed this Spring were such as this years winter, or lack there of, severe weather in the region and past events such as the La Plata tornado and the Fall outbreak of tornadoes associated with the remnants of Hurricane Ivan, storm based warnings, and even the EF Scale. 

It is always great to get out there and form a good relationship with the meteorologists at the Weather Service as well as talk to meteorologists from other markets such as Baltimore and Charlottesville.  It was interesting learning how the EF Scale, or Enhanced Fujita Scale, is different from the old Fujita Scale in terms of damage based wind estimates.  A whole list can be found here:  http://www.spc.noaa.gov/efscale/ef-scale.html  You can click on each of the numbers to the left and it will show you different examples of damage made by certain estimated wind speeds.

Another important topic was the storm based warnings.  You know how when a warning used to go out such as a Severe Thunderstorm Warning or a Tornado Warning, the whole county was warned?  Now, just the particular area involved will be warned (i.e. Southeastern Fairfax County, moving east at 30 mph).  This is because there are so many people getting warned in some parts of the county that are not being affected that the NWS decided to make a change.  Here is a good website that shows examples:  http://www.weather.gov/sbwarnings/

Afterward, we took a picture there in front of their building and hit the road.  They are actually moving into a new building this Fall as Dulles Airport decided to put a runway where their current building is.  You can see Adam Caskey and I on either side of Chris Strong, the Warning Coordination Meteorologist.  Jim Lee, the Meteorologist in Charge, or MIC, is on the opposite side of me (white shirt), with Ron Riley of NewsChannel8 next to him, and at the end of the row, Steve Zubrick, the Science and Operations Officer there at the Sterling office.