Winter Weather Warning

Using Weather to Inform Organizational Decision Making

Jim Duncan headshot
RVA’s beloved meteorologist Jim Duncan will lead this class

With the growing frequency of extreme weather, the need for a rigorous understanding of the forecast when weather threatens has never been greater. Crucial choices in decision-making and safety planning are at stake for professionals, business managers, company owners, school administrators and others.

Winter brings its own set of seasonal weather hazards. An overload of forecast information often leads to consumer confusion, which can result in ineffectual planning and sometime disastrous outcomes. This becomes a particularly vital concern with dangerous winter storms and temperature extremes.

This course prepares participants with best-practices for critical decision making and safety planning for extreme and severe winter weather.

Course Overview

  • Winter Weather Risks

    Winter hazards iconOverview of winter weather hazards.

    • The primary hazards: Snow, ice, cold, wind and low visibility
    • Understanding the risks and scale of importance associated with each of those weather hazard types
    • Review of recently experiences winter weather hazards in Virginia
    • Discussion of how digital and social media have changed the dynamics of information flow, and understanding the importance of this change
  • National Weather Service

    Weather forecaster iconOverview of the official National Weather Service (NWS) forecast and menu of products with a guest speaker from the NWS.

    • Learn about the NWS/NOAA decision-making procedures, their forecast products and more.
    • How to find and use winter-weather forecast products produced by the NWS leading up to significant winter weather events.
  • Build Your Model

    weather technology iconBuild your decision-making model for weather impacts.

    • Decipher the myriad meteorological data sources used by professionals to make the forecast
    • Make sense of forecast time-scales; medium-range vs short-range, the important differences in accuracy with each, and how to use that knowledge to plan and prepare most efficiently and effectively.
    • Step-by-step approach using keys to winter weather preparedness: Decide, Prepare, Share and Execute. Build your own action plan for severe winter weather impacts.
    • VDOT presentation of their decision-making processes in advance of and during high-impact winter weather.
  • Weather API

    Satellite iconWeather API: The new gold standard for weather information delivery.

    • Overview of the latest weather information delivery systems rooted in the utilization of application programming interface (API) technologies.
    • How API is used to bring predictive weather insights to businesses to enhance vital decision-makingbefore hazardous weather hits.
    • How AI can be used to automatically send messaging alerts on risk decisions made by managers to other company team members as well as business customers.
    • Dominion Power presentation on how they utilize AI and API in their planning within the company for impending hazardous weather.
  • Weather & Technology

    News iconUsing social media, digital and other sources for decision planning and sharing; plus a look to the future of weather in this age of explosive informational technology growth.

    • Sorting through the confusing aspects of technology and the weather.
    • Focus on the narrow subset of information from conventionally used sources that really matters. 
    • Investigative techniques for high-impact weather with winter-focus, including a review of advances in radar in winter precipitation forecasts and a discussion of the importance of observational data collection.
    • Discussion of the social and socioeconomic impacts of “high-impact” storms and weather events.