Former NOAA National Weather Service Science and Operations Officer Jeffrey Cupo recently traded the soft, warm breezes of San Juan, P.R. for the bone-chilling winter winds of Oklahoma. He is now serving as the new Meteorologist-in-Charge of the National Weather Service office at the FAA Academy in Oklahoma City.
For some, the sudden climate change might come as quite a shock to the system, but Cupo is used to it. His early travel history includes trips from New York to Southern California and back again, to Florida, Canada and Mexico; and, safaris to Kenya and Tanzania. He has also visited Antarctica and the Galapagos Islands.
"As a kid, I used to watch NOVA and saw where they repeatedly went to Africa to film animals in the wild and found that so fascinating. I determined to go on a safari as soon as I was financially able. I was especially drawn to places of natural beauty like Antarctica, where you can see nature at its finest; and, to the Galapagos, where there was very little human interaction."
Like so many of the Natural Weather Service meteorologists, Cupo's interest was fostered by a particular weather event experienced at an early age. He was only six years old when Hurricane David made its relentless march up the East Coast in 1979. David was a Cape Verde Hurricane that had reached category five strength south of Puerto Rico. The storm skirted the Florida coast, made a final landfall in Georgia and roared northward along the Appalachians through the Mid Atlantic states, through New York and on to New England.
"Hurricane David was the first hurricane I dealt with. It was just one of those fascinating events and I thought I would like to learn more about it. So I started to take more science courses in high school and knew exactly what I wanted to study in college." Cupo received a bachelor's degree in meteorology from Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N.J., in 1995 and a master's degree in meteorology from Florida State University in Tallahassee, Fla., in 1998.
He played a key role in helping the National Weather Service adapt to the Advanced Weather Interactive Processing System (AWIPS) and the modernization program of the 1990s. After receiving his master's degree in 1998, he worked for Planning and Research Corporation, Inc., a subsidiary of Black and Decker, Inc., where he trained National Weather Service forecasters in offices across the nation on AWIPS workstations.
"It was the fact that I could teach the AWIPS platform in a language they could understand. I was able to communicate to them why AWIPS was important - why it does this and why it does that. Today, the blending of meteorology and computer programming is almost academic. You can't separate the two."
Later that year, he joined the National Weather Service Meteorological Development Lab in Silver Spring, Md. where he continued to help develop, refine and implement the AWIPS program. In 2000, he transferred to the Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Okla. where served in a duel capacity as a Technical Development Meteorologist and an operational forecaster.
"Most of my time was spent developing operational programs, but I also worked shifts as a forecaster. This provided a good transition to my subsequent roles as a Science and Operations Officer."
Between 2003 and 2009, Cupo worked as a SOO for the forecast offices in Midland, Texas, and San Juan, where he gained a wide range of experience in various weather systems including fire weather, severe thunderstorms, winter weather, tropical storms and marine forecasting. "You put yourself in a whole new arena and if things are foreign to you that is good. It forces you to learn."
The mission of the National Weather Service Office at the FAA Academy is to provide weather training for Federal Aviation Administration Air Traffic Controllers, write reference materials, and administer NWS Certification examinations for Pilot Weather Briefers (PWB) and Tower Visibility Observers. The staff consists of a Meteorologist-in-Charge, an Administrative Support Assistant, and five senior meteorologist instructors. The unit is part of the National Weather Service, Southern Region.
The Office provides required certification, proficiency checks, and supplemental training to FAA Pilot Weather Briefer candidates - both contract and government. It also provides formal classroom instruction for Air Traffic Basics and Tower Visibility. Tower Visibility also includes testing and certification by the NWS. In addition, it develops training course material and computer based instruction in meteorology for the FAA, administers and grades written and oral examinations for PWB candidates, issues Certificates of Authority to PWBs.
All of these responsibilities are part of the National Weather Service's "protection of life and property" goal which, in this case, are the people and aircraft that use private and commercial aviation throughout the United States. While the work at the office is very important, it is one of the least known activities of the National Weather Service. Cupo hopes to change that.
"The primary goal is to keep the flying public safe - and part of that involves training Pilot Weather Briefers on a wide range of weather information. But one of my other goals is to get people to know what the FAA Academy is all about. Sometimes I feel its visibility is a little low. I really want to make the Academy shine. There is a great group of individuals there that really don't get the visibility they deserve."
