It looks like a suburban house until you see the 24-foot satellite dish antenna on the roof. This is the National Weather Service Forecasting Office, just off the freeway in Redwood City, California. Inside this unassuming building, an astonishing array of computers and electronic equipment helps meteorologists make weather forecasts for the Western United States, local TV stations and ships at sea. During a tour of the weather station, they gave us a glimpse of the side of meteorology that the public never sees.
Computers are everywhere.
The office literally hums with activity fmm banks of machines. There are 280 Weather Service stations in the U.S., each loaded with an identical array of electronic paraphernalia. Just beyond the lobby, weather forecasters answer constantly ringing phones, peer over maps and distribute information to the news media and the public. But it all starts in that big dish on the roof. Those satellite photos in newspapers and on TV might mislead you into believing the earth already has a map deeply etched into its surface.