By Mary Cline

By day Mike Honigsberg is a mild-mannered manager at Larry Black's Sporting Goods in Enid. But when atmospheric conditions threaten human lives, this father-of-five guy throws caution to the wind, rolls up his sleeves and voluntarily serves the public as Director of Garfield County Emergency Management, using OK-FIRST technology to monitor storm activity and keep the county informed of potential danger.

The OK-FIRST Project (Oklahoma's First-response Information Resource System) is an outreach system of the Oklahoma Climatological Survey designed to improve access to current weather data. The program presently provides 65 communities with current, localized weather information through public safety agencies including fire departments, law enforcement and emergency management.

The Garfield County Emergency Management center, housed at Enid's Central Fire Station, accesses NIDS (NEXRAD Information Dissemination Service) products from 15 radar maps and meteograms from 115 Oklahoma Mesonet stations.

The University of Oklahoma donated a computer to the weather center, accompanying two other computers purchased by Garfield County. A satellite link between the weather center and the National Weather Service, as well as a direct link to the NWS via HAMM radio, is available for all severe storm warnings. Honigsberg is fully authorized to issue tornado or severe thunderstorm warnings.

The Emergency Management center also works cooperatively with Vance Air Force Base in Enid, providing a backup system for the base when needed. Vance AFB also helps to confirm data.

Appointed to the Emergency Management post in 1996 by the Garfield County Board of Commissioners, Honigsberg says he accepted the volunteer position because he was not satisfied with the weather coverage available to this area. According to Honigsberg, information from television stations in Oklahoma City is not real-time weather data due to broadcasting delay.

"I got tired of waking up at three in the morning and us getting hammered by weather. I'd turn on the TV for a weather report and find out the update was from a 2:45 a.m. report. That's already 15 minutes old," he said.

Honigsberg received OK-FIRST training in June 1997. To date, he has accumulated over 2,500 hours of NEXRAD time. In spite of his credentials, Honigsberg insists that the Enid weather center is simply the hub of a well-organized network of resources. Of particular importance to the center's operations are the trained storm spotters who provide ground level info.

"Even with all of this technology," said Honigsberg, "we still need the human element out there to tell us what is happening between the cloud base and the ground."

"We like to use emergency organizations like the fire departments, police and sheriff's department officers to do our spotting," he said. "They are going to be out there anyway and have the training necessary to corfirm what we are seeing on the radar screens.

Honigsberg also received assistance from Monroe Elementary sixth graders who faxed updates on the location of the dryline during the spring season through their analysis of Oklahoma Mesonet data.

Honigsberg describes the Garfield County weather center as a hub for the county, with in-the-field storm spotters service as "satellites" to relay vital information back to the base station.

On April 21, 1999, when a tornado touched down in Carrier, Okla., volunteer storms spotters Butch Phillips and Dale Pazzo were in the Hillsdale area, communicating with Honigsberg in Enid via radio. Using the combination of human eyes and NEXRAD/Doppler technology, the team gave the residents of Carrier ample warning that a tornado was heading for the town.

Honigsberg said most of the Garfield County area has adequate storm spotter coverage, except the Hillsdale/Carrier and Covington/Douglas areas. He said he would like to visit Covington to give a storm safety presentation about what to wathch for and do during severe storm warnings.

"Everybody needs to know this stuff," said Honigsberg.

Meanwhile, he and his team of storm chasers brave the elements, keeping county folks a little safer.

"We're not doing this for publicity," said Honigsberg. "We're doing it for public safety. My team and I do care. We're going to be here until all storms have cleared the county."

Used by permission, The Covington Record