New leaders at National Weather Service’s Spokane office bring decades of experience

In the fall of his eighth-grade year, Andy Brown’s family moved to Dayton, Ohio. A surprise October snowstorm shut down the schools.

“I thought, ‘This is awesome. Snow can shut down schools? When will it snow again?’ ” Brown said.

The closure of school sparked a passion that led Brown on a career path and his current job: meteorologist in charge of the National Weather Service’s Spokane office, a promotion he landed earlier this year.

“I would wake up early before the rest of the family and watch the Weather Channel,” he said.

Two top positions at the weather service’s office on Rambo Road on the West Plains have been filled recently: Brown and Charlotte Dewey, who took over Brown’s former position as the warning coordination meteorologist. The duo has decades of combined experience with the National Weather Service.

Brown, a self-described Air Force brat, grew up in multiple locations, although many of his family members ended up in Texas. When he started middle school, he lived in Las Vegas. He describes the weather there as hot and boring.

Brown studied meteorology at Texas A&M, then worked for a private forecasting company. There he was in charge of monitoring the weather worldwide for aviation companies. But he knew he wanted to work for the National Weather Service, partly because he believes in the mission of protecting property and saving lives.

“I knew that was the place to be,” he said.

He saw an opportunity when a position opened in the remote Alaskan town of McGrath in 2004.

“I was looking for opportunities, a way to get my foot in the door,” Brown said. “The National Weather Service is very competitive.”

McGrath, population 400, was only accessible by plane or, in the winter, dog sled or snowmobile.

“It was difficult,” he said of living in the tiny town. “It’s where my passion for building relationships comes from. These were very remote communities without a lot of access to resources. They’re very hardy people, but they need to know what the forecast is.”

He worked in McGrath for less than a year before transferring to Anchorage for another seven years. He came to Spokane in 2012 as the Warning Coordination Meteorologist. Part of his job was to work with emergency management representatives when there were weather extremes, such as large amounts of snow in the forecast or high winds on hot, dry summer days.

Brown said he’s been handing off his duties to Dewey and introducing her to the emergency management employees that he’s worked with for more than a decade.

Unlike Brown, Dewey didn’t think of becoming a meteorologist when she was young. She grew up in Colorado, where she once saw a big hailstorm shred a tree in her backyard.

“I was interested in it as a kid, but I didn’t really think of it as a career.”

When she began attending the University of Northern Colorado, she realized that she could major in meteorology. She was sold. She knew her options were mostly limited to a television weather forecaster or working for the National Weather Service. The Weather Service seemed like an obvious choice.

“I just wasn’t interested in going that route, being on television,” she said.

She was always interested in the daily changes in the weather.

“I wanted to know why and how it worked,” she said.

Her first job was at the Space Weather Prediction Center in Boulder, Colorado, where she examined sunspots and solar flares. Her first posting with the National Weather Service 16 years ago was in Phoenix, and she arrived only a few days after a huge rainstorm. She also worked in Salt Lake City before arriving in Spokane four years ago.

It was, naturally, partly the weather that drew her to Spokane.

“I’d heard a lot of good things about the area,” she said. “It had all the seasons. I really like the diverse weather. It’s similar to Colorado, where there are all the seasons, sometimes in one day.”

Dewey said she’s always wanted to move up from being a forecaster into the warning coordination meteorologist role.

“It’s so much more about the outreach and education about the weather,” she said.

There are 25 employees at the Spokane Weather Service office. Brown said he and the three managers he oversees work together to staff the office 24/7.

“We work as a team to move the office forward,” he said.

Brown and Dewey launched an after-action review group three years ago to examine major local weather events to analyze how they were handled and what could be done differently in the future.

Brown and Dewey said they sometimes miss the total immersion in the weather that comes with being a forecaster.

“You have awareness of the weather, but our job is much more administrative,” Brown said.

“It’s different,” Dewey said. “It’s a totally different mindset. When you’re a forecaster, your focus is totally different.”