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'Weather Geek' Runs Hurricane Center

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The Associated Press

The Tampa Tribune

Published: July 1, 2008

MIAMI - MIAMI - When hurricanes and tropical storms threaten the United States, a self-described "weather geek" will let the nation know what the dangers are.
National Hurricane Center director Bill Read marked a small milestone Monday. He's one month into the Atlantic hurricane season, with five more to go.

So far, there has been only Tropical Storm Arthur, which formed in the Atlantic the day before the season officially started on June 1 and soaked the Yucatan Peninsula. Ahead, however, are typically the season's busiest months, August and September.

With things quiet so far, the center has had more time to adjust to Read, who took over after the contentious departure of his predecessor, Bill Proenza, who was on the job only six months before he was placed on leave last July. The center's staff urged his dismissal, saying he exaggerated problems with a satellite and undermined forecasters.

Read said when he took over that he was a little more laid back than Proenza. His hurricane kit contains "Ritz crackers and peanut butter." His son's cell phone plays The Doors' song "Riders on the Storm" when he calls.

Like other center directors, however, Read said he expects to spend a lot of time talking about hurricane preparedness, including how to secure homes against storms, urging families to create a storm plan and encouraging people to have sufficient hurricane supplies.

"It just drives me nuts that we haven't solved that problem," Read said in describing the challenge of getting people to prepare.

In particular, Read said he wants to try to understand why some people or neighborhoods evacuate and others do not. Then, he wants to tailor his message to individual communities. In places like New Jersey, which hasn't had a hurricane make landfall since 1903, there should be a different way of talking about preparedness than in places that have seen hurricanes more frequently, he said.

"The one pamphlet response to hurricane preparedness is not going to work," Read said.

Born in South Weymouth, Mass., and raised in Delaware, Read said he knew he loved weather early on: He would press his face up against the windows of his house to watch snow fall.

He went to Texas A&M to study meteorology and then was drafted into the military. He served as a meteorologist flying aboard Navy hurricane hunter aircraft for two seasons. Though at the time he had been on only a handful of airline flights, it was his job to control the plane's path through the storm at low altitudes of 500 or 1,500 feet.

"I think I gave religion to a lot of people," he said.

After finishing with the Navy and returning to Texas A&M for a master's degree, Read joined the National Weather Service in 1977. He served in several posts before being chosen to lead the weather service's Houston-Galveston office in 1992. He held that job until moving to Miami and the National Hurricane Center.

If his job in Texas was like a steak dinner, heading the National Hurricane Center was the "extra piece of key lime pie afterwards: not expected but enjoyed nonetheless," Read said.

People who know him say he is well equipped to deal with the job's pressures.

Paul J. Croft, a meteorology professor at Kean University in New Jersey, succeeded Read in 2004 as president of the National Weather Association. Read always tells people what he does and does not know, Croft said.

"He's always been one to give it to you straight," Croft said.

Read, meanwhile, said he's already gotten advice from Max Mayfield, the former center director who held the job from 2000 to 2007. Mayfield told him if he stayed on the job more than five years his gray hair would turn white. Read said he would stay until "it's no longer fun."

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