Posted: May 13th, 2016

When forecasts are wrong, it is often because:

1. The NWS recommends that emergency managers have more than one means of
receiving Watches and Warnings
a. True
b. False

2.NOAAWeatherRadio(withSAME):
a. Can be heard everywhere in the country
b. Costs more than EMWIN
c. Provides the same information as EMWIN
d. Can monitor for watches/warnings in your area and sound an alert

3. Which of the following represents a variable environmental factor?
a. Soil saturation
b. Soil type
c. Locations of mountains or hills
d. Locations of dams

4. The FEMA program that helps build disaster resistant communities is:
a. StormReady
b. Project Impact
c. SkyWarn
d. Safety First

5. A telephone alert system:
a. Calls 911 for you when the smoke alarm goes off
b. Forwards calls from your dispatch center to your EOC
c. Pages you when a warning is issued for your area
d. Calls residents in a certain region and delivers a
message

6. EMWIN provides:
a. A local radio channel for law enforcement communication
b. Weather information from the NWS for emergency managers
c. Two way communication with the NWS via satellite
d. A way to warn citizens via the telephone system

7. An example of an indirect weather observation system is:
a. Buoys
b. ASOS
c. Radar
d. Radiosondes

8. Long range forecast products tend to be more accurate than short range ones.
a. True
b. False

9.The forecast discussion you are reading one summer day mentions that instability is high.
You conclude that:
a. Conditions are right for a severe thunderstorm to occur
b. Rising motions in the atmosphere are suppressed, so clear weather is
likely
c. A front is going through the area
d. The forecaster s confidence in model results is very low

10. Advisories are issued:
a. Only for flooding situations
b. For threats that are likely to occur a month or more in the future
c. For threats that are not expected to be dangerous
d. To raise awareness about existing or imminent threats

11. The NWS employee who can help set up spotter groups and public awareness
activities is:
a. The Warning Coordination Meteorologist (WCM)
b. The Science and Operations Officer (SOO)
c. The Lead Duty Forecaster
d. The Meteorologist in Charge (MIC)

12. Large water bodies often affect weather downwind by:
a. Orographic lifting
b. Creating mesoscale fronts when the land temperature is different than the water
temperature
c. Creating stable air parcels
d. Altering the course of the jet stream

13. An inversion is a region in the atmosphere where:
a. Temperature decreases with height and air parcels are likely to stop rising
b. Temperature decreases with height and air parcels are likely to continue rising
c. Temperature increases with height and air parcels are likely to stop rising
d. Temperature increases with height and air parcels are likely to continue rising

14. Who is authorized to initiate official watches and warnings?
a. The National Weather Service
b. Registered private weather services
c. Certified media meteorologist using Doppler radar
d. Any of the above

15. If your community has a Presidentially Declared Disaster, there is a 95% chance it
will be weather or flood related.
a. True
b. False

16. The forecast discussion products provide:
a. Climate forecasts
b. Forecaster reasoning
c. Comparisons of radar images from different Weather Forecast Offices
d. Temperature probabilities

17. A cold front typically has a _______ slope and _______ ahead of it.
a. Steep, thunderstorms
b. Shallow, steady precipitation
c. Steep, clearing weather
d. Shallow, thunderstorms

18. A Watch means that:
a. A severe weather event is imminent or occurring
b. Citizens should take shelter immediately
c. A severe weather event has occurred in a nearby county
d. The risk of hazardous weather has increased significantly

19. Forecasting precipitation type (rain, snow, sleet, ice) is difficult because:
a. You need to know what kind of cloud nucleii are in the
atmosphere
b. The lifting process determines the type
c. You need to know the depth of the melting and freezing layers in
the air
d. You need to know the depth of the moist and dry layers

20. A threats analysis should include analyzing the vulnerabilities of power generation,
water, and sewage treatment facilities.
a. True
b. False

21. The water vapor image shows a dark black area over your state. This indicates that:
a. There is ample mid level moisture for storms today
b. There is ample low level moisture for storms today
c. The atmosphere is too dry to support storms today
d. There is little moisture in the middle levels of the atmosphere

22. The weather behind a cold front tends to clear because:
a. Cold air is more dense than warm air
b. Cold air is more stable than warm air
c. Lifting mechanisms are no longer in place
d. All of the above

23. As the emergency manager, you call the Weather Forecast Office (WFO) and report
that you have experienced heavy, wind driven rain for the past 30 minutes, and that your
dispatch center has received calls about small streams flooding on the southern edge of
your community. The WFO uses this information to:
a. Complete the application to become a StormReady community
b. Define areas to be evacuated
c. Send the Warning Coordination Meteorologist to your area to report
conditions
d. Refine their forecast to alert others in the storm s path

24. A climate forecast is typically a short range forecast.
a. True
b. False

25. When forecasts are wrong, it is often because:
a. Indirect observation methods cannot detect fronts and other weather systems
b. Too many observations slow down the computer processing
c. The forecast is not updated during the times when the WFOs are closed
d. Something happens in the atmosphere that is more complex than the models can
simulate