Editor’s note: I tried to send this email to NOAA directly when I heard that their email address had leaked and was getting hate mail (NSFW content) Unfortunately, by the time I got done setting up a separate email address to send my message from (because I didn’t really want 13,000 bounce responses if it failed spectacularly going to my main email) they had patched the mail server to not accept email from people like me. Took ’em long enough.
If you know someone at NOAA, please pass this along to them.
I hope this email finds you.
I check your weather site every day. The forecast discussions in the Mt. Airy office help me both understand how weather works and help me understand why all of your jobs are so very difficult.
You do really hard jobs, and you do them very well and I want to say thank you.
Your predecessors kept my dad safe when he was in the Coast Guard in the 1960s, a lightship sailor in the North Seas. Your weather forecasts keep all of our service members safe every day. They keep all of us safe every day. I get a little arrogant when my friends are quoting crazy snow totals at me and I pull up the forecast discussion and go “well yeah but here are the models the feds are looking at and here’s what’s not evening out yet, so they’re calling for less and here’s why” and they’re more consistently correct than anything any other app puts out. Also, the communications that I found on your Facebook channel which shows what the chances are for different snow amounts made some of my family go “wow!”. Thank you.
You research and react to climate research changes, which helps every one of us figure out what to plant and where, from the apartment balcony garden to full-sized farms both here in the US and all over the world. Your educational resources are fantastic and your climate stripes have inspired a lot of knitters I know, even if it does mean they get really mad at how much red yarn they end up using. Your planning and commitment to the real science of the climate keeps us both safe and fed. Thank you.
The work you do around the oceans and coasts mean that cities like Virginia Beach are prepared for storms and the surges they bring. My trips there every summer to relax allow me to recharge and do better at all the work — family and paid — that I do throughout the year. Without your hard work the hotels and tourism industries couldn’t do what they do, and I couldn’t get a chance to watch the dolphins chasing the paddlers at sunrise. Thank you.
We all laughed when the Evergreen got stuck in the Suez Canal, because we definitely needed a laugh when that happened. But if it weren’t for the hard work you do in charting and maps, not only would we have boats stuck all the time, the Coast Guard would be working who knows how much longer to save ships sunk by unknown underwater rocks. You keep us safe. Thank you.
Every time we have a hurricane and we watch the intense graphics and rapid updates, it’s because your scientists are in airplanes flying through those hurricanes. That’s hard dangerous work, and it takes a huge team of scientists and others to produce that data, keep the ones in the planes safe, and communicate the findings out to the rest of the world. Thank you. And thank you to the amazing folks who are putting satellites in space and then telling us the story of our Earth, with pictures of storms and methane emissions and all kinds of other facts we would have no access to without the satellites.
A few years ago someone told me that the overfishing of the oceans and waterways was so bad that the only things really flourishing were jellyfish, so I’d better figure out how I like my jellyfish cooked. (I’m guessing as jellyfish chips since once the water’s out of one there’s not much left.) But the folks working in the Fisheries division are helping to make sure that we don’t get to that point. I like having well-stocked waterways both because hey, fish are tasty, and because the natural ecosystem of the ocean requires, you know, the ecosystem to be alive. I watched an awesome video on SciShow the other day about reducing bycatch and I’m 100% sure that even if your studies weren’t the ones being performed, “reducing bycatch” is something that we wouldn’t be able to research without the baseline of knowledge that you provide. Thank you. And thank you to everyone working with and around the marine sanctuaries to ensure that we have places that are as protected as possible from all the chaos humans inevitably create.
I don’t even know how to begin to talk about your communications teams. The websites, the alerts, the education libraries, the videos, the photos, they’re all amazing. I love you all for every thing that you produce, even when I don’t know it’s coming from you.
You all — every one of you — work really hard jobs that pay dividends in science, health, education, infrastructure, and so many other ways.
You keep us safe. Thank you.
thank you,
anne gibson