Chris Strong: Hi! My name is Chris Strong. I work for the National Weather Service under NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Today, I am going to talk to you about how you can forecast the weather. First thing we will talk about today is taking observations. How to observe the weather from your home, surface observations you can take right at ground level. We will also talk about satellite, radar and weather balloons as well as other observations.

Next, we will discuss how you can determine the big picture from your surface observations. How you can track changes in pressure, temperature and other things that will tell you what's coming down the pike for you, what type of weather do you expect?

Next, short term forecast. How to forecast what's going to be happening over the next few hours, simple things that you can do at home? Followed by a long-term forecasting. We will talk about how we can use computer simulations of the atmosphere and tells what's going to be happening several days from now, and where you can access this information.

Lastly, we'll talk about completing the forecast. How you can take your surface observation, satellite, radar information, and short-term and long-term forecasting information and figure out what's going to be happening in your location for several days out.

Here at the National Weather Service, we use a lot of high-tech equipment and various sources of information to make our weather forecast, but from your house, using simple information such as even just looking at the sky, to having a weather station right at your house and certainly the vast source of information that's available on the Internet, you can make your own forecast.

First, a little bit about myself. I am the Warning Coordination Meteorologist here and it's basically my job to keep our office connected with the community. I work at the media and I also work with state local governments to make sure that we are accomplishing our mission here at the National Weather Services.

The National Weather Service is in charge of protecting the lives and property across the country from the various weather threats that we get that affect the country. And it's up to us to make sure that people get that information and can act on it properly so that they can protect themselves when hazardous weather strikes.

So, now let's talk about how you can forecast the weather.