Informal Weather Education Outreach

This one-hour webinar explores best practices in informal weather education outreach and shares successful examples from the Extreme Events Institute (EEI) and International Hurricane Research Center (IHRC) at Florida International University (FIU) in Miami, Florida (http://eei.fiu.edu/).  Attendees will learn about the NOAA Weather-Ready Nation Ambassador Program and ways to make your community Ready, Responsive, and Resilient. This includes weather science, safety, mitigation, and preparedness and engages public-private-corporate partnerships, including your local National Weather Service, emergency management, and media.  Attendees will also learn about FIU’s amazing NSF-NHERI Wall of Wind (http://www.ihrc.fiu.edu/).

Guest Speaker

Meteorologist Erik Salna is the Associate Director of Education and Outreach at the Extreme Events Institute and International Hurricane Research Center at Florida International University in Miami. EEI and the IHRC are at the forefront of reducing the impact of natural hazard events through research on storm surge, economic loss modeling, and wind engineering, including the NSF-NHERI Wall of Wind. Education outreach has been a career focus for Erik, including participation in the Wall of Wind Mitigation Challenge High School Competition, the Eye of the Storm Museum Hurricane Event, the Wall of Wind Museum Exhibit, and the NWS Weather-Ready Nation Ambassador Program.  These successful projects involved many public-private-corporate partnerships, including NOAA’s National Weather Service, NOAA’s National Hurricane Center, and the Florida Division of Emergency Management.  Erik testified to the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology in the hearing entitled “The Future of Forecasting: Building a Weather-Ready Nation on All Fronts,” on October 14th, 2021.  Before FIU, he worked at Miami-based America's Emergency Network (AEN) and the non-profit Hurricane Warning at the Disaster Survival House in Deerfield Beach, Florida. He also has over 25 years of experience as a television meteorologist, providing live, continuous coverage for hurricanes, tornadoes, and flooding.  Erik earned an MS in Meteorology from Northern Illinois University and a BS in Physical Geography with an emphasis in Meteorology from the University of Illinois.

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