Welcome to

Letters from Famous People

This page contains a letter from Bob Burpee, Director of the National Weather Service (NWS). I was concerned at the time with the way in which the NWS places the location of hurricanes.  Typically, they locate hurricanes in terms of the position of the eye of the hurricane, which is at a point.  This tends to obscure the fact that the hurricane in reality is spread out over a large area, and in fact resembles a circle more than a point.  In my letter, I propose a way of locating the position of hurricanes that takes their extent into account.  I still believe this is a good suggestion, and would like to see it implemented.  Mr. Burpee did send back a very nice letter about this issue.