By BECKY KISER
Hays Post

Larry Ruthi is the Meteorologist In Charge at the National Weather Service in Dodge City.

He’s been in the business for 36 years.

Ruthi said growing up on a farm in rural Osborne County where he “watched thunderstorms develop” sparked his interest in becoming a meteorologist. His degree is from the internationally-reknown School of Meteorology at the University of Oklahoma.

When he first started, “forecasting the weather was 70 percent art and just 30 percent science,” Ruthi recalls.

Now with improved technology worldwide, weather forecasting is much more accurate, but “it’s not an exact science,” he cautioned.

“If you put five meteorologists in a room with the same information, they’ll come up with five slightly different forecasts. There’s a lot of room for interpretation, depending on (the person’s) experience.

“The forecasts we put out at the National Weather Service are kind of generic. Anybody can look at the forecast and use it or adjust it as he sees fit. We’re kind of the base meteorological support,” Ruthi said.

The five Doppler radars scanning the sky across Kansas that can be seen on forecasts by meteorologists at Wichita televisions are NWS Doppler radars. The satellite pictures come from NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) satellites.

“If we were to take away all the government support, all the NOAA support for the radars, the numerical models, the satellites, the observations–a lot of which are NWS or FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) supported–we wouldn’t have a whole lot to talk about.

“On the other hand, the news media are absolutely essential in communicating the weather information to the public–when you should take action, when you should take cover and what you should do.”

Ruthi believes “the whole process works extremely well when we’re working together.”

There are six National Weather Service bureaus covering Kansas among the 122 NWS forecast offices in the United States.