Welcome to Brazos Matters I'm Jay Socol.

Co-hosting with me today is Avery Foster, Texas A&M journalism major and KAMU content contributor.

So we've talked before about the role of emergency management at Texas A&M University and in the surrounding community.

But today we are going to explore a specific and new aspect within that operation, an improved ability to interpret and produce targeted weather forecasts that help university leadership make better informed decisions about potential weather related impacts.

We're talking about the College Station campus and some other A&M locations.

So our guests today are ready to give us some insight at a time when I think more average citizens are paying attention to threats of severe weather.

So with us are Monica Martinez, executive director of emergency management at Texas A&M, and Diane Delao, an emergency management specialist on Monica's team.

Thank you guys, for being here.

Thank you so much for having us.

Okay, Avery, take it away.

Monica, thank you for joining us again.

Dion, welcome.

So quickly, can you tell us where you're from and the professional path that you took to get here?

Yeah, I'll let Dion start.

sure.

So I was fortunate enough to graduate from Texas A&M and been a meteorologist for about 14 years now.

I've worked in lots of different operations rooms and kind of doing a lot of like practical forecasting with a lot of private industry.

But I decided to kind of take a little bit of a change in career path after my last role was kind of like my big introduction to emergency management.

And I thought, Well, this is kind of cool.

I kind of like this.

And so I decided when this position opened up, I figured, why not like, put in for it and let's just see what happens.

And and sure enough, I got a call for an interview and got to kind of switched my role.

And it's been it's been a great transition.

I've been I've been since I've been in it.

I've been a big advocate for additional just getting more meteorologists like young meteorologists interested like, hey, this is a solid career path that you guys maybe might want to consider if you don't want to go to like Weather Service, for example, this is another way for you to really utilize your skillset in a way that helps people.

Yeah, we've had you here before, but but remind or remind people what your career arc has been to get you to this position today.

Yeah, absolutely.

Well, I'm also an Aggie, and when I came to A&M as a freshman, I really wanted to go to med school.

And so what looks better on a med school application than be involved in some type of medical, you know, service.

And so I joined University EMS.

I started off as a 911 dispatcher.

I eventually made my way.

I went to night school at TEEX to get my EMT basic and eventually made my way into the command post at Kyle Field as a medical liaison there for University EMS.

And that's where I really started to see all of the collaboration and coordination that's involved with large scale special events.

It really primed my interest.

And so once I graduated, I stayed with the University EMS for a few years and then a position opened up with the Office of Safety and Security as an emergency management planner.

And I worked my way up from there.

So I've been in emergency management for 18 years now, a long time.

But you've been a leader in that space and A&M and in this community for for all of those years.

But you've been building your team here on campus.

So at what point did you realize, you know what, Maybe we need somebody with meteorology experience to help round out your staff?

Well, you know, we just got very fortunate with Dion and his expertise in meteorology.

I'll be really honest with you.

When we first posted the position, we weren't necessarily looking, we didn't advertise it as a meteorology position.

However, in the course of my career, you know, one of the first incidences that we had was Hurricane Gustav and Ike and the support that we did as a community for that response.

And so, you know, that was my first taste into, okay, large scale, you know, events or incidents that are happening.

And we have this tropical system coming and being able to predict what's going to happen, what are the impacts locally, how does that affect us?

And so through the course of my career, I've seen more and more the expectation that emergency management is going to be able to interpret the forecasts.

And so that skill set is something that I've seen as a necessary need in our team and a necessary function.

And so I know that there are other SEC schools that have slowly started to hire on meteorologists.

And so we just got really fortunate that when we were looking all at all of our applicants, here's Dion.

He has this skill set.

It's something that we can use and we've definitely leaned into his expertise over the last year.

Interesting.

So, Dion, when there is a weather threat, what's your process and how do you turn those big forecasts into something useful for the campuses?

So I think first thing I really do is kind of do an assessment into into like how impactful something is going to be.

For example, an inch of snow in Dallas is not a very big deal for anybody up there.

Right.

But if, you know, our campus in the valley is going to get an inch of snow, it's a very big deal.

So it's initially starts with a kind of a kind of just an interpretation of like, okay, this is about to happen.

How impactful would this be for that particular location?

And is this something that needs to be brought to the attention of our leadership?

And then once that kind of make I make that decision to kind of go ahead and and draft something up, I kind of start digging through some of the models and see what the National Weather Service is saying.

You know, we have a great relationship with our local office and I've got you know, I've got friends that work over there as well.

And so I can kind of pick their brains a little bit and kind of decide, you know, what's this looking like, if I need some additional input, but basically pieced together a forecast and kind of just really try to hone it in as much as possible for that site and nail down the timing and kind of send it up to Monica for review.

And then she kind of runs it up the chain.

It's hugely impactful.

The kinds of recommendations you make and decisions that are made, because I know here in this community, whatever A&M does impacts what everybody else does, because I've been at City of College Station and prior to that at City of Bryan and everybody sits around waiting, What are you thinking I'm going to do?

Because typically there's not much difference in what school districts and cities and so forth do because there's child care involved, there's public transportation, but it's everything, right?

So I guess the the weight of that is on you guys as you're as you're going through these processes.

Absolutely.

I mean, I think one of the great things about our community is the level of coordination and collaboration we have with our partners or inter jurisdictional partners.

I will say that in some of our most recent incidences, our winter weather from, you know, January this past year, we didn't necessarily all align exactly with what we were doing, but we were absolutely on the phone regularly on zooms, trying to make decisions, okay, this is why we're making our decision.

This is your timeline, you know, and just talking through what is the forecast mean for each of our operations and how that might change or differ.

But we're absolutely lockstep when it comes to looking at the weather information that Dion's providing with the National Weather Service is providing and then talking as a collective about what we want to do.

So can we talk a little bit about code Maroon?

Okay.

So code maroon and you can describe what the capabilities are and when it's used.

But in terms of it being an alert system, I'm curious, is it enough?

Is it is it doing what you need it to do, whether it's weather related or some other kind of crisis event?

And are there any additional tools and strategies that you're kind of keeping your eyes on for the future that might add to that portfolio?

Absolutely.

So the great thing about Code Maroon is it is an integrated emergency notification system, which means that it is actually pulling together many different technologies and tools that we have in our toolbox.

We refer to them as different channels that we are distributing that emergency notification on.

So you're used to the text message and the email, but it is going over.

Yes, right.

So it's coming over KAMU's broadcasts, whether that's television or radio.

It's going over desktop pop ups, right?

There's many buildings on campus that it's integrated into the building fire alarm automated automation system.

And so you're actually going to get that message read aloud to you as well.

And so we're constantly looking at what those technologies are, how we can incorporate them into the code maroon system.

And if they're going to be useful in that emergency situation.

We also can choose based on the emergency which channels we're going to activate.

So, for example, if it's a winter weather closure and I'm sending out the notification the afternoon and it's going to affect operations the next day, I probably don't need to send that over the fire alarm system, right?

Yeah.

But if it's some type of active threat or a tornado warning or anything like that, then that's going to blast all of the channels that we have at our disposal.

And part of the thinking and process with that is making sure that, you know, we're not all sitting on our device or in front of a computer, in front of a television.

And so the more ways that we can get that information out, the more likely we are to reach our campus community.

The other thing I will say about our current emergency notification system that we're using our vendor, is that we've been able to automate the tornado warnings from the National Weather Service.

So when the National Weather Service issues a tornado warning, then it will automatically publish that message via code Maroon so that we don't have to rely on our end users to log in to the system and then reissue that message.

So we save ourselves some time, which can be critical in those life safety situations.

Does Code Maroon also exist at the other campuses you're responsible for?

So we do have emergency notification systems at all of those campuses.

They're not necessarily called code maroon.

Code maroon is the way we brand our notification system.

Right.

And Galveston, it's called See Aggie alert at the law school.

It's law alert for the Health Science Center.

It's HSC alert.

But they all have some way of community communicating with their campus.

Are there more campuses than the ones you just name?

Absolutely.

There's a lot of them.

So we have responsibility not only for Main campus, but also our branch campuses.

So when you think of Galveston, that's a branch campus.

Our TAMUQ in Qatar is a branch campus, and then we have many teaching sites across the state.

So we've got some in the DFW area, the College of Dentistry, we've got the law school, we have some in South Texas.

When you can go to the higher Education center, McAllen, we've got the School of Pharmacy in Kingsville, we have operations in Corpus Christi.

Then we've got some Central Texas locations, Round Rock and Temple.

These are Health Science Center locations.

Obviously, the operations that we have that are continually growing in the Houston area.

And then we have a location in Washington, D.C.

that feels like a lot.

It is.

So before Avery throws another question at you, just just curious, typically what is the you know, how many hands are in this thing before an alert actually gets issued?

You know, I'm sure Dion has influence, but you may be an end user, but you get a clear head with somebody up the chain.

How does that happen?

So the way we've built this into our emergency plans and our processes is that depending on the situation, the severity of the situation and how much time we have, the lower level decision maker can be.

So if it's an active threat, university police, as soon as they get that information, they can hit that button and they can send that information out.

If it's severe weather that's approaching.

And we're talking about whether or not it's going to impact campus operations.

When you think about winter weather or something like that, then that decision making timeline is much longer and we have much more input into the information that we're putting into that message.

Okay, You want to throw out something?

Yeah.

So you mentioned before about setting weather thresholds.

So can you explain why that's important and maybe give some examples of how the thresholds differ?

Yeah, absolutely.

So the one thing that we want to avoid as much as we can is basically what we call like notification overload, right?

If we send too many notifications, if you're consistently getting emails from us saying, hey, there's a slight chance of thunderstorms today, like when there's actually something impactful, like how likely are you going to be to pay attention to that?

So because of that, we kind of started this whole process of where we looked at our main threats that the things that we're really concerned about and we say, okay, at what point do we think that this is worthy of putting something together and sending it out, at least, at least to our leadership, to give our leadership heads up?

Some examples of that are, for example, the Storm Prediction Center will put out a severe thunderstorm risk rating from 1 to 5.

Right.

It's color coded.

You know, it goes, you know, marginal risk slide, etc.. When we get to a kind of a moderate risk or higher for our area or for any of our campuses, then we start paying attention, right, because of say, okay, this is a this is more a little bit more of an elevated risk of severe weather.

If we're looking at with heavy rainfall.

Right.

An extreme risk of flooding, then that would be a trigger point.

We don't want to go for a slight risk because, you know, you could be under that on a weekend, but that's it.

That's not a very big deal.

But so it's just a matter of going through all these different, you know, potential weather events and finding like when those are going to be really worth noting and giving that information out.

Well, and I think that's where the beauty of having Dion on our team, because we get information from the National Weather Service almost on the Daily now, especially with the the summer storms that we've been having.

And so being able to decide, okay, when does this meet that criteria that we need to be sharing it with our campus leadership or others?

And so being able to lean in on his expertise and say, okay, this forecast was issued for a very broad geographic area, what does it mean specifically for us?

Right.

Let's reset things just quickly here.

If you just tuned in.

I'm Jay.

Socol with Avery Foster and you're listening to Brazos Matters.

We are visiting with Monica martinez, executive director of emergency management at Texas A&M, and Dion Delao, an emergency management specialist who is also a certified meteorologist, about how they turn complex weather data into clear and timely guidance for A&M leadership and the campus community.

Okay.

We know what happened in the Texas Hill country was incredibly tragic and we want to approach this with a lot of sensitivity.

But I am imagining that the professions of emergency managers and meteorologists will sort of emerge from all of this with lessons learned that could be helpful to everyone in the future.

And I'm wondering any chances that those lessons learned could find their way into your planning and exercises and responses?

Absolutely.

You know, as professionals in public safety, it is our duty to always look at incidences that are happening, whether they are in the state, across the nation or even worldwide.

We are always looking at, okay, what has happened, what are the lessons, How can we apply what has happened there to our own operations?

Is this an opportunity for us to dust off a specific aspect of our plan or to make sure that we have, you know, everybody's contact information up to date, whatever the lesson is to come out of that incident, We are constantly looking at that.

We discuss them regularly at our weekly meetings.

You know, hey, these are the headlines that we've seen.

You know, how can we apply those to us?

And so I think that, you know, is always something that we do.

I'm sure, as we continue to go on at our professional conferences and more will continue to dive into the specific lessons learned.

But, you know, it's something that we always take into consideration and we're always looking at.

Another thing that I'll say is, you know, we always look at these we we call them focusing events.

And so it's not only the duty of public safety to look at this and see, okay, what can we learn from the situation?

But I think there's always But I think there's always a component of personal responsibility as a campus community member or as a citizen, right.

To say, okay, let me look at this and say, what are those things that I need to be paying attention to when I visit new places, you know, understanding what the risks are or the local hazards for that particular area or, you know, making sure that I have an accidentally turned off those wireless emergency alerts on my phone because I got annoyed one day that it woke me up in the middle of the night and now I've turned them off.

You know, maybe now's the time to look back at those settings in your phone and double check that you are still receiving those messages.

And so it's also a learning opportunity for everyone, not only public safety.

Yeah.

Before Avery takes a question, have have citizens expectations changed in a way they they want to receive alerts and updates and and conversely, have your expectations changed in the way you feel like messages need to be delivered.

I heard one person, you know mentioned that you know, if if folks have a and I know a weather radio like that's the most reliable, you know, way to receive weather updates.

But practically speaking, I'm not sure I know many people with NOAA radio.

So I'm just kind of wondering, are things changing from an expectation standpoint in delivering messages?

I think I think, you know, one thing that no meteorologist anywhere can agree on is that we're always pushing people.

We're always suggesting, hey, have multiple ways to receive alerts because you never know what's going to work and what isn't.

Right.

So it's it's all about having that a little bit of continuity in your own practice.

You know, if if you're if your cell signal goes out, at least, you know your weather radio is still going to work or, you know, there's just, you know, different little devices and all kinds of things that will alert you in the middle of the night.

And so it's I think the important thing to take away about alerting is just, you know, build build that resilience into your plan.

Right.

Have different ways to get those alerts because, you know, some will work and some won't go.

So there's obviously weather jargon that normal people can't understand.

So how do you take these basic terms and turn them into ways that people can understand them and remember?

So I've been very fortunate in my career actually, to have given lots of weather briefings throughout throughout the years.

And I think really the biggest thing is, first of all, just understanding your audience.

What is it that they want to know, Right.

What kind of information is most important to them?

And if I were learning this for the first time or hearing about this, you know, am I going to understand what what the importance of, you know, 50 knot winds at 500 millibars means like, no, absolutely not.

Right.

So so we take that information and just try to try to explain it and really give people the information that they want.

And the most important information is usually it's, you know, what is it?

Where is it going to be?

How long is it going to be that, you know, impactful or when can we resume normal operations and, you know, focusing on those on those on those questions really kind of helps clear clear that, you know, kind of like that data overload, right, of all the graphics and information and maps and things that you tend to see, it kind of helps clear clarify it and simplify it in a way that people because.

Okay.

All right, cool.

We can we can make a decision based off that.

Well, you know, when I realized that we had an opportunity to bring you on and have a conversation.

Yes, I did a little LinkedIn stalking because I had assumed, he he must have had a career in TV meteorology.

No.

So you have what looks like a fascinating career of doing forecasting that relates to offshore drilling platforms in international shipping and an interesting side of your profession that I didn't even think about.

What did you take from those experiences to be able to come in and do work for A&M?

Well, I think I think, yeah, it's been a very interesting career path.

It wasn't what I had in mind when I started, but, you know, every job has something that you can learn from it.

And, you know, I think learning to, again, like Avery mentioned, kind of take that information and really kind of cater it to my audience.

So whether it was, you know, shipping forecasts, you know, or or, you know, ship routing or, you know, sharing information during Hurricane Harvey when I was in Houston, it's all about just kind of understand who you're talking to and building that kind of like that sort of that relationship with them and say, okay, I know these people are going to ask these kinds of questions and this is what they're going to want to know.

So, you know, the biggest skill was just building that communication piece.

Right.

You know, let's let's talk a little bit.

Let's find out what's important to you and then I can make sure I can get you that information correctly because I'm so curious about this.

Were you actually working out on the platforms at any point?

I was actually I was an oceanographic Technician.

I was I would fly offshore and I was installing most of the time I was installing ocean current.

like they call them ACP acoustic Doppler current profiles.

They measure the ocean current like all the way down to the floor of the ocean that and holodeck monitoring systems.

So that was a it was a pretty cool job.

shout out to Dr.

Conlee at the at department for, for helping me make that connection and get that job.

Any crazy or hairy, expensive experience that's out there.

yeah.

One of my last helicopter flights back in, we flew through a cold front, and that was when I decided maybe I should find a job with benefits just because of the extreme temperature, or did it create an issue?

I went through a little bit of turbulence and, you know, turbulence in an airplane is one thing, but turbulence in a helicopter is another.

And I was like, well, I think I maybe maybe should look for something a little bit more stable on the ground.

Can't really glide in one of those.

So what do you think is the most important ways to, you know, allow people to prepare for severe weather?

And how do you keep folks calm without, you know, I don't know, downplaying the risk?

Yeah, You know, I know.

Well, I think first and foremost, like, there's it's never too early to prepare.

Right.

You know, a lot of people you said time and time again they'll talk about a hurricane impacting someplace and everybody rushes to the store and buys gas and lines are crazy and people are, you know, are just panicking.

So you can avoid all that by preparing.

Now, it's a crazy thought, right?

But, you know, it's never too early to prepare.

I know Texas has the the tax free weekend on like on emergency supplies.

I think it's in April I believe.

And, you know, that's a wonderful time to start buying your hurricane supplies and things of that nature.

So it's never too early to prepare for whatever season is coming up.

You know, you make sure you have you're starting to build your disaster kit, which is something that we champion a lot.

Again, multiple ways to receive alerts And and, you know, just make sure you have everything that you need and if it gives you time, right.

So if there's something if there is something last minute, you're like, okay, well, I have I have a lot of what I need.

I just need a few things, you know?

Yeah.

And one thing I'll say about building a disaster kit, you know, sometimes it can feel really overwhelming, right?

If you've ever gone to Ready.gov, there's a great resource that gives you a very itemized list of all the things that you need to be prepared at home.

But when you first look at that, it can be pretty overwhelming.

And so what we always talk to people is start small, right?

So look at that kit and say, okay, I'm going to add one thing to my grocery list.

Every time I go to the grocery store and I'm slowly going to start to build that more every time you go, you know, shopping, whatever it is, slowly start to build that and it won't.

You don't have to go out and furnish an entire emergency kit all at one time.

And these things are useful regardless, right.

Of you.

Think about severe weather, hurricane season.

We always think about disaster kits.

But if you think back to winter storm Uri a couple of years ago, right, that was a winter storm.

And yet here we were all stuck at home and needing those kind of disaster supplies.

So start slow, I guess is my point and go from there.

So with about a minute left, do you have some parting thoughts or suggestions, advice that might be useful for our audience when it comes to severe weather?

Sure.

You know, I think just being weather aware, right.

There are so many tools out there.

There's so many there's so much information.

Find a reliable source of information in and just maintain situational awareness right before you go out, before you travel.

Whatever the case, pay attention to your surroundings and just know, hey, these are the things that I need to prepare for anything.

Dion, real quick, you have one of your best sources will always be your no aside.

So your you know, your National Hurricane Center, your Weather Prediction Center, your local NWS page, and even your local TV meteorologist.

Great sources.

You know, they're always going to give you the best and most accurate information and how to sign up for Code Maroon Yeah, just go to code maroon.

TAMAKI Edu, that sounds pretty fair.

Monica martinez, Dion Delao thank you so much for being with us on Brazos Matters.

Really appreciate you being here.

Thank you so much for this opportunity.

Yeah.

Brazos Matters is a production of Aggieland's Public Radio, 90.9 Kamu FM, a member of Texas A&M University's Division of Community Engagement.

Our show was engineered and edited by Matt Dittman.

All Brazos Matters episodes are available on YouTube and on podcast platforms like Apple, iHeart and Spotify.

For Avery Foster, I'm Jay Socol.

Thanks so much for watching and listening and go check out all the Brazos Matters archives on our website.