Employee Spotlight:

Pam Mackeen

by Susan Cobb

Blowing sand and dirt had tormented the third grade "Bumblebees'" softball practice one afternoon. When the team found out later that the source of the blowing dirt was a tornadic thunderstorm, it caught the attention of their second baseman, Pam Mackeen. By her eighth grade earth science class, the weather did more than just catch Pam's attention. It was then that she seriously began considering meteorology as a career-- it seemed to offer the sort of challenge on which she thrived. College at Saint Louis University provided the smaller program and well-rounded education she desired. In addition, the campus was located within walking distance of Forest Park, the Fox Theatre, and Powell Sypmphony Hall.

After completing her B.S. and M.S. at St. Louis University, Pam began pursing her Ph.D. at the University of Illinois in the area of climatology. After one semester, however, she decided that she wanted to gain some real-life work experience. At that time Pam saw a job opening at NSSL for algorithm development. The chance to work on a project that the NWS would actually use and in the end would benefit society was just what she wanted to do. Pam moved to Norman on New Year's Day, 1995.

At NSSL, Pam first worked on projects such as the evaluation of the Storm Cell Identification and Tracking (SCIT) algorithm and the implementation of SCIT into Build 9, and WATADS. Then she became an active member of the Convective Weather Product Development Team which is sponsored by the FAA. Scientists from NCAR, NSSL, and Lincoln Laboratory work together toward a common goal: to develop algorithms, using components developed at each lab to predict initiation, growth, and demise of convection. Over the last two years, Pam's contribution was to analyze radar-derived storm characteristics from the algorithms that NSSL has developed for the NEXRAD program to determine which characteristics, if any, could predict storm longevity. With these projects completed, her focus has broadened to include larger-scale systems (regional to national scale) "to determine the operational value of environmental parameters derived from the RUC-II in forecasts of growth and decay for organized convective systems, such as squall lines. In addition to the RUC II, we will be investigating the use of satellite, lightning, and radar data to predict the system's evolution." On the side, Pam has also studied heat bursts.

If you are ever in a morning meeting with Pam, and there is a plate of donuts on the table, you might notice she won't touch them. She worked in a donut shop as a teenager and hasn't eaten one since. Another interesting thing about Pam is how she met her husband Dan. Pam was the Teaching Assistant for a Map and Chart Analysis class he was taking. She says Dan wisely waited to ask her out until after the grades were posted.

Pam has carried her passion for softball from the third grade team "Bumblebees" through college and the present. She was responsible for helping start the coed softball team at NSSL named the Cyclones. Pam also enjoys hiking in Southeast Oklahoma, and aerobics (to relax she says!) Playing the piano, singing in the choir at church, reading, and watching movies are her other favorite pastimes. Pam says she tries not to "get sucked into one thing."

Recently, Pam submitted her first "lead author" paper to "Weather and Forecasting." Further ahead, she says she is considering finishing her Ph.D. In the meantime, she has gone back to school part time. The class she is taking, "Forecast Evaluation and Decision Analysis," is in another area of interest to her - the application of statistics to meteorological data. This opportunity to keep on learning is what Pam likes about her job.