“Identification, please.”

At the front gates of the Monterey County National Weather Service Forecast Office, I hand my driver’s license to a guard. He is dressed in full camouflage, complete with a boonie cap and 9mm pistol, standing with his hands on his hips.

I pull over while I’m being cleared for entry. Glancing over to the right side of the road I notice a sign reading, “Force Protection Condition: Alpha.” I’m left wondering how a terrorist strike on the Weather Service Forecast facilities would be a crippling blow to our national defense infrastructure.

The building itself isn’t much to look at: a lone, humble, red brick structure in the middle of a grassy lawn. A series of antennae and satellite dishes on the roof and next to the building are clear giveaways that this place definitely isn’t a chiropractor’s office. After passing through two keypad security doors and expecting a retinal scan at any moment, I’m finally through to the top-secret headquarters of weather forecasting.

I am greeted by Dave Soroka, the warning coordination meteorologist at the forecast office. Soroka, an 11-year veteran of the National Weather Service, is responsible for providing critical weather information to the media and other agencies.

“I’ve always been a real weather nut,” says Soroka. “When I was a kid I loved the snow and blizzards and I always wanted to know what factors make them possible.”

After working for a business firm inside tower two of the World Trade Center, Soroka decided to follow his childhood ambitions and landed a position with the National Weather Service (NWS), a division of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Both NWS and NOAA fall under, of all things, the Department of Commerce.

Soroka’s work with the NWS took him from his first job forecasting at Rockefeller Center in New York to the “active weather” of North Dakota to Monterey, where he’s worked for the past two years.

Anyone who’s lived in Monterey County will tell you the same thing: the weather here is beautiful but boring. There’s that rare day when temperatures will boldly stray above 90 degrees or below 40 degrees, but in general complaints about bad weather coming from a Monterey County denizen are laughed at by the rest of the country.

“We have what’s called a Mediterranean climate in Monterey,” Soroka explains. “This type of climate is found in less than 10 percent of the world.”

Relaxing climate aside, I soon discover why this office is so heavily protected.

“The NWS is the sole voice of watches, warnings, and emergencies,” Soroka says. “Our number one mission is the protection of life and property.”

The NWS has 125 forecast offices around the country. Almost none are as heavily guarded as the Monterey County office, which shares its property with the Naval Research Lab, an extension of the Naval Postgraduate School. This collaboration with the Navy explains the armed guard and heightened security.

At least one or two forecasters can be found at the forecast office at any given time. Since weather doesn’t work a nine to five job, they’re open 24-7. Also, one person is always in control of the marine forecast, which is updated a minimum of four times per day, and often many times more than that.

“Wind direction, wind speed, temperature. There’s always something to record and it has to be correct,” says Soroka.

Looking at a map in the control room, I am taken aback by the extensive area this one tiny office covers. They forecast everything as far north as Sonoma County, down through San Francisco, Oakland, San Jose, Santa Cruz, Monterey County, and 60 miles off the coast across that entire distance. Over a thousand volunteer observers given special monitoring kits aid the station in keeping the forecasts up to date, detailed and accurate.

Instead of paying a weatherman to broadcast around the clock at a moment’s notice, the National Weather Service utilizes the charming computer generated voice of Craig. Craig keeps stating the forecast over the radio without ever asking for a pay raise. Craig can also change sexes at the turn of switch, magically transforming into Donna. Before Craig, the less interesting and less technologically advanced forecaster was nicknamed Boris for his notably boring delivery.

When asked about the more exciting moments in his career, Soroka recalls an account in North Dakota where he was the one to put the warning out for an F4 tornado. If you’ve never seen Twister, an F4 is a tornado capable of doing massive amounts of damage, carelessly flinging unsuspecting cars, refrigerators, cows, and homes across the Great Plains with its violent vortex of destruction.

I can’t leave without asking about something that has always perplexed me: how inches of rainfall are measured. The answer: with a bucket and a ruler.

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