Norman company aids Thai cave rescue
Saturday morning, Weather Decision Technologies received an email from Google: Elon Musk’s SpaceX and The Boring Co. needed help.
Since then, the Norman company’s WeatherOps team has been running high-resolution forecast models and creating graphics to aid the rescue of the Thai youth soccer team that has been trapped in a cave by floodwaters for weeks.
“We’re just excited to be working with that caliber of business,” said Steve Miller, senior vice president of marketing. “We use their services every day, but very rarely do we get to work alongside them.”
Weather Decision Technologies is a Norman-based weather risk mitigation company that does data analytics. The company makes government-provided meteorological data “palatable” to private businesses, working as a sort of translator, Miller said.
John Tharp and Chris Kerr are its chief meteorologists. Tharp said accurate weather predictions are important in this situation because water levels are the most important factor in the cave rescue.
“Locally heavy rainfall can
cause very rapid changes in the amount of water in the cave, and that can either make the rescue operation more difficult or bring it to a halt completely,” Tharp said.
Kerr said Thailand is a tough place to forecast for and isolated storms could cause major problems.
In addition, it is currently monsoon season in Southeast Asia. The area where the cave is located averages a foot of rain per month during the summer months.
“Here in the States,
we have the luxury of having all these observations, really highresolution models that we run (and) just a lot of people in the know,” Kerr said. “Where the cave is is very remote . ... One of the challenges we’re crossing is some of the models are saying completely different things than the other one.”
Tharp and Kerr said they are the only group they know of making weather predictions in the area aside from Thailand's national weather service. Tharp said WeatherOps is “pretty darn good” at predicting daily forecast rainfall amounts for the area, but predicting exactly where
and when this rainfall will occur is more difficult.
The team uses satellite and radar data, global and high-resolution weather forecast models, a lightning detection network and weather observations.
“Figuring out if it’s raining this much here, is that really going to affect it? Or if it’s raining a lot over here, will it affect it coming in like this?” Kerr said. “So any additional, even minuscule amounts of rainfall can have big impacts.”
Tharp said the 12-hour time difference is helpful because WeatherOps can send information in the late evening and early morning hours, and the
teams in Thailand have what they need for a while.
The forecasts Weather Ops is producing include the typical seven-day predictions of rainfall, wind and temperature in addition to special models, graphics and summaries.
“In effect, we’ve thrown some extra modeling resources at it, and it’s a little more handson in terms of meteorologist's assessment than you would for say a generic day-to-day forecast for Norman,” Tharp said.
Tharp said working on the project is “eyeopening,” and Kerr said it makes the rescue feel
“really real.”
“This weather can affect you kind of emotionally and mentally, as well,” Kerr said. “For me, it’s nice to know that we’re helping people who really need accurate information.”
Weather Decision Technologies is on the University of Oklahoma’s Research Campus and has a close relationship with the university and the National Weather Center.
WeatherOps did onand offshore weather forecasting for Hurricane Harvey in August and often works with music festivals, such as Lollapalooza, and artists like Beyonce.