Taking an active role in the profession-wide discussion regarding new NOAA Policy on Partnerships. Since the Policy was introduced in December of last year, NCIM issued a position paper calling for review and modification of the policy We organized a unique panel session and discussion on the matter at our annual meeting And have offered guidance to NOAA's developing initiatives to modify the policy
	NCIM members have attended several Government workshops on public, academic and private cooperative activities in the coastal zone
	NCIM sent a representative to the 2005 AMS Corporate Forums
	We continue to place a high priority on developing ways to extend our Educational and Career Outreach
	NCIM has committed to long-term support of the Loren Crow Memorial Scholarship through AMS
	Our Continuing Education Committee is actively soliciting ideas for future AMS/NCIM workshops
	A complete revamp and re-launch of the NCIM Web site

These are just a few of the NCIM activities that have taken place over the last year or are currently in progress. Considerably more is happening above and below the radar. This newsletter will help keep the members informed of just what their organization is doing.

NCIM is well represented within our Profession

At present, our organization is extremely well represented within our profession with our highly active membership. For example, the following NCIM members have taken very active roles in the American Meteorological Society (AMS):

	Walt Lyons - AMS President
	John Toohey-Morales - Commissioner on Professional Affairs
	Matt Parker - Commission on the Weather and Climate Enterprise: Board on Enterprise Communication (Chair) - AMS Board on Private Sector Meteorology
	Chris Bedford - Commission on the Weather and Climate Enterprise: Steering Committee
	Jim Block - Board on Private Sector Meteorology (Chair)
	Nick Keener - Board of Certified Consulting Meteorologists
	Jill Hasling - Board of Certified Consulting Meteorologists

But we all know there are other things out there influencing our profession besides the AMS. There are numerous other ways to be involved with the advancement of private sector meteorology. For example:

Steven Root - President of the Commercial Weather Services Association
Sean Potter - Regular Contributor to Weatherwise Magazine

With such a prominent membership, I've no doubt missed other relevant activities of our members. If you want to be included in our "honor roll," please send them on to me and we'll make sure it gets posted in the future.

NCIM is having an impact

With all this exposure, I believe NCIM is having an impact on producing positive change. Our annual meeting brought NOAA Deputy Under Secretary Brig. General (ret.) Jack Kelly and others into a very open and spirited discussion regarding private sector perceptions of the New NOAA policy on partnerships. Our experienced members helped put the discussion in a historical perspective and newer members explained the potential impacts changes in NOAA policies would have on their businesses.

Discussion of this important matter has continued between NOAA and NCIM. It is hard to ignore the fact that NOAA proposed a revision to its policy in August, less than 60 days after the Cocoa Beach meeting. No doubt these discussions will continue, and we hope NCIM members will continue to bring their views on the matter to the forefront and help positively impact the process.

All this work requires people

Without competent, dedicated NCIM members, this organization would cease to exist. One could argue that NCIM is more relevant, more sought out, and has higher visibility than it ever has. That success is due to the dedication and hard work of the people involved in NCIM. In order to maintain the rising position of our organization, we need your help!

	Come to the mid-year and annual meetings
	Volunteer to help out in areas where you have special skills, experience, contacts, and/or interest
	Encourage other CCMs to become consulting members
	Identify young, bright, motivated meteorologists and recommend them as associate members
	Spread the word when you see advancements, initiatives, and changes in our profession that may impact the private sector
	In short, GET INVOLVED and spread the word about the good work of NCIM!

Thanks for your time, and I look forward to working with you all on a successful year!

Sincerely,

Chris Bedford, CCM, NCIM
President
president@ncim.org

	Loren Crow: His Pioneering Role in Catalyzing a Favorable Relationship between the U.S. Weather Bureau and the Nation's Industrial Meteorologists by Phil Falconer NCIM Secretary-Treasurer

Loren Crow (1916-2001) was one of the twelve founders and charter members of NCIM as well as the first meteorologist to successfully pass the examination leading to the AMS Certified Consulting Meteorologist (CCM) distinction. Loren was an early and highly successful private sector meteorological consultant, whose career began in 1946 as a member of Dr. Irving Krick's International Meteorological Consulting Service, where he worked on various weather modification and applied meteorology projects. In 1955, Loren struck out on his own, eventually serving such major industrial clients as Carrier Corporation, General Electric, Whirlpool, Chrysler, Fluor Corporation and ASHRAE.

However, one of Loren's most interesting assignments came in 1964. In the post-WWII years, growing numbers of meteorologists were moving into private practice, serving the nation's industry, commerce and transportation interests by providing client-specific, user-friendly weather forecasts and an ever broadening array of customized meteorological assessments for business and government. As the private sector grew, tensions inevitably developed within the U.S. weather enterprise as to the proper roles of industry and government in serving the needs and interests of the nation. When Robert M. White, then president of the Travelers Research Center in Hartford, Connecticut, was tapped to succeed Francis W. Reichelderfer as chief of the U.S. Weather Bureau, he brought with him a great appreciation and first-hand understanding of the range of specialized services and technical capabilities the growing private sector weather community was able to deliver. White recognized that he had an opportunity to defuse the unproductive animosity that had been simmering between government forecasters and private sector meteorological practitioners, and felt that one way to accomplish this would be to hire a highly-qualified private meteorologist to serve as a government liaison to the private weather services community. White felt that there should be a focal point within the Bureau, through which the groundwork for developing an appreciation of the mutually-supporting and beneficial roles of public and private meteorologists could be established

Thus in 1964, White asked Loren Crow to come to Washington, D.C., to serve in the official capacity of the U.S. Weather Bureau's first Special Assistant for Industrial Meteorology, an assignment that lasted two years. As Loren later recalled, White was very flexible regarding the manner in which his assignment would be carried out, as long as headway was made in sensitizing the Weather Bureau management the crucial roles private forecasters, applied climatologists, and industrial meteorologists filled in providing weather services to commerce, transportation and business interests that government meteorologists simply could not deliver.

In his travels around the country to meet with Weather Bureau officials and discuss these issues, Loren stressed that there was no better use of the weather data routinely collected and stored by the Weather Bureau than having these data first pass through the hands of a professional meteorologist willing and technically able to help the client understand the quality, accuracy and precision of the data, and to develop a strategy for using this information to the client's benefit. Loren felt strongly that not only would most end-users of these products need time to learn how to use the weather information, but that the meteorologist who furnished the data should be very familiar with how the client's business operates and in what way it the business may be weather-sensitive. Loren effectively used his position to create opportunities that would familiarize Weather Bureau scientists and administrators with the scope of applied meteorological consulting within the private sector, and how these services ultimately represented a logical extension to the U.S. Weather Bureau's core missions of data collection and generalized public weather forecasting.

In the decades since Loren Crow's two-year tenure as the Weather Bureau's first Special Assistant for Industrial Meteorology, others have stepped into that role-Bob Beebe, Bob Carnahan (also an NCIM founder and charter member), Ed Gross and Allen Eustis-each of whom made important contributions in keeping the private sector abreast of significant U.S. government initiatives, policies, and new technologies that would affect the entire U.S. weather enterprise. The private sector has continued to flourish, and in the early 21st century comprises one-third of the nation's meteorological work force. However, despite having facilitated decades of generally fruitful and effective dialog between commercial and industrial meteorologists and their government counterparts, the position of Special Assistant for Industrial Meteorology was abolished in 1999, thereby ending what Dr. White and Loren Crow had envisioned could be an effective means of sustaining the dialog between members of this nation's weather community.