Oklahoma's quirky weather was not the chief reason for Weathernews Americas, Inc. to open a Norman office that now employs 92.

Working with other organizations based at the University of Oklahoma was the drawing card, says Warren Qualley, director of aviation services for Weathernews in Norman.

Qualley says the primary mission of Weathernews is to collaborate with other weather organizations and apply research developed here to benefit its customers.

He joined Weathernews, a 52-year-old company with world headquarters in Tokyo, after a 25-year career of managing weather operations for American airlines. He co-chairs the Norman Chamber of Commerce Weather Committee.

For a Tuesday meeting of the chamber's Aviation Committee, Qualley described the goals for Weathernews, which sells industry-specific weather forecasts to companies in 19 industries. Besides the air travel industry, the company is involved in such areas as energy, agriculture and shipping.

"The 7- to 10-day weather forecasts you see on TV are not worth the paper they're printed on," Qualley said. His job at American Airlines and with Weathernews has been to "de-fuse" such long range forecasts, he said. "We take non-weather events and make sure customers are insulated from media hype."

Qualley said much of what Weathernews does involves helping customers decide on the economic impact of weather and make decisions that are "company-specific." He admits such efforts are not overly precise, but said the company is developing methods customers can use to reduce the element of chance in making weather-related decisions.

Such methods make weather forecasters the unlikely support team for such functions as marketing and sales, he said. That was unheard of just a few years ago.

American Airlines meteorologists "were supposed to forecast the weather only, and not be concerned about things like marketing," he said. "What can you do? Try to forecast harder?"

Ten years ago, when Qualley was manager of the American Airlines forecast group at Dallas-Ft. Worth Airport, all 19 of his meteorologists forecast an ice storm for Dallas, he said. "American cancelled 35 percent of its 800 flights." The airline lost many customers and a substantial amount of money on that day, he said.

"The next day was sunny. All the [weather forecast] models failed us. I had to come up with an explanation."

Qualley said a vice president of the company told him "From now on, we won't be proactive. We'll wait until the ice hits the windshield." The black and white decision based on chance was bound to fail.

"The next time we had an ice storm, we did just that. It was really bad," Qualley said.

He said the snowstorm that deposited two feet of snow last weekend presented a similar dilemma. "Most airlines are proactive, but always looking over each others' backs," he said.

The danger is unloading passengers to competing airlines. Proactive measures such as grounding aircraft and rescheduling passengers are still expensive, he said.

"But if you wait for the weather, everybody's scrambling." That can be just as costly, he said.

"Black and white decisions based on greyscale forecasts" [with 10, 20 or 40 percent chance of a weather event] are virtually impossible to make, Qualley said. "Non-weather events are almost as important. We can save our customers money on preparation."

Qualley said he met Kelvin Droegemeier, academic director for OU's Center for the Analysis and Prediction of Storms (CAPS) in the mid-'90s. Later, he said, Weathernews and CAPs worked out a three-year agreement to provide forecasts for hub airports. ("HUBCAPS," the arrangement was called.)

Weathernews now has 700 employees worldwide, including those in Norman. The company takes up half of the 50,000-square-foot Partners Place I, an office building adjacent to the new National Weather Center on OU's south research campus. Prospects are strong for hiring more Weathernews employees in Norman, Qualley said.

Ahead, Qualley sees not only more accurate weather forecasts, but better use of them through developing "decision support systems." That will entail establishing "threshold values" that justify making changes in a company's operations.

"A threshold value of, say, a 35 percent chance for a weather event, might trigger management decisions," he said. "That's better than some of the seat-of-the-pants decisions done today."