By Bryan Painter

Why are parting words often the most meaningful words of a conversation?

Like when Mike Foster said, "This will help you understand what we do when — not if — something severe happens."

Foster is the meteorologist in charge of the National Weather Service's Norman forecast office. Those final words came after I had spent an afternoon observing how they act and react during severe weather.

The "when, not if" stuck with me.

The Norman Forecast Office is one of the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration agencies that occupy the National Weather Center in Norman. They've been in the building more than a year — the center opened in August 2006 — I wanted to talk with Foster about how this central location for so many agencies affects what they do.

As we were finishing the recent interview, the focus returned to "when, not if."

"I think that is the cornerstone to being prepared," he said. "It's being prepared to answer whatever circumstances may arise.

"And that meets our core mission, which is lifesaving information for the citizens of this country."

If you take the approach of when, not if, then it reduces or eliminates the threat of being caught off guard.

So what does that mean in terms of the still fairly new National Weather Center? It means that government and university weather experts and others are working together in Oklahoma in unprecedented fashion.

Before the center opened, the Norman Forecast Office and the Radar Operations Center were in one building and the National Severe Storms Laboratory and the Storm Prediction Center were in another.

The buildings were only a couple of hundred feet apart, but communication was nothing compared with what it is with these and others now under the same roof. Add to that the fact these buildings were well north of the University of Oklahoma campus and their researchers and students.

Keeping ideas from evaporating.

Foster said some exchange was taking place, "but today, we're bumping into each other three or four times a day."

How is that beneficial?

Think about how many times you've thought about mentioning an idea to someone who is located somewhere else only to have it disappear amid a busy world.

"Now it's not forgotten," Foster said. "It's on my mind and I say, "Hey you know I was just thinking ... ' And there's a lot of this going on because people walk by and they take a look in there and they see what we're paying attention to and it triggers an idea and they tell us."

Here's a more specific example:

During the spring, scientists, researchers and forecasters were gathered at the National Weather Center from around the nation. They were studying some experimental forecast models in the "NOAA Hazardous Weather Testbed room" which is between the Norman Forecast Office and the Storm Prediction Center, separated only by glass walls.

"Frequently what happened is that one or more of our forecasters would glance at what they were doing out there," Foster said. "And then the forecaster would go back to them and say 'You know I saw what you were talking about here, and we had a situation that was going on.'"

This allowed them to take the situation they saw on the model and then refine the model to make it more accurate.

Refine in part denotes progress. So some plans refined today may help in the short term. However, Foster also explains that because of the research, and archived models and because of ideas that are communicated before they evaporate, the full impact of the difference the National Weather Center is making may not be realized for many years.