David Novak ’00 gave the keynote address at the Northern Plains Winter Weather Workshop Thursday in St. Cloud.
Novak is the director of the Weather Prediction Center in College Park, Maryland. In this capacity he is responsible for the overall provision of national forecasts of heavy rainfall, snowfall and hazardous weather up to seven days in advance. The Center is a catalyst for collaboration among the National Weather Service forecast offices and enables national readiness for extreme weather events.
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He spoke on winter weather science and service advances and challenges at the workshop hosted by the St. Cloud State University Department of Atmospheric & Hydrologic Sciences and the St. Cloud State Chapter of the American Meteorological Society held Oct. 26-27 at the Holiday Inn in St. Cloud. The workshop brings together meteorologists, practitioners and enthusiasts from the public sector, private sector, academics, broadcasting and emergency management communities to collaborate and share research and ideas before the worst of winter arrives.
He went on to earn a Ph.D. in atmospheric science from SUNY Stony Brook in 2009 and also holds a master’s degree in atmospheric science from SUNY Albany.
Novak earned a degree in meteorology at St. Cloud State and began his career as a meteorological intern in Duluth. He also worked as a fire weather technician in Fairbanks, Alaska.
He joined the Scientific Services Division of the Eastern Region Headquarters in Bohemia, New York in 2002.
In 2009, Novak became the science and operations officer for the Hydro meteorological Prediction Center (HPC). In this role, he was responsible for assuring the scientific integrity of Center information, and for staff training and professional development.
Since 2012, he has served as chief of WPC’s Development and Training Branch.
In this capacity, he is responsible for supporting the day-to-day operations of the Center, including managing complex IT systems and service improvements. Throughout his academic and professional career, he has been involved with collaborative research, bringing operational needs to the attention of the research community and integrating promising research into operations.
Novak is a lead author on 11 peer-reviewed journal publications on operational weather topics and is assistant editor for weather and forecasting. In 2008, he earned the St. Cloud State Graduate of the Last Decade Award. He has also earned the AMS Editor’s Award in 2010 and the NOAA Bronze Medal in 2012 among other honors.
