FRIDAY
VIRUS DEADLY TO WHITE-TAILED DEER NOT PREVALENT IN NE OREGON: PAGE 1B
In SPORTS, 6A
Serving Baker County since 1870 • bakercityherald.com
January 31, 2020
IN THIS EDITION:
REMINDER TO OUR
READERS ABOUT
CHANGES TO THE
PUBLICATION
SCHEDULE
Starting next week, the
Baker City Herald will be
published Tuesdays, Thurs-
days and Saturdays. That
means you won’t see a
paper for Monday, Feb. 3.
Starting with the Tuesday,
Feb. 4, issue, papers will
be delivered by the U.S.
Postal Service. Because
the Herald will be printed
in the evening rather than
the morning, Tuesday’s is-
sue will be in boxes and at
retail outlets several hours
earlier in the day than in
the past.
Local • Health & Fitness • Outdoors • TV
$1.50
Meteorologists In Boise Issue Forecasts, Warnings For Baker County
Weather Wizards
jjacoby@bakercityherald.com
Good Day Wish
To A Subscriber
A special good day to
Herald subscriber Sheila
Merrill of Baker City.
BRIEFING
The Baker County Gar-
den Club will meet Feb. 5
at Baker Botanicals, 3797
10th St., at 10:30 a.m. Topic
will be herbs and how to
winter over. Please bring a
sack lunch, beverage and
a chair. New members are
always welcome.
WEATHER
Today
44 / 32
Partly sunny
Saturday
46 / 27
Mostly cloudy
Sunday
37 / 20
Mostly cloudy
The space below will be
blank on issues delivered
or sold from boxes. The
space is for a postage
label for issues that are
mailed.
Jubilee
future
unsure
By Jayson Jacoby
QUICK HITS
Garden Club
meeting Feb. 5
Baker
wrestling
Lisa Britton/For the Baker City Herald
Chuck Redman, fi re weather forecaster at the National Weather Service offi ce in Boise, can track weather
conditions as well as multiple forecast models from his desk.
By Jayson Jacoby
jjacoby@bakercityherald.com
B
OISE — The people who tell
us whether it’s likely to rain
tomorrow rely on satellites
22,000 miles above the Earth and on
balloons that aren’t so different from
what you might use to decorate a
toddler’s birthday party.
This combination of advanced and
basic technology refl ects the inher-
ent complexity of the atmosphere,
said Jay Breidenbach, warning
coordination meteorologist at the
National Weather Service offi ce in
Boise.
The federal government’s new-
est weather satellite, which started
transmitting its detailed images
of clouds and other phenomena in
November 2018, is a vital tool for
forecasters, Breidenbach said.
“It’s a quantum leap forward in
terms of what we can observe from
space,” he said of the data supplied
by the GOES-West satellite, the
second of four satellites the federal
government plans to put into orbit.
The fi rst of the four launched in
2016. The third is scheduled to lift
See Jubilee/Page 3A
Lisa Britton/For the Baker City Herald
A pair of big-screen monitors on the wall at the National Weather Ser-
vice offi ce in Boise show radar and satellite images that meteorologists
use to track conditions and forecast weather.
off in December 2021, and the fi nal
satellite in 2024.
The National Oceanic and Atmo-
spheric Administration, the federal
department of which the National
Weather Service is a part, will spend
about $10.8 billion to launch the
quartet of weather satellites (GOES
To fi ll that gap, the Weather
Service at its offi ce in Pendleton uses
PENDLETON — Weather forecast- advanced technology to generate
ers want to know “ground truth,” but forecasts that help inform residents,
getting those direct observations of
seven airports and dozens of school
weather in the Pacifi c Northwest can districts from central Oregon to Yaki-
be diffi cult.
ma and as far east as the Snake River
Rob Brooks is one of the meteorolo- about the weather. The two major
gists at the National Weather Service developments on that front in recent
station on Pendleton’s Airport Hill. In years are Geostationary Operational
Kansas, he said, the Weather Service Environmental Satellites (GOES) and
can rely on a rancher who would look dual-polarization Doppler radar.
up and report a storm coming over the
The technology
ridge on his land. Kansas is fl at, the
The National Oceanic and At-
Pacifi c Northwest anything but. And
mospheric Administration — the
while the Pacifi c Ocean generates
National Weather Service’s parent
massive weather systems, eyewit-
federal agency — has launched two
nesses may be sparse.
GOES satellites and plans to put two
“If it’s coming off the ocean, you
got a few boats out there sometimes,” more into orbit.
The satellites can detect fog, tell
Brooks said.
Marc Austin, the warning coordina- the difference between hailstorms
and dust storms and reveal thun-
tion meteorologist at the Pendleton
offi ce, echoed the notion, equating it to derstorms that are developing — an
advancement crucial for fi re season
heavy fog impeding an angler’s view
since lightning sparks many wildfi res
of the river.
in Northeastern Oregon.
“The fewer observations you have
The GOES series, Austin said, pro-
upstream, the less you’re going to
vides more data and provides it more
know,” he said.
is an acronym for Geostationary
Operational Environmental Satel-
lite. Geostationary refers to the orbit,
which is stationary so the satellite
sees the same part of the Earth, and
its atmosphere, all the time.)
See Weather/Page 5A
By Phil Wright
The (La Grande) Observer
TODAY
Issue 123, 12 pages
A Baker County com-
mittee’s recommendation
to hire a new contractor to
operate the local visitors
center could imperil the
future of the annual Min-
ers Jubilee celebration in
Baker City, according to the
current contractor.
The county’s Transient
Lodging Tax Committee
voted Thursday to recom-
mend county commis-
sioners award a roughly
$74,000 annual contract for
operating a visitor center to
Anthony Lakes Mountain
Resort.
The Baker County
Chamber of Commerce,
which has the current six-
year contract, has operated
the visitor center on Camp-
bell Street near Interstate
84 for more than 30 years.
Shelly Cutler, the Cham-
ber’s executive director, said
this morning that the issue
is not limited to who oper-
ates the visitors center.
Cutler said that if the
three county commission-
ers, who are scheduled to
meet Feb. 19 to consider
the lodging tax committee’s
recommendation, agree
to award the contract to
Anthony Lakes, then the
Chamber would no longer
be able to put on Miners
Jubilee and other events,
including the downtown
Christmas parade.
Calendar ....................2A
Classified ............. 2B-4B
Comics ....................... 5B
Community News ....3A
Crossword ........2B & 4B
Dear Abby ................. 6B
About The Series
The weather forecasts you read
are short and straightforward.
But the work that goes into
them is anything but. The Baker
City Herald and The Observer
in La Grande visited the two
regional National Weather
Service offi ces — in Pendleton
and Boise — to learn about what
goes into predicting weather in
Northeastern Oregon. The two-
part series will continue in the
Tuesday, Feb. 4, issue.
Quiet
zone
event
lures
locals
By Samantha O’Conner
soconner@bakercityherald.com
quickly, and when it comes to weather,
more data is better.
“Just having that data update more
frequently gives us more situational
awareness,” he said.
Some Weather Service offi cers are
experimenting with using that satel-
lite imagery to fi nd hot spots on the
ground.
More than 30 people
attended an open house at
Baker City Hall Thursday
evening to learn more
about the city applying for
a Quiet Zone designation
in which freight trains
wouldn’t sound their
whistles except in emergen-
cies.
Residents strolled among
several tables with infor-
mation about the potential
changes the city would
have to make at fi ve rail-
road crossings to prevent
vehicles from getting onto
the tracks.
See Forecast/Page 3A
See Quiet/Page 3A
Horoscopes ............... 4B
Jayson Jacoby ..........4A
News of Record ........2A
Obituaries ..................2A
Opinion ......................4A
Outdoors ................... 1B
Senior Menus ...........2A
Sports ........................6A
Weather ..................... 6B
TUESDAY — THE CHALLENGE OF FORECASTING BAKER COUNTY WEATHER