The National Weather Service prepares for the Pope’s visit

With the Pope’s visit nearing, residents of El Paso and Juarez are finalizing their plans for the big visit.

In the Borderland, great weather is a staple. But, the region is also not foreign to wacky winter weather. In fact, the Freeze of 2011 was in February just 5 years ago. In early February, this year, El Paso saw snow, rain and sleet.

So, who creates the official Papal Forecast?

“We’ve been to hundreds of meetings and spent thousands of hours planning for this event,” El Paso Emergency Management Coordinator Chief Al Talavera said.

The Emergency Management Office partnered with agencies across the state of Texas to prepare for the Pope’s visit. They enlisted the National Weather Service to assist with gathering weather data, and forecasting the big event.

“The National Weather Service is going to be providing what we call decision support services,” Warning Coordination Meteorologist John Fausett said.

The team of meteorologists tracks the forecast leading up to, and during, the Pope’s visit.

“We have various types of applications we can use for radar, for computer model forecasting, for data collection,” he said.

The meteorologists assigned to forecast the day of the Papal visit will take laptops around the Borderland. Those laptops are loaded with the applications necessary to track weather and update forecasts.

Pairs of meteorologists will be stationed in Far East El Paso, Downtown, the National Weather Service office in Santa Teresa, and at the Sun Bowl. Ten of thousands are expected to watch the Mass from the Sun Bowl.

“Even if the weather is nice, there’s always the potential of some kind of hazardous material incident and you’d need weather information for that type of thing,” according to Fausett.

Fausett and Talavera both said the main goal of forecasting the event, rain or shine, is to ensure the safety of anyone in the region.

“We’re working to make sure the citizens of this area, of El Paso, are safe,” Talavera said.

Fausett added that currently, the National Weather Service has not officially partnered with the weather forecasters in Mexico. He added, he would be interested in something as simple as a Google Hangout, if weather conditions became bad.

As of Tuesday afternoon, computer models were leaning towards a dry and warm forecast, with temperatures warming into the 70s around El Paso. However, computer models can change up until the day of an event, and the ABC-7 StormTRACK Weather Team will be updating the forecast regularly online and on air.