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Uwe Gramann (owner and principal operator of Mountain Weather Services) obtained his Master's degree in Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Karlsruhe, Germany with a thesis worked on at UBC in 1993. Following university Uwe worked in climate and atmospheric research environments and consulted the BC Ministry of Forests on meteorological issues. In 1998 Uwe joined Environment Canada, where he obtained the 'Meteorologist' certification working as a forecaster for aviation, fire weather, road and public applications in British Columbia and the Yukon Territory. In 2005 Uwe became a member of the Canadian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society (CMOS) and established “Mountain Weather Services” with two key goals
- To raise the level of safety, weather awareness and related knowledge of outdoor professionals and amateurs, whose work and life are directly influenced by weather.
- To provide a safer and more efficient work environment through consulting, forecasting and customized services
Mountain Weather Services is providing services in the four key areas of meteorological training, forecasting, automated weather model output and climate/weather data tracking/reasearch.
Mountain Weather Services has assembled a team and all technical information, software and tools needed for a fully operational forecasting office in Oliver, B.C. with partial thanks to the vision of Environment Canada and its open information policy the “Mountain Weather Centre” lacks nothing Environment Canada forecasters have at their disposal. The team consists of only Environment Canada certified meteorologist, each of whom has at least 10 years of forecasting experience over western Canada.
Some of the things which shaped Uwe's career:
Uwe worked several years with the Canadian Supercomputing Centre in Montreal (CMC) developing a high-resolution weather model over mountainous terrain British Columbia (2.5km GEM-LAM). The knowledge and contacts gained during this project are invaluable in providing automated weather forecasts and data.
As a forecaster for aviation, fire weather and a variety of other application as well as his love for the outdoors, Uwe has gained a detailed knowledge of the topography of British Columbia and its associated weather. He is happily engulfed in weather-challenges that mountainous terrain and the pacific ‘data void’ throw at him.
Uwe created and programmed an aviation observation and forecast database, that evaluated terminal aerodrome forecasts (TAF) against observations and helped educate pilots and forecasters alike to write and interpret TAFs. The knowledge gained in this project brought a great insight into the operational demands on pilots and common misunderstandings between forecasters and aviation professionals.
Mountain Weather Services envisioned and built a two level avalanche weather course with and for the Canadian Avalanche Association that has now been running successfully for several years and has become a WorkSafe BC prerequisite for avalanche workers. As originally planned, this course has now created some offspring in the form of aviation weather seminars for pilots and dispatchers as well as a generic weather course for outdoor professionals, amateurs and the media.
One of the more significant ventures is the recent cooperation between Environment Canada and Mountain Weather Services on a Fire Weather Training course for provincial Fire Weather Forecasters for which Uwe delivers the NWP (numerical weather prognosis) module.
Publications:
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