Ray Zehr
Cooperative Research Program
Regional and Mesoscale Meteorology Branch, in Fort Collins, Colorado
Research Scientist
Ray Zehr began his career as a
meteorologist at Northern Illinois University, in DeKalb, Illinois. He
was hired as a Student Trainee in the National Weather Service at
Peoria, Illinois, in 1971. After receiving a B.S. degree in
Meteorology, he worked as a Meteorologist Intern at the National Weather
Service in Des Moines, Iowa. In 1974, he went to Fort Collins, Colorado
and completed at M.S. degree in Atmospheric Science at Colorado State
University, with Dr. William Gray's project working on tropical
cyclogenesis. During 1976-1977, Ray was employed as a private
forecaster near Chicago and at NWS in Louisville, KY. During 1977-1980,
he worked at NWS Headquarters in Silver Spring, MD, doing research on
rainfall statistics with the Office of Hydrology.
Ray was one of the five original members of the NESDIS RAMM (Regional
and Mesoscale Meteorology) Branch in Fort Collins, CO. After several
years working on mesoscale analysis and severe thunderstorms, he
returned to his primary interest in tropical cyclone research. In those
days, the mid 80's, he worked closely with Vern Dvorak and Vince Oliver
at NESDIS on the evaluation and testing of Objective IR hurricane
intensity estimates, and also with Mike Mogil as one of the NESDIS
instructors for U.S. Navy training courses. Most of Ray's work has been
in applied research, technique development and training with satellite
applications for tropical cyclone forecasting. He completed a Ph.D. in
Atmospheric Science at Colorado State University in 1992, with a
dissertation on tropical cyclone formation in the western North Pacific.
He has participated in WMO's International Workshops in Philippines,
Mexico, and China, as well as cooperative research projects and training
with colleagues in India, Taiwan, and Australia.
Currently, Ray is pursuing studies on various hurricane related
research areas, such as vertical wind shear influences on intensity
change, and applications of the new satellite data sets to tropical
cyclone analysis and forecasting. In 1997, Ray initiated the RAMM
Tropical Cyclone IR image archive, which now contains over 90,000
images, and has been used for a variety of research projects.
Publications
Zehr, R.M., 2003: Environmental vertical wind shear with Hurricane
Bertha (1996). Wea. Forecasting, 18:2, 345-356.
E-mail to: Ray.Zehr@noaa.gov
