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The night shift at the National Weather Center

About an hour before midnight, the vast Oklahoma sky is a blanket of dark, inky velvet.

Only a handful of stars dot the night.

There’s a slight breeze; it’s cool, but enough residual heat remains to remind you that this afternoon the tempreature was in the triple digits.

It’s August, so it’s dry and it’s hot.

And it’s the type of weather that — sometimes — might bore a guy like Kevin Brown.

But Brown, a senior forecaster the National Weather Center, knows that here, in Oklahoma, the weather doesn’t remain boring for very long.

“Some people say we try to read God’s mind,” he says with a chuckle. “I get asked that at church a lot.”

But Brown’s real mission is much simpler — protect life and property by trying, as he says, to “anticipate what the most likely outcome will be” from the weather data he has available.

Arriving for the 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. shift, Brown and a co-worker will spend the next eight hours of this warm, August night surrounded with mountains of computer images and data at the University of Oklahoma’s National Weather Center.

They are seated in a room filled with wall-to-wall monitors — the Situational Awareness Display — which show images from satellites, ground-based equipment, and even human weather spotters.

Data that Brown is constantly reviewing.

Data that can be used to predict, or forecast if you will, the next day’s weather.

Or, even save a life.

It’s a job that — at its best — is incredibly tough in Oklahoma.

“Anybody who thinks there are gonna’ get the forecast right and never miss, and basically read God’s mind, well that’s not gonna’ happen,” he said.

We observe and record data, he said. “And that data is then put into a computer model to try and anticipate what the weather will do.”

It’s a big responsibility.

Brown’s forecasts affects all aspects Oklahoma life: farming, business, sports, government and even public safety.

And his goal is accuracy.

If his forecast says the temperature will hit 100 degrees, he considers it wrong if the temperature only reaches 99 or goes on to 101.

“We do our best to be accurate,” he said. “It’s important.”

Slim, and dressed casually in jeans, a maroon T-shirt, and a ball cap, the 39-year-old Brown has spent 15 years trying to discover the weather’s next move.

Be it a thunderstorm.

A tornado.

Or a warm August night.

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