ELMIRA, N.Y.(WETM) - The National Weather Service Binghamton became a tropical forecast office a few years ago. This means that they can provide tropical storm warnings or hurricane warnings if need be in their area.
National Weather Service Binghamton has Chemung, Schuyler, Tioga (NY), Bradford, and many other counties in their jurisdiction. Even though the Twin Tiers region may not be on the ocean, our area is close enough to get remnants of hurricanes every so often.
Hurricane Agnes devastated our area with flooding back in 1972. More recently, our area got flooding from hurricanes Irene and Lee back in 2011. Hurricane Sandy in 2012. And now in 2024, we got rain and some tornadoes from Beryl, flooding from Debby, and showers from Helene.
To become a tropical forecaster office, you need to go through a lot of training.
"We go through training routinely, especially before Hurricane season every year, for all the things that we must do in a coordinated fashion with the National Hurricane Center and with other offices throughout the country, the Weather Prediction Center, even the Storm Prediction Center for when it comes to where tornado threats may be, so that we can put out a unified, coordinated message on what is going on with a particular storm," says Mark Pellerito, a warning coordination meteorologist at National Weather Service Binghamton.
Thankfully, widespread damage from tropical storms in our area isn't nearly as common as states on the coast like Florida or Georgia, but there is always that chance that flooding or wind damage from post-tropical storms may come our way.