Judy Ghirardelli awarded Isaac Cline Award

Oct 01, 2019

Photo of Dr. Steve Smith and Judy Ghirardelli - Isaac Cline 2019 Award

Congratulations to Judy Ghirardelli for receiving the Isaac Cline 2019 Award for her leadership in developing Skillful and Reliable Statistical Forecast Guidance for Aviation in Alaska.

The Isaac M. Cline Award recognizes operational excellence of line and program staff employees in the delivery of products and services supporting and enhancing the achievement of NWS strategic and operating plans. The awards are named in honor of Isaac M. Cline, one of the most recognized employees in weather service history. Mr. Cline made numerous contributions to the mission of the Weather Bureau. Most noteworthy of his accomplishments were the actions Isaac Cline took during the Galveston hurricane of 1900, the deadliest weather event in U.S. history. Isaac Cline’s acute understanding of weather conditions, and his heroic forecasts and hurricane warnings saved several thousand lives

Judy Ghirardelli is the Task Manager for the Localized Aviation MOS Program (LAMP) in the Meteorological Development Laboratory (MDL) of the National Weather Service (NWS) in Silver Spring, MD. She oversees the development and operational implementation of the LAMP system, which provides objective probabilistic and deterministic forecast guidance of sensible weather with a focus on guidance for aviation forecasting. The LAMP forecasts are available at stations in the United States (US). Gridded LAMP guidance for a number of forecast elements, including convection, lightning, ceiling height, and visibility, is also available on a 2.5-km grid covering the contiguous US.

Judy received her Bachelor of Science Degree in Mathematics from Davidson College. After graduation, she worked in the insurance industry as an actuarial analyst, but left the insurance industry after four years to go to graduate school for meteorology. She earned a Master of Science Degree in Meteorology from the University of Maryland. Judy is a member of the AMS Aviation, Range, and Aerospace Meteorology Committee.