Meteorologist

Meteorologist

Portland General Electric is seeking a meteorologist with skills in operational and fire weather forecasting, as well as data science. The primary responsibility will be to create a daily forecast and provide briefings to keep operations and emergency management informed of potentially impactful weather including wind, ice, snow, and fire. The candidate must have expertise in forecasting critical fire weather patterns that lead to high fire danger.

The successful candidate will also produce seasonal weather outlooks, lead or support the development of predictive models, and support the development of tools, dashboards, and other forecast products to advance forecasting and fire environment analysis. This position will also serve on the PGE incident management team when the Emergency Operations Center is activated supporting situational awareness and incident response operations, including public safety power shutoffs to mitigate the risk of wildfires.

• Interpret meteorological data and forecasts to produce a daily impacts‑based forecast and briefing for operations
• Work collaboratively with meteorologists, data scientists and risk modeling team to support development of predictive modeling for outage and ignition probability
• Advance the development of meteorological tools for fire environment analysis
• Develop and maintain user interfaces for meteorology tools that provide actionable situational awareness insights
• Analyze historical weather data to support fire environment and impactful weather event analysis
• Effectively communicate findings from data analysis and forecast information to deliver reports to a variety of stakeholders
• Collaborate with diverse teams to develop plans and procedures
• Develop relationships and collaborate with internal and external stakeholders, data scientists, project managers, engineering, operations, analysts and leadership to develop data‑driven solutions for weather, climate, and risk assessment models
• Assist with managing PGE's weather station network including siting new locations and managing network data
• Provide weather analysis to support wildfire risk assessments including development or refinement of High Fire Risk Zones

• Assist storm preparedness and power restoration efforts by providing concise, detailed forecasts during periods of extreme weather to a variety of stakeholders. This may result in shift work, and extended hours.

Required

• Education: Bachelor’s degree in Meteorology, Atmospheric Sciences, or related area of study
• Experience: Typically 5+ years in operational weather forecasting, prefer 2+ years in fire weather forecasting (including completion of S290: Introduction to Wildland Fire Behavior)

• Demonstrated knowledge of meteorological phenomena, fire science/behavior, climatology, geography, forecasting techniques, weather model analysis, data science and programming languages.
• Proficiency in using meteorological software, tools, and data sources
• Ability to ingest, decode, analyze, and visualize meteorological observational and model data
• Demonstrated experience and expertise in the utilization of Python for geospatial data analysis
• Thorough understanding of various probabilistic and ensemble forecasting methodologies, with particular emphasis on the utilization of probabilistic numerical weather prediction methods for determination and presentation of various weather risks
• Knowledge of Pacific Northwest meteorology
• Experience preparing findings and presenting complex technical information to both technical and nontechnical audiences
• Excellent organizational skills and ability to efficiently handle multiple projects and requests.
• Three years of weather forecasting experience in the energy and/or utilities sector
• Thorough knowledge of fire/wildfire behavior, the National Fire Danger Rating System, and completion of wildland fire classes such as:
  • S-390:
    Intermediate Wildland Fire Calculations
  • S-490:
    Advanced Fire Behavior Calculations
• Thorough knowledge and experience with:
  • Database creation and manipulation, data management platforms, data collection, storage,…