NOAA’s National Weather Service (NWS) expert, Charles “Chip” Guard, visits the RMI this week to conduct a tropical cyclone, disaster preparedness and climate workshop with RMI officials. Chip is a weather expert from the Weather Forecast Office on Guam, who has been studying Pacific weather patterns and helping Pacific Island governments prepare for rough weather for some 40 years. The National Weather Service and the RMI Weather Service Office here in Majuro work closely together. The US NWS provides most of the funding and a good bit of the technical support to the RMI weather station. In turn, weather station people provide invaluable weather observations and launch weather balloons to provide the NWS vital data from the upper atmosphere and stratosphere. The funding for these joint weather activities is through an annual appropriation from Congress.