Louis Uccellini

Louis W. Uccellini, Ph.D., was raised on a small farm in Bethpage and graduated from Bethpage High School in 1967.  He went on to the University of Wisconsin-Madison for his bachelors, masters and doctorate degrees in meteorology.  In February 2013, he was selected as the Director of the National Weather Service.  In that role he is responsible for the day-to-day civilian weather operations for the United States, its territories, adjacent waters, and ocean areas.  Previously he held positions including the Director of the National Centers for Environmental Prediction, the Director of the National Weather Service’s Office of Meteorology and senior research scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. 

Louis is a prolific author of more than 60 scientific articles on severe convective storms, snowstorms, and the use of satellite data in numerical forecast models. He also co-authored the widely acclaimed two-volume American Meteorological Society (AMS) monograph entitled Northeast Snowstorms.  Throughout his career, Louis has made major contributions to advancing our understanding of weather systems and has contributed to the foundational transformation of the forecast process that is now based on numerical forecast models and accurately predicts extreme weather events out to a week in advance.

As the 16th Director in the 145-year history of the National Weather Service, Louis has led the agency through a series of upgrades to its powerful supercomputers, which run increasingly sophisticated numerical models to forecast extreme weather, water and climate events.  This huge leap in technology will permit even more accurate forecasts and warnings, which are now used by the emergency management community to make life-saving decisions – as the Nassau County Emergency Operations Center did for Hurricane Sandy in 2012.

In 2001, Louis received the U.S. Presidential Meritorious Executive Rank Award and in 2006 he received the U.S. Presidential Distinguished Rank Award. In January 2012, he was elected the President of the American Meteorological Society and served from 2012 to 2013.

Louis and his wife Susan have 3 children Anthony, Francesca and Dominic and 6 grandchildren