John Ogren
John Ogren is the director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) National Weather Service (NWS) Training Center in Kansas City, MO. His career spans 20 years, working with weather disasters that range from floods to tornadoes to hurricanes. He conducted damage assessments after some of the nations largest tornadoes including the May 3, 1999 Oklahoma/Kansas tornado outbreak and the La Plata, Maryland, tornado of 2002. Although he now focuses on the National Weather Service’s training needs, Ogren remains on-call as a damage assessment expert for particularly difficult storm.
Before his current assignment, Ogren served as deputy regional director of the NWS Central Region, as meteorologist in charge of the NWS forecast office in Indianapolis, and as warning coordination meteorologist both at NWS Headquarters and in Wichita. All of these past positions required close coordination with the Federal Emergency Management Agency, state and local emergency management, and not-for-profit disaster relief organizations.