Wendy Pearson
Hydrologist-in-Charge, Missouri Basin River Forecast Center
Wendy Pearson has been the Hydrologist in Charge at the NOAA NWS Missouri Basin River Forecast Center in Kansas City, Missouri since August of 2019. She leads and supports the MBRFC staff to evolve the NOAA NWS Water Resources Science and Impact-based Decision Support Services of the future.
Wendy Pearson has been with NOAA’s National Weather Service (NWS) for over 25 years and has worked in Iowa, Illinois, Minnesota, North Dakota, and Missouri. Wendy has an MBA with a certificate in Project Management and received her Bachelor of Science degree in Meteorology from Iowa State University.
Prior to working at the MBRFC, Wendy was the NWS Central Region Headquarters, Deputy Chief for Hydrologic Services where for 20 years she supported the NOAA Water Resource Services Program across 14 mid-western states, including the Missouri River, upper and middle Mississippi River, portions of the Ohio River, and the Red River of the North and Souris basins.
Wendy is involved in strategic endeavors including the NOAA CR Collaboration team for the past 9 years, the Tri-agency FUSION team Advisory Committee 2015-2020, facilitator for the NWS CR Leadership course called LEAD, the NWS Operations and Workforce Analysis (OWA) 2015-2106, NCRFC’s development of the Runoff Risk in 2016, Hazard Services application testing/development, NWS IDSS Boot camps, Advanced Hydrologic Prediction Service (AHPS) projects, integrating hydrology into the CR WRN Roadmap 2018-2019, and incorporating societal impacts information into climate, weather and water forecasting.
Record floods have shaped Wendy’s NWS career path for more than 27 years. A high point of her career was the incredible widespread record floods of 2019 and being able to support WFO/RFC IDSS and the emerging National Water Center as the Incident Commander of the CR ROC in March 2019.
Wendy began her NWS career working part-time at WFO Des Moines, IA in 1992-1993 while completing her undergraduate Meteorology degree at Iowa State University. In June 1993 Wendy crossed the Mississippi River to work for the NWS as a Met Intern in the Springfield, IL (now WFO Lincoln, IL) messaging the river forecasts of the Great Floods of 1993. Floods of 1993 inspired her to take graduate level hydrology courses to strengthen her resume to become a Service Hydrologist.
Wendy was the Service Hydrologist in Grand Forks, ND during the 1997 Flood on the Red River of the North. The Red River of the North “baptism by fire” 500-year flood experience, customer and partner relationships she had established, and the challenges in communicating forecast impacts motivated her to come to CRH to lead the development of the first version of the AHPS web pages in the early 2000s. Wendy completed her MBA with a certificate in Project Management in 2006, participated in the Weather and Society*Integrated Studies Workshop (WAS*IS) in 2007, did a 4 month detail with EPA Region VII in 2008, hosted a Water and Society*Integrated Studies workshop in 2009, and graduated from the DOC Executive Leadership Development Program in 2009.
