Celebrating decades of data support for real-time operations, Tom Kent retires

By Theresa Barosh | July 2025

satellite dishes at CSU’s foothills campus

Researcher Tom Kent has been with NOAA 40 years and CIRA for 29 of those. He retires this week.

“Although the work was interesting, challenging, and rewarding, my biggest takeaway from my time at NOAA was meeting all the great people along the way,” said Kent. “The people, science, and research were incredible which made NOAA a fantastic place to work. The CIRA support towards our NOAA mission was top notch throughout the organization with their dedication and willingness to always help out. Thank you NOAA/CIRA for this great journey!”

Most of his career was spent on data management and decoding software for real-time operations in the National Weather Service field.

He worked to help NWS weather forecast offices get any data that could positively impact their forecasts. This included work on the WSR-88D radars, ASOS, many years on AWIPS, and the MADIS project. Data types included grids, metars, buoys, balloons into hurricanes, dropsondes, radar, satellite, radiometers, aircraft, mobile vehicles, and hundreds of differently formatted meteorological surface data types.