William H. Haggard

Fascinated by the weather from early childhood, William (Bill) Haggard had a long career as a meteorologist with the U.S. Navy in WWII and the Korean conflict, retiring as a captain. He served as a forecaster and researcher in the U.S. Weather Bureau. He was a college instructor at North Carolina State University and a climatologist before serving as assistant chief in the Office of Plans for the U.S. Weather Bureau and then as deputy director and director to the now National Climatic Data Center. After retiring in 1975, he formed Climatological Consulting Corporation, which provided services in forensic meteorology.

Bill graduated from Yale in 1942 with a degree in Physics, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with a Certificate of Professional Meteorology, the University of Chicago with a M.S. in Meteorology, and had two years of further graduate training at the Florida State University.

During his careers, the author published technical articles in professional journals on long-range forecasting, hurricane and tropical storm prediction, excessive rainfall probabilities, applications of climatic data to operational programs, climatic analyses, flash floods, wind studies, forensic meteorology, radar and satellite meteorology, and so on.

The author has served as an associate editor of Journal of Applied Meteorology, consulting editor of Weatherwise, and editorial board member of the American Meteorological Society Glossary of Meteorology (second edition).

The author has also served on international assignments as chairman or member of several U.S. delegations and working groups of the World Meteorological Organization and of the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission.

Bill is a Certified Consulting Meteorologist and has been elected as a fellow and honorary member of the American Meteorological Society.

He has been affiliated with the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, National Council of Industrial Meteorologists, American Association for Advancement of Science, American Geophysics Union, American Meteorological Society, International Oceanographic Foundation, New York Academy of Science, United States Power Squadron, American Association of State Climatologists, American Association of Weather Observers, and National Weather Association.