Chris Broyles

John C. "Chris" Broyles is an American meteorologist who is a weather forecaster and tornado forecasting expert with the Storm Prediction Center.

Education
Broyles attended St. Edwards University in Texas, before transferring to the University of Northern Colorado, where he graduated with bachelor's degrees in meteorology and journalism.

Career
In 1994, Broyles was hired as an intern at the National Weather Service (NWS) office in Jackson, Kentucky. Following his internship, Broyles was hired as a forecaster at the NWS office in Aberdeen, South Dakota. In 2003, Broyles was hired at the Storm Prediction Center (SPC) at the National Weather Center in Norman, Oklahoma as a forecaster. Throughout his career forecasting at the SPC, Broyles issued 13 High Risk Outlooks, with 10 verifications. On April 7, 2006, Broyles issued the first-ever Day-2 High Risk Outlook, in preparation for the tornado outbreak of April 6–8, 2006. This High Risk also included a 60% chance of tornadoes, including at least some becoming significant. Following verification of this High Risk, the United States Department of Commerce awarded Broyles with a Silver Medal. On April 14, 2012, Broyles issued the second-ever Day-2 High Risk Outlook, while forecasting for the tornado outbreak of April 13–16, 2012.

Publications
Throughout his career, Broyles has authored and co-authored several academic papers and case studies. Besides academic publications, Broyles led a team of twenty others to create the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Violent Tornado webpage, which documented more than 200 tornado outbreaks throughout the United States' history.


 * Forecasting tornado location across the Dakotas and Minnesota in 1998.
 * The role of synoptic patterns and temperature and moisture distribution in determining the locations of strong and violent tornado episodes in the north central United States: A preliminary examination. in 2000.
 * The Effect of a Low-Level Boundary on the Development of the Panhandle, TX Tornadic Storm on 29 May 2001 in 2002.
 * Synoptic and mesoscale characteristics associated with violent tornadoes across separate geographic regions of the United States: Part 1 - low-level characteristics & Part 2 - upper-level characteristics in 2002.
 * Radar characteristics of violent tornadic storms using the NSSL algorithms across separate geographic regions of the United States in 2002.
 * An Iterative Storm Segmentation and Classification Algorithm for Convection-Allowing Models and Gridded Radar Analyses in 2022.