Don Nalley, director of Beason & Nalley and the vice chair of economic development for the Chamber of Commerce of Huntsville/Madison County, presents a commemorative plaque to Bob Baron, president and CEO of Baron Services, during a ribbon cutting ceremony on May 22.

The company features a 24-hour, 7 day-a-week forecasting operation, which is responsible for data quality assurance.

“I am so proud of this new facility,” said Bob Baron, president and CEO of Baron Services. “Our continued success has compelled us to double the size of our headquarters in Huntsville, Alabama. We now have the space and technologies we need to support our customers for years to come.”

Don Nalley, who served as master of ceremonies at the event, said that Baron Services offers cutting edge technology that has put the company at the forefront of severe weather tracking and analysis. “In a technology-driven community steeped in technological innovation, Bob Baron and Baron Services stand tall,” Nalley said.

Nalley, director of Beason & Nalley and the vice chair of economic development for the Chamber of Commerce of Huntsville/Madison County, said Bob Baron shared many similarities with other business pioneers in the community, “those who possessed the vision to create innovative solutions to real problems while having the technical expertise to make that vision a reality,” Nalley said. “We congratulate Bob and all the employees at Baron Services.

Huntsville Mayor Loretta Spencer congratulated Barron and the employees on the company’s growth and said the international success of Baron Services has created great community pride.

Bill Proenza, director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric and Administration National Weather Service, southern region, was one of the featured speakers at the event and said he was proud of the partnership between NWS and Baron Services that is creating technology and tools to better forecast severe weather across the country.

Baron, a local meteorologist at the time, started the company after an F-4 tornado struck Huntsville on Nov. 15, 1989 and destroyed or damaged nearly 300 homes, 80 businesses, three churches, 12 apartment buildings and more than 1,000 cars. The tornado also demolished an elementary school, killed 21 people, injured close to 500 and caused about $250 million in damage. That day, Baron said, changed his life and sparked his drive to create more sophisticated severe weather tracking and analysis tools.

Fast forward nearly 20 years and Baron Services now has more than 100 employees, five divisions and offices in Huntsville, Oklahoma, Florida and North Carolina. Baron Services has become XM Radio’s weather partner for the award-winning XM WX Satellite Weather service, a trusted information source for professional pilots and mariners. An extension of that partnership resulted in XM NavWeather™. The XM NavWeather service utilizes Baron’s exclusive Threat Matrix™ technology to track and provide drivers with immediate alerts on developing weather threats, such as hail, floods, tornado and storm warnings.

“The backbone of our company is certainly meteorological innovation,” said Baron. “That innovative spirit and advanced engineering has spurred the company’s growth across all five divisions enabling it to thrive in a variety of industries.”

In 2004, Baron Services teamed up with the University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH) and WHNT-TV resulting in the first broadcast dual-polarization radar in the world. Since then, six other major-market stations have turned to Baron Services for their cutting-edge polarimetric radars. Baron’s first dual-polarization radar was installed for KRIV in Houston. Other stations followed including WFLD-TV in Chicago, WNYW-TV in New York City, WRAL-TV in Raleigh, Bay News 9 in Tampa Bay and KELO-TV in Sioux Falls. “To date, we have installed every broadcast dual-polarization radar in the world,” said Bob Baron.

Last October, Baron Services and L-3 Communications won a 5-year, $43 million contract from NWS. The company will provide design, development and production services for a comprehensive upgrade of 171 NEXRAD radars to dual-polarization capability for the NWS, Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the Department of Defense (DOD).