Sunny Wescott
Sunny Wescott is a Federal Emergency Response Official Chief Meteorologist with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) specializing in national extreme weather hazards and climatological studies for impacts to public and private sector key resources.
Ms. Wescott graduated top of her class for her degrees in Homeland Security Management, Public Safety Administration, and Atmospheric Sciences and is a member of the American Meteorological Society (AMS) and the International Association of Emergency Managers. Her passion for life-long learning is highlighted by more than 90 certifications from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), the University of Colorado’s COMET Meteorological Education Program, the Department of Defense Weather Technology Course, Texas A&M, and multiple certifications from the National Weather Service Subject Matter Expertise Course.
During her time in the US Air Force as a Lead Meteorologist, Ms. Wescott trained on continental and oceanic weather as the Top Forecaster for her support region and is considered a subject matter expert for multiple climatological events such as drought, subsidence, wildfires, tropical cyclones, and winter storms.
Since 2018 Ms. Wescott has been providing support to various working groups across the federal government to include the Resilient Power Working Group, CISA’s Extreme Weather Working Group, the National Disaster Resiliency Council, the National Risk Management Center’s Climate Focus Group, the Climate Security Council, the National Drought Resiliency Partnership, the Arctic Resilience Working Group, the Interim Climate Services Working Group, the Extreme Heat Interagency Working Group, the Climate and Extreme Weather Resilience in Healthcare Working Partnership, and the National Water Sector Threat Team in addition to providing expertise to the National Level Exercise hosted by FEMA and numerous exercises across all levels of the government while maintaining a weekly national- international climate summary to various partners across the nation and abroad.
While previous roles within CISA focused on working with emergency response operations for telecommunications, critical infrastructure, and executive briefing support which integrated her background of operational forecasting from her military experience, Ms. Wescott’s current role with CISA’s Infrastructure Security Division, Assistant Chief of Staff office, enables Extreme Weather Outreach by providing focused reports for regions and critical infrastructure operators before, during, and after disasters.
CISA’s New Extreme Weather and Climate Change Website:
• https://www.cisa.gov/topics/critical-infrastructure-security-and-resilience/extreme-weather-
and-climate-change
CISA’s Extreme Weather Impacts to Critical Infrastructure and the Implications to Emergency Response
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F88cFaNIG4c