2022 Wildfire Season: Protect Your People 

Paul Pastelok has been with AccuWeather for 30 years. He leads a team that provides clients with forecasts ranging from short-term, to sub-seasonal and seasonal domains, to as far out as 12 months. Paul’s department has expanded globally and has developed long-range forecasts for Europe, Canada, South America, and Asia. Paul also has experience in commodity, tropical and global drought forecasting. Paul has worked extensively with clients in a variety of industries including radio, television broadcasting, and newspapers, and now has a weekly, long-range podcast.

Tom Bedard is an Implementation Manager and Meteorologist at AccuWeather for Business. In this role, Tom is responsible for integrating AccuWeather’s business services into their client’s business continuity and emergency preparedness operations. He leads a team of technical support and emergency preparedness specialists who provide AFB clients with onboarding, training, and enterprise support.

Tom holds a bachelor’s degree in Meteorology from Penn State and has previously worked as a FEMA course developer, FEMA course instructor, and risk management analyst. He has been an active volunteer firefighter/EMT for over a decade, regularly works with local emergency management agencies, and also serves as a search and rescue K9 handler for human remains detection. Tom was the 2019-2021 Chair of the American Meteorological Society’s Committee on Emergency Management.

John Lavin is the Director of Forensic Services and a Certified Consulting Meteorologist (CCM) at AccuWeather for Business. He leads a team of highly qualified expert meteorologists who specialize in reconstructing the weather at a particular time and place for legal cases and insurance claims. John has over ten years of professional meteorology experience at AccuWeather for Business providing forecasts and warnings to many Fortune 500 companies. John earned his CCM designation from the American Meteorological Society, which is only awarded to meteorologists that possess a high level of knowledge, experience, and character in the field of meteorology. John has been designated as an expert witness in meteorology in cases involving wildfires, property damage, and wrongful death suits.