The Guam office of the National Weather Center showed off their new national director, who stepped foot on Guam for the first time. He's here getting to know our meteorologists and to announce some exciting plans for the island.

The new chief made his way to our island, getting familiar with the ins-and-outs of the Tiyan Weather Forecast Office, and meeting its staff. "Eight months into this job,and really looking at a vision or future for this agency and thinking about the transformative nature of what we want to do, I need to really get to know all aspects of our entire weather services," he noted.

Ken Graham is the first sitting director of the weather service to set foot on the island and in the region. "Get off that plane, all I can say was - I love the weather, the nice breeze. It’s warm again. This is my favorite type of weather. If I could wear shorts the rest of my life, I would," he said happily.

His visit comes at at time with national attention on the recently-shot down Chinese spy balloon, which Chinese officials claim is a weather aircraft. He repsonded saying, "It's not our balloon, so I don’t know what all that is. I see all the information, I’ve been following that. I think the biggest thing for us is this is really a DOD type of response."

Now into his eighth month of tenure and efforts to transform the weather agency to better protect life and property, he shares big plans for the island, saying, "I wanted to announce today that we have a partnership with a company called slack. And we are completely redoing our NWS chat. And its going to have capabilities to communicate with emergency managers and even the media."

The NWS Instant Chat website is underway to demo in the region as early as next week, where media and the emergency response community can relay critical weather information in realtime with transparency.

"I think the rest of the nation can learn from some of the challenges that you have," he shared. "The uniqueness of the island with some of the coastal impacts that you can learn from, some of the challenges with the various islands in communicating. How can we learn to be more resilient?"

And to be more prepared for whatever Mother Nature brings our way.