FREMONT, Neb. (AP) - It was an evening she will never forget.

From early that week, forecasters with the National Weather Service in Valley had been warning that potentially strong storms could spawn a few tornadoes in the area by midweek.

By late afternoon on June 11, National Weather Service forecaster Becky Griffis and other forecasters in the office were watching a storm system move through the area.

"I was working radar that night," said the 32-year-old Griffis, who lives in Fremont. "It was an awful night. We were prepared. We knew it was coming."

The National Weather Service office was filled with almost all of its 25 employees, including 10 forecasters, three management members who are also forecasters, support staff and technicians.

"There's 25 people running around," she said. "It's controlled chaos. It's like an emergency room."

Then something hit.

"Lightning hit our office," she said. "Our computers locked up. We weren't getting new radar images. We have backups for this. The offices in Hastings and Des Moines split our counties until we can get back up again. Our electrical tech came in and fixed the radar."

Growing up on a farm in northwestern North Dakota, Griffis has been interested in weather since she was a little girl.

"I like storms. I like severe weather," she said. "I always looked at the sky and asked why things were happening. I was curious."

But it wasn't until a fourth-grade tour of the National Weather Service office in Williston, N.D., that she knew.

"That's when I decided what I wanted to do," she said. "Then I got to college and realized how much math and physics was involved. I kind of got down, but I studied pretty hard and got through it."

She received her bachelor's degree in atmospheric science in 1999 with minors in geography and mathematics.

During her senior year at the University of North Dakota, Griffis was able to work at the National Weather Service office in Grand Forks, N.D.

It was there that she got her first real taste of the dangers that weather can produce.

"That's when we had that big flood. We had 15 minutes to evacuate the town. That was scary."

After graduation, she started working at the Valley office.

The night of June 11 has been one of most horrific of her career.

"When we have an outbreak of severe weather like that, we work in teams of two," she said. "My partner that night was David Nietfeld. We watched the radar as the system went through western Iowa. It was about 20 minutes later that we (heard) that there were massive casualties at the Boy Scout camp. Our hearts just sank."

Four Boy Scouts were killed, including three from Omaha.

"We had 12 minutes of lead time on that tornado. They just had nowhere to go. Then we had to follow up the next day," Griffis said. "We have to go out and explain why things happen."

It gets frustrating at times, especially with the public perception.

"We saw the headlines that next day. 'It came without warning.' It did not. There was plenty of warning," she said. "We strive to have 10 minutes of lead time to issue a tornado warning. We had 12 minutes that time. We pride ourselves in that. We train and we study to get even better."

Winter storms provide a different challenge.

"When we get winter storms, there's usually a small band of an area that will be the heaviest," she said. "There's a lot of pressure to get narrow band of heavy snow exactly right in the forecasts. Utility companies and schools depend on that. That's challenging."

But that isn't the only challenge in the job, she said. Forecasters work rotating shifts. When severe weather breaks out, they can work as many as 16 hours in a day.

"It's hard on family life," she said. "It's hard on sleep. It's hard on healthy living. But that's part of the job."