Xavier William Proenza was the Southern Region Director of the United States National Weather Service from 1999–2007 and 2007–2013. He was also previously the director of the National Hurricane Center (NHC) from January 4, 2007 to July 9, 2007.

The NASA QuikSCAT was an Earth observation satellite carrying the SeaWinds scatterometer. Its primary mission was to measure the surface wind speed and direction over the ice-free global oceans via its effect on water waves. Observations from QuikSCAT had a wide array of applications, and contributed to climatological studies, weather forecasting, meteorology, oceanographic research, marine safety, commercial fishing, tracking large icebergs, and studies of land and sea ice, among others. This SeaWinds scatterometer is referred to as the QuikSCAT scatterometer to distinguish it from the nearly identical SeaWinds scatterometer flown on the ADEOS-2 satellite.