We often hear the alerts on our televisions, or while driving in the car, but the work of the National Weather Service is much more than tracking storms.

The men and women in the Binghamton office are responsible for more than 2.5 million residents living everywhere from Utica to Northeastern Pennsylvania.

"Over here is the main operations area. And so, in our operations area, we have several workstations where people can sit on a quiet weather day. There's just two or three people around here. But if you have a severe weather situation, it's all hands on deck," said Warning Coordination Meteorologist Mark Pellerito.

In the Binghamton NWS office, Pellerito’s job truly never stops. He’s responsible for tracking severe weather in 14 counties across Central New York and the Southern Tier, along with seven in northeastern Pa.

"Our main goal is to protect life and property," Pellerito said. "And so that's what we do. We maintain constant weather, looking at the forecast for the next seven days to the next 7 minutes, depending on if it's a storm that's right on our doorstep."

Severe weather can happen here in an instant. Look no further than the record-level snowfall in Buffalo last year, or even the recent tornadoes.

While the past few months may have seemed a bit out of the norm for the state, Pellerito says it’s actually not uncommon.

"We have busier years and we have less busy years, and this just happens to be one of those where we got into a pattern that just favored almost daily thunderstorms,” said Pellerito.

The Binghamton office alone is responsible for alerting up to 2.5 million people at any given moment. And in the days of social media, pushing out accurate and up-to-the-minute updates is more important than ever.

"There's so much noise, so much information that how do you jump up and down and say, ‘Hey, no, this is the day you have to worry about. This is the storm you have to worry about.’ And so much of our job these days is dispelling rumors, but then also focusing on what's most important," said Pellerito.

Meteorologists like Pellerito rely on several different weather models and the latest mapping technology. But sometimes it’s all about the basics.

"What we have here is the standard eight-inch gauge and a compresses down into this tube here,” Pellerito said of a rainfall gauge. “The rain catches right there, and then this special ruler spreads it out so we can measure it to the nearest one-hundredth of an inch.”

Whether it’s measuring rainfall or tracking incoming storms, Pellerito says he is living his dream job, and he wouldn’t have it any other way.

"The favorite thing about my job is that what you are looking at right here? Sure, it's a sunny day, but atmospherically, this day has never happened, ever in the history. I mean, every day is different,” said Pellerito. “Weather is 24/7 and so are we.”