William L. Read, commonly known as Bill Read, is an American meteorologist born circa 1950. He earned a B.S. in Meteorology from Texas A&M University in 1971 and an M.S. in Meteorology from the same institution in 1976. His early career included four years in the U.S. Navy as an onboard meteorologist with the Hurricane Hunters, joining the National Weather Service (NWS) in 1977 at the Test and Evaluation Division in Sterling, Virginia, followed by roles as a forecaster in the Fort Worth and San Antonio, Texas NWS offices, and as severe thunderstorm and flash flood program leader at NWS headquarters in Silver Spring, Maryland. From 1992, he directed the Houston/Galveston NWS Weather Forecast Office, leading it through the NWS modernization in the mid-1990s and organizing the annual Houston/Galveston Hurricane Workshop, the largest of its kind in the U.S. He served as a member of the Hurricane Liaison Team at the National Hurricane Center during Hurricane Isabel in 2003 and as Deputy Director of the Tropical Prediction Center (including NHC) in Miami starting in August 2007. As an expert in tropical meteorology and emergency management, he served as Director of the National Hurricane Center from 2008 to 2012. After retiring from the NHC in 2012, he worked as a hurricane specialist for television networks (including KPRC 2 in Houston), served as a professor, and joined the Institute for a Disaster Resilient Texas at Texas A&M University Galveston campus, studying rainfall rates and hurricane behavior. He received the National Hurricane Conference Public Education Award in 2004 for his hurricane preparedness efforts.