10/26/10 Predictions

[Brian Rogers]

This isn't the first time I've seen this, but this time it really struck me.
There is so much "we are chasing tornadoes to learn more about them and increase awareness and so on" Yet I saw here that the weather community was well aware that something big was going to happen on 10-23-10, 3 days before it happened, and alot of the risk areas for tornadoes was well adressed long before the first watch was issued at 10pm on 10-25-10.
Thankfully conditions didn't align 100% to generate the perfect storm, but when people are talking storm of the century on sunday, and Joe Public doesn't know a thing come tueday, I'm concerned. The only public information I saw of this pending apocalypse was tuesday 6pm weather center.
Why isn't there a stronger effort to make people aware of what might happened? Why isn't the 6am, 12pm, 6pm weather guy on the news telling people, "hey, we expect a tornado watch to be issued later tonight, these conditions are coming together and there is a risk for sever weather here and here till this time tomarrow" I bet most people in the midwest went to bed tuesday night not having a clue about what was coming, and if things had been a little different we could have had alot of tornadoes in the overnight and wee morning hours that may have taken lives, and people would ahve been saying, why wasn't there more warning?
Is it that the american sheeple aren't bright enough to handle this information and we are afraid of inducing a panic?
Are we afraid to cry wolf and be wrong?, because people will stop caring after the first few times nothing happens, like I think most people don't care about tornado watches anymore either.
Just curious...

 

[Connor McCrorey]

This "Storm of the century" or whatever people were calling it wasn't at all a big deal tornado-wise. It was an incredibly deep cyclone that produced a TON of interesting weather, and despite the numerous tornado warnings I haven't heard of anything significant. I'm not really sure what your point is. TV mets spend plenty of time alerting the public before hand, without causing alarm. I see nothing wrong with the way these things area handled at all.

 

[rdale]

TV mets around here certainly (and smartly) plugged the threat, I can't believe that every station you watched ignored the threat.

The one thing I noticed was that many NWS office webpages had NOTHING on the threat during Monday. Even the ones that did just had a small headline of "Strong winds coming" next to "Winter weather spotter classes coming soon." On the other hand I did notice a few that put it in bold, or colored it, and many SRH offices REALLY made you notice.

 

[Brian Rogers]

Well, if I wasn't one to read this site couple times a week, and refresh my wunderground page once an hour, I don't think I would have know much about this storm at at all. I didn't hear or see anything news wise, and when I posted a "heads up" on facebook Monday, nobody had a clue as to what I was talking about.

 

[Connor McCrorey]

The public doesn't care about the pressure that the center of the low reaches. It cares about the wind and the storms. As far as I know, that was covered very well.

 

[Patrick Martin]

It's easy to throw the NWS and TV mets under the bus when it's not your behind on line to publish an official forecast. How many times have we seen what looks like a "perfect" scenario, just to have partially materialize, or not at all? They have to strike a balance between awareness, and scaring the poop out of everybody. I think Rich Thompson covered this exact type of thing indirectly at ChaserCon once when he talked about high risk days that were a bust.

If you want a peek into what the NWS is saying in an official capacity 3 days out, read the AFD that's published twice daily.

 

[George Widener]

One thing I noticed while trying to explain to people what was supposed to be coming with this storm- the "uninformed" were unable to discern the difference between a "storm" (ie: the one that hit at 4:35pm last week and dropped some rain and hail) and a "storm" (ie: like we had, a multiple-day event with high sustained winds). Perhaps it is the difference in wording, whereas the former instance could be called a "storm" and the latter a "storm system" or something similar. Then again, even in the regular tornado season I know tons of people who literally ignore the forecasts and simply say "they're never right anyways" and go about their business.

 

[Adam Lucio]

Keep in mind severe weather itself is an isolated phenomena, if nothing happens on your block you might be saying WTF this was lame, however a mile away a microburst or tornado could have done major damage and to those people yea, it was the once in a lifetime event.

I addressed this in my blog: http://aerostorm9.blogspot.com/2010/10/feeling-cheated-by-october-26th-2010.html

 

[Jeff Duda]

One thing I noticed while trying to explain to people what was supposed to be coming with this storm- the "uninformed" were unable to discern the difference between a "storm" (ie: the one that hit at 4:35pm last week and dropped some rain and hail) and a "storm" (ie: like we had, a multiple-day event with high sustained winds). Perhaps it is the difference in wording, whereas the former instance could be called a "storm" and the latter a "storm system" or something similar. Then again, even in the regular tornado season I know tons of people who literally ignore the forecasts and simply say "they're never right anyways" and go about their business.

I agree that the word "storm" gets abused in meteorology and is used by many TV meteorologists to refer to just about any weather phenomenon other than "clear skies" and "light winds".

On a less-related note, on Tuesday I heard Rob Marciano - CNN meteorologist - note about a tornado warning near Atlanta metro: "...this tornado, if on the ground, would be wrapped in rain." ...How can knowledgeable meteorologists expect the lay person to understand weather any better when established professionals can't explain it?

 

[Jesse Risley]

On a less-related note, on Tuesday I heard Rob Marciano - CNN meteorologist - note about a tornado warning near Atlanta metro: "...this tornado, if on the ground, would be wrapped in rain." ...How can knowledgeable meteorologists expect the lay person to understand weather any better when established professionals can't explain it?

Yeah, his choice of verbiage is technically incorrect, but I do think it conveys the intended point that any tornado associated with that storm is likely to be shrouded in rain and not visible to the naked eye, which is probably what he meant to say.

So many people seem to have this thinking about tornadic thunderstorms, likely born from watching too much footage on TV, whereby some classic or LP supercell will be headed their way at 35 mph, so they'll be able to see it coming five miles away and step outside on the back deck with a camera and enjoy cocktails as it churns across the countryside in a docile manner.

Speaking entirely on an anecdotal basis, I've come to the conclusion that far too many people don't take severe weather seriously until they are personally impacted in a negative manner. As Adam said, if a tornado watch was issued but one didn't touch down within forty miles, it was a false alarm. If a tornadic supercell passed through the area and the sirens were sounded, yet all we got was some rain, hail and gusty winds, it was another false alarm. If a SVR thunderstorm warning was issued, yet the nearest structural damage was ten miles away, "they done got it wrong again." Most people just don't seem to grasp how inexact of a science meteorology real is, especially on the mesoscale, microscale and storm scale.

 

[Jeff Duda]

The point I was trying to make was that more specific terminology would help.