April 27, 2011 outbreak - NWS service assessment

[rdale]

Well the idea made sense in 2007 and nothing has happened. When it came up at IAEM last month, Mr Hayes was amazed at the possibility and said he'd look into it.

Just seems like it would run into a roadblock if Midland held patent rights and only they could make compatible radios.

 

[Mike Smith]

Just seems like it would run into a roadblock if Midland held patent rights and only they could make compatible radios.

If they manufacture the radios, people will be able to decide whether they wish to purchase them. Midland might chose to license the patent to others. I don't see a "roadblock."

I agree there is a problem if Midland has the patent and choses to neither manufacture nor license.

 

[rdale]

Midland might chose to license the patent to others.

What I'm saying is that I could hear some serious objection by other radio manufacturers if the NWS started using a protocol that had to be licensed from Midland. That would be similar to them transmitting NIDS data in a format that Weathercentral patented, so everyone would have to pay WXC for licensing in order to utilize. I don't think that passes government open-access muster.

 

[Mike Smith]

Unfortunately, Rob, there is precedent for doing just that. The NWS put out its forecasts and products in a way compatible with The Weather Channel's "WeatherStar" patented technology. John Coleman worked it out with then-NWS director Richard Hallgren.

I'm not offering an opinion, just stating it has been done before.

 

[rdale]

True, but did others have to pay a license fee to TWC in order to make use of those forecasts?

 

[Mike Smith]

True, but did others have to pay a license fee to TWC in order to make use of those forecasts?

No, but there was a penalty for the rest of us. The Kansas NOAA Weather Wire was the first to be "modernized." We created software to parse it since it could be read electronically. We had to replace all of our programming to make it compatible with the NWS's change that was made for TWC.

 

[John Farley]

Regarding Juston and Greg's discussion - while it is true that TOR warnings are often not issued for cells that are known to be elevated, I do think that one way to reduce the FAR would be to take other aspects of the environment into consideration, e.g. things such as LCL. I have seen cases where storms with strong rotation in environments that were favorable for supercells but not so much for tornadoes were TOR-warned over and over again but never produced. For example, the storm I chased May 12 in southwestern MO was TOR-warned for better than 2 hours but never produced. It was a gorgeous supercell with funnel clouds and numerous ground-hugging wall clouds, but it produced not one tornado. Of course hindsight is 20-20 and there may have been good cause for at least some of the warnings - the meso did look impressive on radar - but I wonder if this storm (which, incidentally, occurred in a severe watch, not a tor watch) should have been warned as readily as a similar-apppearing storm (on radar) in an environment more favorable for tornadoes. This is the kind of situation where I think the CYA pressures come into play.