End of an institution? The (in)significance of chaser reports

[rdale]

I hear what you're saying, but I still think you're missing the big picture. You are saying that chaser reports could end because of a blogpost from Patrick? I love his insight - but I'm certain even he would admit he doesn't have that kind of influence. Don't read in more than what he's saying

"The scientist in me would love to be able to attempt studies where the impact of chasers are completely removed. However, the human in me wouldn't actually want to implement something like this in practice on the chance that my perceptions are completely wrong and chasers are extremely valuable to the warning process."

 

[Keith Wilson]

A local station live streaming chaser video of a tornado and multiple reports of a tornado/storm flattening everything in it's path might just spur a few more folks in it's path into taking life saving measures to protect themselves and their families, if they can tear themselves away from the TV. That should count for something.

I don't know of any pure spotters that live stream, but even one verbal "ground truth" confirmation of a strong tornado still carries more weight than "radar indicates a possible tornado." Multiple reports can help pinpoint the location and direction more precisely, so I would think that the more people that are reporting with different details, the better.

 

[Stan Rose]

* the following reflects my own opinion and not necessarily that of my employer (NOAA/NWS*

It's obviously different in a state like OK, but here in SE CO, I welcome as many and as much reports as possible from chasers. Some common sense is required--if you are the 200th person to arrive on a sup, you're not doing us any good calling us to tell us there's a tornado on the ground; we already realized that 199 calls ago. But if you should happen to be chasing in SE CO (say....tomorrow....) after 03Z when most chasers are elsewhere, well then your info is invaluable!

 

[J Allen]

I think from a climatologists point of view - Chasers are damn well invaluable. Without the presence of chasers we would actually know a hell of a lot less about the severe thunderstorm climatology (not theory, but the observations of severe events). For an example: In Australia chasers are going further afield to chase storms and the impact that has on obversational records is very noticeable - I would argue that if you look at the influence in Australia that you might get some sort of idea about the influence it has in the states (mainly because the trends in observational storm data are really difficult to separate and attribute) - and we have only a few people who actually get out to much of the country.

In terms of the influence of chasers on warnings, while I agree with Patrick and others that people are kidding themselves if they think that their chasing directly "saves lives" there is definitely an indirect influence. Until such time that Doppler radar identifies tornado producing versus non-tornadic storms 100% of the time in every part of the states then the warning process will be contributed to by observational reports of tornadoes. And as anyone in the warning business will tell you - we are a long way from being able to do that as evidenced by the false alarm rate in the tornado warning process. As Patrick rightly points out - people will likely react more to an observational - tornado on the ground than the doppler - whether that is the right thing to do or not.

 

[Jeff Hawkins]

From a purely scientific standpoint, this is an interesting null-hypothesis to explore. There isn't really any direct research that's been done to prove it one way or another that's been posted here so far.
Simply speaking, the way to determine if chasers are or are not of any value, is for all chasers to not report anything for say, perhaps, a 1 year period, and compare the data on tornadoes for that year, compared to another similar year (since 1990 per Patrick Marsh's blog), and see if there's a difference (keeping all other factors the same). The null hypothesis says there will not be any statistically significant diference between morbidity/mortality during that year, compared to others.

I know that's unrealistic, but that is how you might at least get a start at answering such a question with surety. The problem with such a method is ethical: what if someone dies during that year, where if a chaser had reported, the person would have then known, and taken appropriate action, and not died? That's a risk I suspect few are willing to agree to take.

 

[Dan Robinson]

I think it might be possible to quantify by segmenting the data by region. For example, the South and Midwest has been largely "unchased" until about 5 to 10 years ago, maybe even more recently. Those regions have comparable tornado numbers and casualties (the South in particular) during events that few, if any, chasers were on.

And by the way, this is by no means a slam on anyone suggesting a diminished value of chaser contributions, just a search for truth that will influence my priorities during my own chases in the future.

 

[Jesse Risley]

I don't know that any hard, qualitative data will exist to answer these questions using any sort of longitudinal data mining; however, I'm not sure that we need to be overly concerned about that. The aforementioned articles (cf. Doswell and Marsh) explored two mutually exclusive attributes of this argument, though two coterminous points remain clear: storm chasers aren't directly saving lives in pursuing their own self-interest vis-a-vis storm chasing, viz., chasers who bloviate about being out in the field just to save lives could, in almost all cases, stand to be more forthright about their innate drive to chase storms. Granted, there may be a few chasers who find it their civic duty to primarily go out and save lives, but those two articles, particularly Doswell's essay, argue that this is completely a fallacy for most making such claims.

However, there seems to be enough anecdotal evidence that chasers, by submitting quality reports in a timely manner, certainly can play a very important role in helping the NWS to save lives by providing ground truth to ongoing hazardous or otherwise severe weather events. While there may be other factors at play, quality reports can sometimes help facilitate the issuance of a warning (e.g., a SVR warning is upgraded to a TOR warning after several chaser reports of a TOR on the ground correlate with stronger rotation that was evident on radar), and they can lend a bit of credence to warnings that were just based previously on Doppler indicated convective trends. Hence, I wouldn't personally sell the role of chasers in the warning process too short.

 

[Aaron Kennedy]

What I take from Patrick's talk is we o reached reporting saturation a long time ago. i.e. once you have X people out there, the probability of a tornado going unreported diminishes rapidly. Now consider the setups in the southern plains with bazillions of chasers... all reporting the same tornado... before you call in, the odds are the tornado was already reported by somebody.

 

[jaredleighton]

* the following reflects my own opinion and not necessarily that of my employer (NOAA/NWS)*

1. ^^^^^^^^^^^What he said ^^^^^^^^^^^

2. While I'll start off by saying the warning process can and will go on without chaser/spotter reports (which is what I think Dr. Doswell is hinting at), I'll finish by saying that chaser reports accomplish a multitude of things with respect to the warning process. Unfortunately, people take warnings more seriously when they have some kind of confirmation that the phenomenon the warning is covering is actually occurring (i.e. reported tornado vs doppler radar indicated). This notion is even more pronounced with the tornado tags associated with the IBW testbed. Ideally this shouldn't be the case, but in reality TORNADO.......OBSERVED carries heavier meaning than TORNADO.....RADAR INDICATED. So for that fact alone, spotter reports are important to convey higher urgency and gives the warning forecaster a higher confidence in the warnings themselves.

3. I have yet to meet an operational meteorologist who doesn't like spotter/chaser reports of any kind. The more information that a radar operator can obtain regarding a particular storm, whether it's hail, wind, or even tornado the better, so long as it's correct and accurate. Obviously the information that comes in from the field isn't always 100% accurate, but that's a challenge that I think most forecasters are willing to take on if it means good information also makes it into the office.

Again, the warning process can and will survive without reports, but that does not mean that reports do not improve the warning process. I don't believe either Patrick or Dr. Doswell meant to imply that reports are worthless, and any inference by a chaser or spotter that NWS offices do not want or need reports is ludicrous.

 

[Wes Carter]

Chasers making reports and potentially saving lives are akin to grain elevators saving lives. The grain elevators were not built for mobile phone/broadband antennas to provide level 3 data to chasers, but they can and do provide that secondary function in some cases.

I think we get caught up in thinking this is a black and white issue but we are really dealing with many shades of gray. I chase for more than one or even two reasons, all of them pretty selfish to be honest. But I could never live with myself if I didn't make a report if a tornado I saw killed people. It's no different than driving down the road to get a six pack of beer and being the first one on the scene of an accident. I'd stop and help in any way I could, but I don't drink beer to save lives.

Sent from my DROIDX using Tapatalk 2

 

[Jesse Risley]

But I could never live with myself if I didn't make a report if a tornado I saw killed people. It's no different than driving down the road to get a six pack of beer and being the first one on the scene of an accident. I'd stop and help in any way I could, but I don't drink beer to save lives.

Not to detract too much from the original arguments here, but even though it may be next to impossible to win a successful tort against a chaser (ethical and moral issues notwithstanding), the way common civil law works in some states, you could theoretically be held accountable for legal liability due to failure to act (negligence) if you simply refused to report a tornado that otherwise went unreported, people were killed, and you had all of the means of doing so (reporting) at your disposal.

 

[Patrick Marsh]

I figured that since I poured gasoline on this topic elsewhere, and it was referenced in this thread, I might as well offer some comments on my views.

First, a response to my original thread can be found here: http://www.patricktmarsh.com/2012/0...-chaser-contributions-to-the-warning-process/

Second, be careful reading too much into my original post and the graphics there. As at least one commenter pointed out, I was guilty of confirmation bias. I saw what I wanted to see in irrelevant or inconclusive data. Truth said, from the data I showed, at best you can draw the conclusions Aaron Kennedy stated previously in this thread. It s a complicated problem that deserves a detailed analysis. The problem is that the detailed analysis is going to be very hard to do.

The warning process is not static. It's constantly being changed as new technologies come online and old technologies die off. Who would have envisioned streaming video from chasers 10 years ago? Who would have imagined NWS chat? Twitter? Facebook? Super-resolution data? All of these have an impact on the warning process. To put this in a mathematical/physics reference frame, what we end up with is a superposition of factors. Trying to tease out any single signal from the signal of the whole is a non-trivial process. It is my opinion that you cannot definitively see a signal from chaser contributions in the data in my original post. That doesn't mean it isn't there...nor does it mean that the contribution is not increasing. It just means that it cannot be discerned from every other signal -- at least with only the data I presented.

Do I think we need to objectively assess the impact of chasers? Probably not. Do I think it would be interesting? You bet. Anecdotes are offered up from all sides of these issues. Some talk about how a chaser improve the quality of a warning; some even got a warning issued that previously was not. Others can offer stories where chaser reports were erroneous and negatively impacted the quality of the warnings. (At least one tornado emergency was the result of erroneous spotter/chaser information.) But yet after every major event I hear chasers tout how valuable they are and public officials tout how much problems chasers caused. Truth is, we have no idea who is right and who is wrong. It's even possible that both sides are right.

What I really wanted to convey in my original post, but miserably failed to do, is the following:

Be honest with yourself and with others about your intentions for chasing. Don't feel the need to justify your actions under the banner of "public service". If you see something, report it in a timely manner. If you see someone in need, remember that humans can't be replaced and tornadoes will always exist. And, most importantly, just shut up and chase. Ultimately, it is about you and Mother Nature.

I need to take those last two points to heart...

 

[Greg Higgins]

Tim,
I don't know which NWSO you are associated with but I would hazard a guess to say that they took an extreme approach to the budget cuts which is NOT reflected by NOAA / NWS. As for refering reports to 911, that is an absolutly asinine response as now you have just swamped and overloaded the primary call center for responders!! Our NWSO (FWD) has adamatly preached at Skywarn classes and other presentations, DO NOT call 911! And please remember that you are speaking of only 1 NWSO that seems to have taken a skewed approach, not the majority of the field offices.

Over all I think the NWS does need good spotters and chasers to send in reports.
BUT, I have noticed over the years that these reports are not as important to them, or some WFO's.

During the recent almost "Federal Gov. Shutdowns" last year we found just how important our reports
are.
The media could still call in reports to the local WFO, but spotter/chase groups were told to call 911.
We suggested that we could limit the calls from our group by only allowing certified relay people to do it, but the
answer was still no.
How about radioing them into a net control and that net control would phone them in. Still no.

They also would not allow reports to be submitted via NWSChat. Then or now.

During this years budget cuts the spotter classes in many places were cut or they had other
folks hold them for the NWS.

When it comes down to brass tacks, the NWS says we are important but do not reflect this in their actions many times.

I am not saying this is something the NWS as a whole seems to reflect, but it does seem to be more prevalent.

Tim

 

[Greg Higgins]

I will take exception to this statement regarding "saturation". While this may be true at a few of the NWS offices, it defintly does not hold true for the office I volunteer (FWD)! Example: several months ago and even on April 3, there were numerous storms with radar indications of rotation, etc. but we were not receiving any ground truth reports. We brought up the chaser streaming websites and SN and were amazed to discover that there were 10-20 chasers on the storms BUT NO ONE CALLED IN! We used the streaming video (THANKS for providing the streaming video!) and even called several of the better known chasers (numbers obtained through SN) so at least we were able to obtain some information. But, the main point is, depending on the location, chasers DO NOT call in reports.

What I take from Patrick's talk is we o reached reporting saturation a long time ago. i.e. once you have X people out there, the probability of a tornado going unreported diminishes rapidly. Now consider the setups in the southern plains with bazillions of chasers... all reporting the same tornado... before you call in, the odds are the tornado was already reported by somebody.

 

[Matt Hunt]

I think I've submitted a total of 2 reports in my relatively short amount of time chasing. Neither of them would have been able to save lives, whether it was indirectly or not. My decision on whether to make a report or not is based on the situation. April 14 in Kansas, I saw no need to report the wedge tornado that 50 other chasers were on, and other reports were already submitted. However, if I were chasing here in Indiana, I know I might be the only one on the storm, or at least one of very few. In that case, I will certainly report a rotating wall cloud (IMO the most critical report as it almost says "tornado imminent"), and then again if it actually touches down. I would be even more compelled to report it if it were on a path toward a town, or already in a town.

But... in all honesty the reason I started chasing is because for years I had wanted to see a tornado in person. I just plain love storms, and love experiencing and witnessing severe weather. That is the sole reason why I chase.