It's time to do away with severe thunderstorm warnings

[Dan Robinson]

First, in the case of a severe thunderstorm warning, a forecaster is forecasting a direct and tangible threat - hail or wind is is likely being generated by the atmosphere without human intervention. In the event of the winter weather product issuance, again, forecasters should forecast the direct and tangible threat being generated directly by the atmosphere. Road ice is a combination of a lot of things outside the direct realm of the atmosphere including, but not limited to, soil temperature, the material used to build the road, frequency of automobiles traversing the area, what pre-treatment was applied, what 'during-the-event' treatment has been applied, etc. When you start asking meteorologists to forecast things that are outside their area of expertise you are inviting trouble. Furthermore, you have failed to make the argument that the NWS should be responsible for these warnings. It seems to me that a road ice warning would actually under the jurisdiction of the Department of Transportation. You can get road ice from non-meteorological factors.

Road icing is a direct weather threat. Why is freezing rain and snow in progress not weather?

It is not complicated to forecast for road icing. All you need is surface obs below freezing and falling precip to indicate the hazard. This accounts for 99% of active icing scenarios. As I mentioned before, road surface temps could be helpful but they are not necessary.

Second, winter weather advisories should adequately relay the threat that icing is a concern.

They do not nor ever have address the degree of threat to life and property. Even flood warnings mention auto deaths. Severe thunderstorm warnings talk about deadly lightning.

Third, what you really need is to argue for is an increase in public education of what the NWS products convey and not to argue for additional winter weather products (which are too bloated already in my opinion).

Education is important, but needs to happen in tandem with official declarations of the threat level.

This coupled with DoT issued Road Ice Warnings should satisfy the concern.

The DOT is not a weather forecasting agency and is not equipped with staff to perform those duties.

 

[Dan Robinson]

OK guys, I'm all for debating this, but I'm running in circles here. Please read the thread! I keep addressing the same questions over and over as if no one is reading anything I've posted already.

 

[Dan Robinson]

It's apparent, even more so now after seeing this thread, that there is a widespread prejudice against crash victims based on erroneous assumptions about their role in their accidents. I hoped that my first-hand experience and production of factual data would help counter that. The diverse demographic of crash victims does not support the argument that they knew about a life-threatening hazard and chose to ignore it. The mothers with young children, the woman with her grandparents, the father with his family - I find it difficult to assume that they knowingly placed themselves and their loved ones in a situation that they knew had a high probability of death or injury. That doesn't make any sense. The picture of the speeding 19-year old with an invincibility complex simply does not represent every icy road crash. There are a few accidents caused by those types of people, but they are not representative of the whole. Again, I invite everyone to look up the individual accidents listed on the web site and see for yourself who these victims really are. I'm offering facts, not assumptions.

Those facts are that this hazard is often not apparent to most drivers, either because they are not accustomed to recognize the more subtle indicators, or they are not conditioned to fear it as a deadly threat. The actions I'm suggesting are simple low-cost measures that have the potential to make a difference in some - not all - of similar future cases. If calling it a warning instead of an advisory and adding wording that outlines the threat to life and property saves 20 lives per year, why not do it? What if it saves 100 lives a year?

We're down to around 60 tornado deaths per year, and still are spending tremendous resources and effort to make improvements and 'tweaks' to the process. $12 million for Vortex2, adding "tornado emergencies", the EF scale, you name it. Again, I'm not trying to diminish tornadoes - they obviously deserve the attention. But so does road icing. The whole point is to save lives, by using the agencies and communication channels already in place that are dedicated to weather-related hazard forecasting and warning dissemination.

The bottom line is the icing is a DIRECT WEATHER threat - snow, freezing rain, etc. fall under the jurisdiction of the NWS for forecasting and warning dissemination. DOTs and individuals in the public cannot be expected to read soundings to see if the 850mb layer is below 0c and that the RUC shows precip breaking out at 12z.

 

[Dan Robinson]

The past three pages of this thread are mostly the same questions and arguments repeated over and over, ones I have already adequately countered numerous times. If you have an argument to counter a rebuttal, that's great - but this rehashing of the same arguments that I've already addressed repeatedly is a waste of time. With all due respect, all of the common arguments against road ice warning/awareness are easily rebutted, and I've countered them numerous times with facts.

I'll try to condense the repetitive arguments and a quick response here:

NWS jurisdiction:
Snow and freezing rain in progress are weather issues, not DOT issues. Road icing is not a result of a weather phenomenon, it IS a weather phenomenon! Saying it isn't is like saying that an ice storm is a secondary effect from weather, and that private landowners and the power company should be the ones responsible for assessing the possibility of ice forming on trees and power lines. DOTs are not equipped with tools and staff to forecast weather phenomena - most rely on the NWS for information! DOT efforts (salt trucks, etc) are not adequate to mitigate all hazard areas (they cannot guarantee ice-free roads).

Hazard is directly weather related:
Icing is a direct weather phenomenon - it is simply freezing/frozen precip that has reached the ground (snow, freezing rain, freezing drizzle). The ice gets under vehicle tires, separating them from pavement and causing vehicles to lose control without abnormal behavior or carelessness on the part of drivers being necessary. It is exactly as if a tornado caused the vehicle to leave the road, external forces applied that are 100% weather-generated.

Current products:
Advisories do not convey the threat to life and property in the same way that warnings do. At minimum I'm suggesting to at least beef up the wording to convey the threat level, a low-cost and simple measure. At the very least, change 'advisory' to 'warning', keeping all other procedures and criteria nearly identical. We've been tweaking severe thunderstorm and tornado warnings, why can't we do the same here?

Driver responsibility and 'common sense':
The 'surprise' icing accounts for a large percentage of deaths, events that are more difficult for drivers to recognize and unreasonable to expect them to. The public is not currently trained to fear icing as a deadly weather threat, and this lack of fear and respect for the hazard translates to prudent people exposing themselves to the danger when they otherwise would not. The chain of communication (NWS-media-public) starts with official forecasts/warnings and continues through information channels to the public. More serious wording is itself a vital way of increasing the awareness and level of 'common sense' that drivers can have.

Hazard incident frequency:
Most CWAs in the US see road icing threats no more than once or twice per week at maximum. High-threat road icing always requires falling precip and subfreezing surface temperatures, elements that are simple to forecast and that are already evaluated in existing forecast products. Pavement sensor data is not necessary to evaluate the hazard, but it is readily available if needed for verification. 'Refreezing' and man-made icing are rarely causes of fatal crashes and do not need to be considered.

 

[David Wolfson]

I thought I knew where this was going and then I read

Road icing is a direct weather threat. Why is freezing rain and snow in progress not weather?

It is not complicated to forecast for road icing. All you need is surface obs below freezing and falling precip to indicate the hazard. This accounts for 99% of active icing scenarios. As I mentioned before, road surface temps could be helpful but they are not necessary.

If you mean that the NWS should alert to the conditions you describe -- well, they do. But I don't think that's what you mean, or what constitutes the greatest hazard. Rather it's the highly localized conditions which aren't obvious that are the biggest concern, and about which the NWS doesn't have the best information.

The meshuga bridge Dan's always videoing is a good case-in-point IMO. I'm sure the NWS forecasts snow and ice pretty well regionwide, but the jurisdictional DOT is most responsible for knowing what precipitation, radiational, road surface, and wet-dry bulb conditions turn that particular stretch into a skating rink. Heaven knows, they should have enough sample points by now. TTI they apparently don't have the technical and operational resources to do the job properly.

 

[Greg Stumpf]

NWS jurisdiction:
Snow and freezing rain in progress are weather issues, not DOT issues. Road icing is not a result of a weather phenomenon, it IS a weather phenomenon! Saying it isn't is like saying that an ice storm is a secondary effect from weather, and that private landowners and the power company should be the ones responsible for assessing the possibility of ice forming on trees and power lines. DOTs are not equipped with tools and staff to forecast weather phenomena - most rely on the NWS for information! DOT efforts (salt trucks, etc) are not adequate to mitigate all hazard areas (they cannot guarantee ice-free roads).

It's important to understand that the communication of hazard information is an integrated process that must involve the NWS, EMs, and other agencies, as well as the end users. The NWS is moving toward a paradigm of integrated services and providing decision support for weather hazards, and this will require the collaboration of many agencies with fuzzy areas (not solid lines) drawn between their respective jurisdictions. It's going to be less "one agency's domain" and "another agency's domain" (e.g., the NWS v. DOT argument), and rather an integrative approach where the many agencies are working together to provide hazard services. A future NWS office may have more than just staff meteorologists, such as decision support experts as communicators, and social scientists help better understand the users. In addition, private industry will be part of the equation as consumers of the integrated hazard information and the providers of very specific hazard services and products to their business clients.

That being said, there is already work underway that has developed a road maintenance decision support system which marries NWS data with local transportation departments to assist in winter road operations (soon to add hazards from all seasons).

http://www.rap.ucar.edu/projects/rdwx_mdss/

 

[Patrick Marsh]

It's important to understand that the communication of hazard information is an integrated process that must involve the NWS, EMs, and other agencies, as well as the end users. The NWS is moving toward a paradigm of integrated services and providing decision support for weather hazards, and this will require the collaboration of many agencies with fuzzy areas (not solid lines) drawn between their respective jurisdictions. It's going to be less "one agency's domain" and "another agency's domain" (e.g., the NWS v. DOT argument), and rather an integrative approach where the many agencies are working together to provide hazard services. A future NWS office may have more than just staff meteorologists, such as decision support experts as communicators, and social scientists help better understand the users.

Yes. However, even in this new paradigm, the meteorologists will forecast the meteorology...social scientists will worry about the end-users...and in the case of the NWS vs. DOT, someone with expertise on road conditions will handle road icing.

My argument that road ice is DOT's jurisdiction and not the NWS's jurisdiction is that in the paradigm we are currently working in, the NWS does not have the expertise to know about all the road conditions - that is the DOT. I'm all for an integrated approach, and you know that, Greg, however we aren't there yet.

 

[Patrick Marsh]

The past three pages of this thread are mostly the same questions and arguments repeated over and over, ones I have already adequately countered numerous times. If you have an argument to counter a rebuttal, that's great - but this rehashing of the same arguments that I've already addressed repeatedly is a waste of time. With all due respect, all of the common arguments against road ice warning/awareness are easily rebutted, and I've countered them numerous times with facts.

I'll try to condense the repetitive arguments and a quick response here:

NWS jurisdiction:
Snow and freezing rain in progress are weather issues, not DOT issues. Road icing is not a result of a weather phenomenon, it IS a weather phenomenon! Saying it isn't is like saying that an ice storm is a secondary effect from weather, and that private landowners and the power company should be the ones responsible for assessing the possibility of ice forming on trees and power lines. DOTs are not equipped with tools and staff to forecast weather phenomena - most rely on the NWS for information! DOT efforts (salt trucks, etc) are not adequate to mitigate all hazard areas (they cannot guarantee ice-free roads).

Hazard is directly weather related:
Icing is a direct weather phenomenon - it is simply freezing/frozen precip that has reached the ground (snow, freezing rain, freezing drizzle). The ice gets under vehicle tires, separating them from pavement and causing vehicles to lose control without abnormal behavior or carelessness on the part of drivers being necessary. It is exactly as if a tornado caused the vehicle to leave the road, external forces applied that are 100% weather-generated.

Current products:
Advisories do not convey the threat to life and property in the same way that warnings do. At minimum I'm suggesting to at least beef up the wording to convey the threat level, a low-cost and simple measure. At the very least, change 'advisory' to 'warning', keeping all other procedures and criteria nearly identical. We've been tweaking severe thunderstorm and tornado warnings, why can't we do the same here?

Driver responsibility and 'common sense':
The 'surprise' icing accounts for a large percentage of deaths, events that are more difficult for drivers to recognize and unreasonable to expect them to. The public is not currently trained to fear icing as a deadly weather threat, and this lack of fear and respect for the hazard translates to prudent people exposing themselves to the danger when they otherwise would not. The chain of communication (NWS-media-public) starts with official forecasts/warnings and continues through information channels to the public. More serious wording is itself a vital way of increasing the awareness and level of 'common sense' that drivers can have.

Hazard incident frequency:
Most CWAs in the US see road icing threats no more than once or twice per week at maximum. High-threat road icing always requires falling precip and subfreezing surface temperatures, elements that are simple to forecast and that are already evaluated in existing forecast products. Pavement sensor data is not necessary to evaluate the hazard, but it is readily available if needed for verification. 'Refreezing' and man-made icing are rarely causes of fatal crashes and do not need to be considered.

First, you contradict yourself. If "surprise" road ice is the real culprit, then how does one forecast the surprise? If the occurrence of road ice is as simple as you say it is, "All you need is surface obs below freezing and falling precip to indicate the hazard. This accounts for 99% of active icing scenarios. As I mentioned before, road surface temps could be helpful but they are not necessary," then why can't we convey that to the general public? It seems simple enough. Surface observation below freezing + falling precipitation = road ice. I'd argue that is easy enough to convey to the public.

Third, road icing is *NOT* a weather phenomenon. It is the result of precipitation falling onto a *surface* that is below freezing - not necessary a place where the observed surface air temperature is 32F. During the big ice storm of 2007 here in central OK, a considerable amount of damage occurred as the result of ~1-2" of freezing rain. The surface observations were in the upper 20s. Using your simplistic formula, one would expect that the city must have been paralyzed due to 1-2" of ice on the roads. However, there was very little, if any, ice on roads here in Norman. This had nothing to do with any action the city took. It was because the surface observation is taken at 2m AGL, and is not a true *surface* temperature. It is an *air* temperature. A true surface temperature will depend on soil temperatures which can be considerably different.

I also lived quite a bit of my life in western AR. I540 runs from Fort Smith, AR to northwest AR and in northwest AR portion of the interstate there are some really long, high bridges. If I were to take the surface observations...which will be from the ground, not the elevated bridge...I might have a temperature of 33-34F. However, on the bridge it might be 30F. Many accidents occur in these situations. Also, sometimes there will be surface observations of 31F. The ground may be too warm to prevent ice from developing on the road. However, you'd expect ice on the bridge, right? After all it doesn't have the ground beneath it warming it. Ah, but what if there is a strong inversion aloft, which is often the case in freezing rain events. The temperature of the air on the bridge can sometimes be warmer than the air before getting on the bridge.

These aren't made up examples. There is *a lot* of uncertainty here. Water in the atmosphere doesn't freeze at 32F. It depends on a lot of other factors, most importantly being ice nuclei. However, water *will* freeze at 32F if it comes in contact with a solid object that is below 32F - this is why we have freezing rain in the first place. The problem with road ice warnings is the reality that the solid object on which the water comes into contact with must be below freezing...not the air surrounding it. I'll say it again, just because the surface observation says it is 32F outside does that mean you'll get freezing rain or more generally, ice - the object on which the water comes into contact must be below freezing....and the NWS has absolutely no way of knowing what the temperature of the roadways are or will be. This is why some surfaces will have ice and others won't. Thus, to accurately predict a road ice warning, you *must* know the temperature of the road surface. The weather service does not have access to this information...the most likely agency to have this information is DOT.

As you mention (and I never argued against), DOT does not have the expertise to predict meteorological phenomena. Leave that to the meteorologist. Let the meteorologist predict falling precipitation. DOT does however, have a better feel for their roadways than the NWS. DOT is more likely to have a network of road temperature monitors (a la Kansas) or have people out on the roads to know if there is ice accumulating. Let DOT issue a road ice warning if they deem it necessary. I will say that as the NWS moves more to a decision support mindset, they will be able to work with and answer the meteorological questions DOT might have...but ultimately, the roadways are DOTs responsibility. I don't know why you feel that the NWS is the bad guy here!

Lastly, I am not prejudiced against crash victims I feel for them. I've been involved in road ice issues. I do, however, think that we shouldn't have to warn explicitly for every circumstances. People need to learn to take responsibility for their actions and not expect someone else to think for them. We have warning labels on bags of peanuts that say "Warning: Product contains peanuts" for crying out loud.

 

[Robert Dewey]

First, you contradict yourself. If "surprise" road ice is the real culprit, then how does one forecast the surprise?

From what I gather, I think he means a "surprise" to those that aren't meteorologically inclined. That's getting into semantics, but it's easy to see where someone can be surprised while others are not (i.e. a surprise party).

 

[Dan Robinson]

If "surprise" road ice is the real culprit, then how does one forecast the surprise?

A surprise to the driving public, not to meteorologists. Yesterday morning's event in Kentucky and Ohio was plainly apparent to me all night (and the NWS, who issued an SPS for it), but many people were caught off guard in the morning while going to work/school. Including the tragedy near Louisville with the mother and her two young children.

It seems simple enough. Surface observation below freezing + falling precipitation = road ice. I'd argue that is easy enough to convey to the public.

Exactly, but the issue is conveying how grave the hazard is. Right now there is no mention of death or injury in WWAs or freezing rain advisories. I seriously doubt that parents with young children would venture out in certain situations if they were aware how real the likelihood of crashing is.

Third, road icing is *NOT* a weather phenomenon.

By that standard, flooding isn't either. Flooding is the result of rain after it has reached the ground, but it still gets attention in the form of a strongly-worded warning product. Flash flood products also have to take into account soil conditions and previous QPF to determine FFG values, excercises that are currently undertaken by the NWS with no problems.

It is an *air* temperature. A true surface temperature will depend on soil temperatures which can be considerably different.

I have been paying close attention to icing behavior with regards to observed surface temps while out in the field for the past 2 years. I have found that icing potential is very predictable when certain conditions are met. It does get harder to call when temps are around the 32F mark, but many instances are cut-and-dry. For example, any precip arriving in an area with temps in the upper 20s is going to see hazardous road icing - every time.

Doesn't the very fact that the NWS issues WWAs, freezing rain advisories and SPSs demonstrate that there is some inherent responsibility and original intent to warn the public of the icing hazard in the first place? A freezing rain advisory, for example, is by definition a product that addresses the road ice hazard exclusively. That indicates to me that the hazard does in fact fall under NWS jurisdiction, and always has. If that is the case, why not take some time periodically to evaluate how these products are presented and disseminated in light of the tremendous public impact?

We've changed hail criteria for severe thunderstorm warnings and introduced the Tornado Emergency wording, for example. And those changes have been found to have a positive effect. I'm simply suggesting is the same type of evaluation and 'tweaking' be applied to another equally valid hazard.

 

[Greg Stumpf]

Yes. However, even in this new paradigm, the meteorologists will forecast the meteorology...social scientists will worry about the end-users...and in the case of the NWS vs. DOT, someone with expertise on road conditions will handle road icing.

There might be some cross-training across disciplines, but the future paradigm also includes a common database of weather hazard and impact information that is shared by all parties. So, the NWS meteorologist could have access to the road condition information in the shared database.

My argument that road ice is DOT's jurisdiction and not the NWS's jurisdiction is that in the paradigm we are currently working in, the NWS does not have the expertise to know about all the road conditions - that is the DOT. I'm all for an integrated approach, and you know that, Greg, however we aren't there yet.

I'm talking about a vision for the future, all part of the Integrated Hazards Information Services concept that is under development right now.

 

[Patrick Marsh]

Exactly, but the issue is conveying how grave the hazard is. Right now there is no mention of death or injury in WWAs or freezing rain advisories. I seriously doubt that parents with young children would venture out in certain situations if they were aware how real the likelihood of crashing is.

The contact your local office and ask them to add enhanced wording to the existing products. Contact your local TV station and complain to them that they should spend more time conveying the seriousness of the threat. A new products isn't going to change anything. The NWS *did* issue something. How end users handle said product is outside the realm of the current NWS and would require social scientists.

By that standard, flooding isn't either. Flooding is the result of rain after it has reached the ground, but it still gets attention in the form of a strongly-worded warning product. Flash flood products also have to take into account soil conditions and previous QPF to determine FFG values, excercises that are currently undertaken by the NWS with no problems.

I agree, and that is why the NWS has Hydrologists on staff at many offices. They play a role in the flood situations. The NWS doesn't have a DOT person on staff.

I have been paying close attention to icing behavior with regards to observed surface temps while out in the field for the past 2 years. I have found that icing potential is very predictable when certain conditions are met. It does get harder to call when temps are around the 32F mark, but many instances are cut-and-dry. For example, any precip arriving in an area with temps in the upper 20s is going to see hazardous road icing - every time.

I look forward to reading your results in the scientific literature. I say this because I already mentioned the 2007 Ice storm in which there were no road problems (from ice...trees on the ground is a different story) and the temperatures started in the mid-20s.

It isn't as cut and dry as you make it out to be. How long it has been cold before hand plays a big part.

Doesn't the very fact that the NWS issues WWAs, freezing rain advisories and SPSs demonstrate that there is some inherent responsibility and original intent to warn the public of the icing hazard in the first place?

And doesn't the issuance of said product indicate that it already takes these steps?

A freezing rain advisory, for example, is by definition a product that addresses the road ice hazard exclusively. That indicates to me that the hazard does in fact fall under NWS jurisdiction, and always has.

This isn't true. You can have freezing rain and not have ice accumulate on roads. See the December 2007 ice storm in Oklahoma.

...why not take some time periodically to evaluate how these products are presented and disseminated in light of the tremendous public impact?

They do. In fact, the overwhelming response was that there were too many winter weather headlines and to scale back on the number of them. The weather server has/is doing this scaling back.

We've changed hail criteria for severe thunderstorm warnings and introduced the Tornado Emergency wording, for example. And those changes have been found to have a positive effect. I'm simply suggesting is the same type of evaluation and 'tweaking' be applied to another equally valid hazard.

This argument carries little weight with me. I'm opposed to the the use of Call-to-Action statements in general. Furthermore, I think all tornado warnings are tornado emergencies and we don't need tornado emergency language.

The tornado emergency example is an interesting one. This isn't a new product, it is extra language added to an existing product. Which goes back to what I've already said. Use existing products to highlight the threat.

 

[Adam Lucio]

A surprise to the driving public, not to meteorologists. Yesterday morning's event in Kentucky and Ohio was plainly apparent to me all night (and the NWS, who issued an SPS for it), but many people were caught off guard in the morning while going to work/school. Including the tragedy near Louisville with the mother and her two young children.

Its a surprise to them because they don't pay attention to products that are already available to them. Said mother probably lives a rat race lifestyle where her husband works 12hrs overtime every day so she has to rush rush rush and get the kids to school etc etc and wont take time to slow down or check these kinds of updates.

Nobody wants to take the blame for their faults...the first response you always here is "we had no warning" yea bullshoot.

I admire what you're trying to do and your passion for protecting people...but when it comes to practicality I don't see what more can be done.

I mentioned this in spotterchat earlier...cars are too safe these days...people think the 4wd will drive for them. Society as a whole is becoming dumber to the threats because people always believe that things are made safer and safer...the super duper lazer computer traction grip anti lock break skid prevention system will keep them from sliding into a telephone pole while they put on makeup, update twitter and eat breakfast all while driving.

 

[Dan Robinson]

The NWS *did* issue something. How end users handle said product is outside the realm of the current NWS and would require social scientists.

Are you saying that the wording has absolutely no impact? Would you be satisfied with doing away with tornado warnings and replacing them with tornado advisories?

I agree, and that is why the NWS has Hydrologists on staff at many offices. They play a role in the flood situations. The NWS doesn't have a DOT person on staff.

The DOT issue is irrelevent to the discussion. They are a response agency, not a forecasting/warning issuing entity.

I look forward to reading your results in the scientific literature.

You very well may in the future.

I say this because I already mentioned the 2007 Ice storm in which there were no road problems (from ice...trees on the ground is a different story) and the temperatures started in the mid-20s. It isn't as cut and dry as you make it out to be. How long it has been cold before hand plays a big part..

That is one anomalous example. And while the surface roads weren't icy, I'm sure the bridges in fact were - which introduces a significant hazard.

And doesn't the issuance of said product indicate that it already takes these steps?

It does, but it's an advisory, not a warning. Does not communicate the threat to life and property. By that standard, we need to remove all descriptive wording from every other product as it is useless.

This isn't true. You can have freezing rain and not have ice accumulate on roads. See the December 2007 ice storm in Oklahoma.

So why would they issue the advisory if it had absolutely no other impact? Trace icing on trees and power lines is an inconsequential event.

This argument carries little weight with me. I'm opposed to the the use of Call-to-Action statements in general. Furthermore, I think all tornado warnings are tornado emergencies and we don't need tornado emergency language.

Someone in charge decided that they were worth implementing - which means apparently the consensus doesn't go along with the position you outline.

Which goes back to what I've already said. Use existing products to highlight the threat.

Exactly. If a new product isn't practical, then change the wording of the existing product to properly illustrate the threat.

 

[Dan Robinson]

Said mother probably lives a rat race lifestyle where her husband works 12hrs overtime every day so she has to rush rush rush and get the kids to school etc etc and wont take time to slow down or check these kinds of updates.

I have a hard time making the default assumption that she would have done nothing differently if she'd heard a TV met say that a warning was out, and that the conditions were life-threatening if not taken seriously. If she knew that there was a possibility that she'd be sliding head-on into a truck and losing her two kids, I think she would have said "to heck with school, we're staying home for a while."

People are human and deserve some grace. We all get caught up in daily life and have the chance to miss warning signs that may or may not be obvious. Some additional reminders aren't unreasonable prospects.