Massive Technology Failure?

[Bill Tabor]

Last night David Douglas and myself were navigating in the dark home into the tornado watch box and oncoming storms when we realized all radar on GR3 was very old. Next we saw that Iphone app Radarscope showed what appeared to be all station (in the country?) as red meaning not operational. Fortunately I had Threatnet right? Nope. I switch to that app and it isn't even recognizing the radio id even though it was working properly earlier. I eventually switched to my Weathertap account (yep I'm that redundant) and found Radarlab Hd was functional. I've heard today of the NWS server overload but does that explain Mobile Threatnet not even having a proper radio ID?
at the time David and I jokingly considered solar flares, Chinese hacking attack, impending nuclear attack, satellites taken out by (fill in the blank), lastly...alien invasion - lol! Hopefully this can get fixed soon. The season is still early and the server load issues will only get worse. Can anyone explain the Threatnet issue?

 

[rdale]

It won't get fixed by NWS as it's a money and time thing. Best bet is to pay a few dollars a month and avoid that issue entirely. Anyone relying on radar data should never use free sources...

 

[Robert Rohloff]

ThreatNet did that again today I had issues with it locking on and numerous errors....

 

[Bill Tabor]

Is this because of the upgrade to the higher res radar using more bandwidth / resources?

 

[Rob Wadsworth]

One would surely think this wouldn't be an issue at all anymore - considering the level of relatively inexpensive equipment and better bandwidth available. I hope it doesn't prove to be 'the' weak link. Especially if there is a major outbreak this season. A day late and a dollar short won't work as an excuse if many are harmed/killed for this reason - should it occur. 'I told you so' just wouldn't seem appropriate either. Personally, didn't think this would even be a problem this year...

 

[rdale]

Did anyone call WxWorx to find out why?

 

[David Douglas]

They guys who drove into the MS tornado (the video has been seen on multiple media outlets) narrated that they drove into the tornado because the had old radar data. That may be true. Should they have taken the timestamp and storm speed into account, sure... but we'll all have to be careful this year and expect an outage at the worst point during a chase and plan your route and timing accordingly.

 

[David Douglas]

By the way, Rob, these are not 'free' resources. They are paid for by my tax dollars. I would expect that NOAA would understand and plan for the expansion and use of their services as more and more people rely and use the them.

 

[Jay McCoy]

They guys who drove into the MS tornado (the video has been seen on multiple media outlets) narrated that they drove into the tornado because the had old radar data. That may be true. Should they have taken the timestamp and storm speed into account, sure... but we'll all have to be careful this year and expect an outage at the worst point during a chase and plan your route and timing accordingly.

That is becoming more and more of a problem is chasers depending on radar to do the chasing and do the popular thing right now of getting "in close' and when the technology fails they find themselves in over their heads. many of the newer less experienced chasers dont know how to read a storm visually and use the radar to get them into bad spots and back out again. With the continuing issue the NWS is going to have with its feed and the issue of overloading cell towers I have a feeling we are going to see alot more of this until it finally ends up in a chaser fatality.

 

[Dave Lewison]

Relying on your gear to keep you safe instead of your eyes, brain & experience is just plain stupidity. Have to agree with Jay that this kind of issue is only going to get worse. Makes me kind of glad I was learning to chase back when in-car radar was only a fantasy. I can fall back on that when the cell towers get overloaded. Won't make me any less pissed off about it though.

 

[Ben Holcomb]

blah blah blah in before another epic arguing thread over using radar. Without radar I couldn't have gotten into that yesterday. I love gadgets, they make my life easier

 

[Bill Tabor]

They guys who drove into the MS tornado (the video has been seen on multiple media outlets) narrated that they drove into the tornado because the had old radar data. That may be true. Should they have taken the timestamp and storm speed into account, sure... but we'll all have to be careful this year and expect an outage at the worst point during a chase and plan your route and timing accordingly.

That's pretty sad. Hope they are ok. Yes, nowadays we all rely on timely, accurate radar. I have chased back when it was difficult to get a radar grab and I did have to rely a lot visually; however having a good accurate radar image is really helpful. As David knows, the problem comes about because you are going along just fine and never had radar update or failure issues before and then out of the blue and you may not even be aware it gets old or goes out. If this happens in a precarious situation that can be a problem. I do tend to often look at the timestamp, but sometimes in the heat of battle with no time I may forget to and then I can be navigating on old data. Case in point Friday I was cutting in front of a tornado warned cell and it was a very close call keeping me out of large hail and possibly even a rain wrapped tornado. I was very closely analyzing the radar to figure out my clearance. Fortunately David was also on the other side providing visuals. I didn't have time to really check the timestamps well. I believe this is one of the cells where the Tornado warning may have mentioned a large tornado was sited by spotters. David mentioned he thought he saw something that could be a rain wrapped circulation - hard to say. Had the radar gone out on me at that time without David on the other side providing visuals I may have been in an unhappy spot. Fortunately it didn't go out then. I was also going by visual and it appeared I was good and clear, but sometimes that can be easy to misjudge based on storm speed and a storm's ability to change or propagate in it's environment.

Now that we have had such a failure all of us will likely be more careful, more visual based, and perhaps switch to private data providers as well, but it would be nice if NWS can fix their server and bandwidth problem.

 

[cdcollura]

Good afternoon,

They guys who drove into the MS tornado (the video has been seen on multiple media outlets) narrated that they drove into the tornado because the had old radar data...

This was NOT only WX worx was I was on that storm and using GRLevel3 and noticed the radar image was old, and - in a panic - I had to bail out of the storm core because it was 15 miles (over) me instead of where I thought it was!

 

[Jesse Risley]

Technology failures don't have to spoil a chase and they don't have to be dangerous to life and limb. I was with Brad Goddard and Kevin Crawmer yesterday, and we were dealing with data issues 30+ minutes before the tornado hit Yazoo City, much of which was cell reception related.

The bottom line is that one needs to understand storm structure and behavior, including wind direction, leaving yourself a safe distance from the storm and anticipating a potential change of direction without palpable notice (e.g. right turn). Technology has done wonders for this hobby, but it cannot and should not replace common sense. Even if the data is working like a champ, one should always remember that the latest scans you are viewing are old anyhow.

 

[Rob Wadsworth]

By the way, Rob, these are not 'free' resources. They are paid for by my tax dollars. I would expect that NOAA would understand and plan for the expansion and use of their services as more and more people rely and use the them.

Couldn't agree more. It is puzzling why these conditions should still be so. I can understand reception issues; I cannot accept a failure of time lost and needed data to be missing due to bandwidth issues and data flow.