• After witnessing the continued decrease of involvement in the SpotterNetwork staff in serving SN members with troubleshooting issues recently, I have unilaterally decided to terminate the relationship between SpotterNetwork's support and Stormtrack. I have witnessed multiple users unable to receive support weeks after initiating help threads on the forum. I find this lack of response from SpotterNetwork officials disappointing and a failure to hold up their end of the agreement that was made years ago, before I took over management of this site. In my opinion, having Stormtrack users sit and wait for so long to receive help on SpotterNetwork issues on the Stormtrack forums reflects poorly not only on SpotterNetwork, but on Stormtrack and (by association) me as well. Since the issue has not been satisfactorily addressed, I no longer wish for the Stormtrack forum to be associated with SpotterNetwork.

    I apologize to those who continue to have issues with the service and continue to see their issues left unaddressed. Please understand that the connection between ST and SN was put in place long before I had any say over it. But now that I am the "captain of this ship," it is within my right (nay, duty) to make adjustments as I see necessary. Ending this relationship is such an adjustment.

    For those who continue to need help, I recommend navigating a web browswer to SpotterNetwork's About page, and seeking the individuals listed on that page for all further inquiries about SpotterNetwork.

    From this moment forward, the SpotterNetwork sub-forum has been hidden/deleted and there will be no assurance that any SpotterNetwork issues brought up in any of Stormtrack's other sub-forums will be addressed. Do not rely on Stormtrack for help with SpotterNetwork issues.

    Sincerely, Jeff D.

Poor Media Use of Weather Terminology

Ummmmmmmm....what?

I mentioned it in another thread but that's standard media terminology unless a tornado has been officially confirmed by NWS survey, even though it's really meant for situations where some storm damage occurred in the middle of the night or invisible inside a wall of rain. When a hundred chasers have video of a huge funnel flinging debris everywhere, then...<shrugs>.

I work as a newscast director for a local TV station, and I've told our producers to stop using that term when there's clear video of it. It usually comes to us in the boilerplate scripts that accompany national network video.
 
My favorite was on The Weather Channel decades ago:

The girl was trying to say “hot off the press” and she said “my hot little hands.”
 
It's kind of a dead horse at this point, isn't it? It's standard media practice to wait for NWS confirmation that a tornado occurred. Yes, it looks silly when there's spectacular video of it in progress. My station did this in our story about the Greenwood tornado this morning. I reminded our producer not to do that when there's clear video, but it'll probably keep happening.
 
It's kind of a dead horse at this point, isn't it? It's standard media practice to wait for NWS confirmation that a tornado occurred. Yes, it looks silly when there's spectacular video of it in progress. My station did this in our story about the Greenwood tornado this morning. I reminded our producer not to do that when there's clear video, but it'll probably keep happening.
Found another post about the Greenwood tornado (called as "funnel cloud" by AP)
 
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