Originally posted by Roger Edwards
Because PWOs were *such* rare products (HIGH risk only, 3-4 times a year) they generally got little notice outside this sort of group (weather weenies who check for them specifically). PWOs were too rare!
Also, the technical SWOs are intended for meteorological guidance, not everybody at large. We get a LOT of feedback questions asking what CAPE means, what \"30 NW END...RSL...TOP...25 N MKC\" stand for, what is \"deep layer shear\", etc. Clearly there are a lot of folks trying to use the daily technical outlooks who don't (and shouldn't be expected to) understand them. This screams at the need for more frequent plain language products to convey the severe threat to more taxpayers. Yet we still wanted to reserve the PWO for only a most-critical subset of severe days that could be more dangerous than usual. Therefore...
Last winter I proposed increasing their frequency to all categorical MDTs in order to
1. Provide a plain language outlook (PWO) more often, explaining what the SPC forecasters expect on the days of heightened severe potential -- which are MDT and HIGH categorical risks (lately, 30-40 total/year on average)
2. Increase the visibility of SPC to the media and public through such outlooks.
Consensus among the staff was that it was worth a try, so we went with it -- a little later than hoped because one of the folks involved with software setup was out for a couple of months with medical problems. We also bumped down by one level a few of the probability thresholds for MDT risks. The various pages explaining these things should be updated soon, I hope.