What is a tornado advisory?

[Todd Friskey]

This Friday night the metro area of New York is under a tornado warning. I went to WNBC-TV, their website (http://www.nbcnewyork.com/) and they have a headline (link) that reads "Tornado Advisory for city, Jersey and Connecticut". I just never heard that before? I assume that is the same as a warning? I clicked on the link but it would not open for me at the time.

 

[rdale]

It's an editor typing in a headline who has no clue what he is doing. There is no such thing.

 

[Todd Friskey]

Thanks for clearing that up rdale. I had a feeling that might be the case. After I posted. I did a Google search on the term and did not find any satisfactory results. I did save a screen shot of the WNBC -TV webpage to my laptop.

 

[Jason Foster]

Maybe something like TWC's TorCon or whatever that thing is called. Purely for marketing/TV use, nothing official (as has already been answered). I'm sure others throughout the country can mention (if it isn't already a different thread) some of the crazy naming schemes for severe weather TV stations have used in the past & present.

 

[Mike Johnston]

The media can label something as whatever they want. For example, if you use Yahoo's little weather summary, you will often see a label "severe weather alert" next to your hometown's current conditions. In our case, this "severe weather alert" only refers to a heat advisory - which we've had in effect every day for weeks now.

 

[Todd Friskey]

I know this is like like beating a dead horse now so I'll end it with the screen shot I took. Note: When my cursor changed into the hand over the text instead of arrow I thought I had a link. Clicked multiple times and nothing.

 

[Danny Neal]

I'm guessing the editor felt the word "watch" was overused so he went in his trusty thesaurus and found the word "advise" -> "Advisory" At least that is what I took it as. We know there is no such thing but will Joe Schmo watching CNN put together what a "tornado advisory" is? Who knows. Hard to get the general public to know what the NWS/SPC/NOAA means when the people feeding it to them don't even know.

 

[rdale]

It's also an indication that the public doesn't understand the watch/warning terminology.

 

[Karen St John]

I'm guessing the editor felt the word "watch" was overused so he went in his trusty thesaurus and found the word "advise" -> "Advisory" At least that is what I took it as. We know there is no such thing but will Joe Schmo watching CNN put together what a "tornado advisory" is? Who knows. Hard to get the general public to know what the NWS/SPC/NOAA means when the people feeding it to them don't even know.

I think you've hit the nail on the head.

We have "winter weather advisories" all the time up here in snowy Michigan. Leaving aside the obvious fact that any weather between December 21st-March 21st is going to be "winter weather" I think the news stations are just trying to jolt the public a bit without using the official wordings.

Why is the bigger question.

I suppose that to the public, watches and even warnings are in the range of the banal. (Until your house is shredded, of course.) An advisory is probably supposed to make someone pause a little, and consider the situation. Whether it is in one ear, out the other...is yet to be determined.

IMO only, what is much more useful is how the public is trained to react, to the watches and warnings before they go up.

 

[Dave Kaplow]

Apparently some people consider "advisory" as a generic catch-all phrase encompassing all the types of warnings and perhaps watches too. For instance, look at this site that I occasionally use for its local lightning graphics. In the upper left there's a box labeled "Advisories" that usually contains any active severe warnings for the area, and I think they may list watches in there, too. Clearly the site's designers think that a severe thunderstorm warning is a kind of advisory. And so on. Not sure how widespread this usage is, but it might explain why NBC would use the term as per the original post. If you look at the actual NWS OKX Watch, Warning and Advisory criteria page there is no such term as "tornado advisory" listed anywhere.

 

[Chris Vagasky]

I think you've hit the nail on the head.

We have "winter weather advisories" all the time up here in snowy Michigan. Leaving aside the obvious fact that any weather between December 21st-March 21st is going to be "winter weather" I think the news stations are just trying to jolt the public a bit without using the official wordings.

That is not entirely true...

http://www.crh.noaa.gov/dtx/wwa_definitions/wsw.php

Scroll down to For Advisories...

 

[Mike Deep]

It's also an indication that the public doesn't understand the watch/warning terminology.

Not a bit. I have to give family/friends a refresher almost every time they come up.

 

[Jeff Richardson]

Not a bit. I have to give family/friends a refresher almost every time they come up.

Same here. People often think a warning means, "We're warning you, it may happen sometime today" and a watch conveys a need to "watch" for a tornado that's been "confirmed."