Apr 20, 2022·edited Apr 20, 2022Liked by James Spann
The one issue I see is the fact that social media meteorologists, ESPECIALLY on youtube, have largely taken over so much that people are in a sense trying to put their faith into their forecasts and nowcasts over what the NWS is doing. That's a serious issue and I have seen it too much on youtube and now people saying to specific weather enthusiast with no degree in weather that "I trust you over the weather service" and I am just stunned.
Like how?! Why? But then the youtube people sometimes then will capitalize over this more and more with merch promotions and donations and they make a LOT and I mean A LOT of money on it. Tune into many of the streams on a big event and you will see THOUSANDS of $$$ being donated....even $200-$500 donation regularly. I mean again there's no way to control the narrative that is being done now but I just hope people come to reason that professional meteorology people, we mostly know what we are doing and spotters giving us false info is not the way to go. I almost think this is also a problem where people are not just educated enough to chase and there so many amateur chasers now in the field with no meteorology training to understand what they are seeing. Everything these days is being reported as a "large, violent tornado" when it's literally just a skinny small tornado sitting in a field and you can tell it's far from "large and violent". That just seems to be a "get views" terms and people become de-sensitized when it is real.
Just a civilian here but.. for the longest time we were told that outdoor weather sirens were “tornado sirens”. Now every town has different rules for when they sound the sirens. There’s a town near me that sounds them for darn near everything. It’s like chaos trying to figure out if it’s pea sized hail or tornado warning.
That plus the social media cowboys you’ve mentioned, and no wonder people don’t pay attention. For those of us that do.. we better have a smart phone and an app because turning on the tv to look at a radar or turning on the radio to hear a report are so hit and miss (assuming we are without a NOAA radio, and I’m sure there are a lot without). Let’s wait and see these 5min of ads or scroll down through the cluttered mayhem of your site of choice to find the hidden weather radar and hope you’re safe already while you wait for it to load.
Network news repeatedly will hype just about any weather event. From the ABC reporter who excitedly reported that dime size hail was falling to the NBC anchor who warned us that 100 million people were in the risk for severe weather even though 90% of that was a low end marginal risk. This all happens too often.
What do you propose to do when that hypothetical EF-0 that you want to ignore, goes thru a cycle and ramps up to EF-2 and hits a town or a school, or a large populated area? Probabilistic risk data might be one answer, but to ignore a tornadic storm just because it's not an EF-1 or above is pure BS. If you really and truly want to stop the hype or the crying wolf, educate the public about the differences between the "uneducated storm chaser hunting for clicks", and the legitimately credentialed professionals. The onus should never be on the radar operators, it should be on the unprofessional hypers. Also, concentrate on nailing these deliberate false reporters to the wall, and educate people on what a tornadic storm looks like in the field.
james you are right with these false alarms it makes the tornado warning loses its crediblity and meaning and unfortunately some people ignore these types of warnings and i think the tornado emergency meaning needs to be raised to higher meaning and it would help the national weather service make better decisions when having these kinds of warnings
How about this: Treat severe weather the way Ryan Hall treats it: Be Prepared: Don't Be Scared. Oh, another thing; there are way too many tornado warnings for rotating thunderstorms where much of the time, they do not produce a tornado. The original intent of the upgraded tornado warnings was to issue them based on vortices aloft. The idea was to increase warning time BEFORE a vortex touched ground. The proactive system seemed good at the time, but what I have noticed is after many years of live storm coverage of storm warnings, the tornado warnings a lot of the time turn out to not be needed. So, they should just say severe thunderstorm warning with a tornado tag on it, for POSSIBLE tornado, but not a tornado warning. Also, time to do away with the overlapping thunderstorm and tornado warning polygons; again, there's too many warnings often for the SAME THUNDERSTORM for slightly different geographical areas, and they often overlap too much. It's a wonder folks have lost interest in the warnings. In the winter, we've had occasional thunderstorm warnings for a sharp line of heavy rain and gusty winds, here in N.Y. State, with no thunder and lightning!! Even in the summer I have seen them do this. I think they are abusing the thunderstorm and tornado warning system. Also, if spotters are going to give KNOWINGLY false reports, they should be kicked out of the spotter network, out of SKYWARN, whatever. Spotters need to be well-trained, and to join the network, SKYWARN classes should be REQUIRED. They need to be honest spotters, and not make things up. It seems that in the 70's, convective weather warnings used to mean something. They were special warnings. Even the "special weather statements" are not "special" anymore. Special Marine Warnings??? HAH!! They too are too common, and they even issue those for "heavy strong showers"!! That's another thing I have seen them do in summer or winter. Also, why are there small craft advisories every day for winds of only 10 to 20 miles an hour? They need to do away with those and replace them with the old small craft WARNINGS. Even THOSE should only be issued for winds of maybe 20 to 40 miles an hour. This would be a step short of GALE WARNINGS. A small craft WARNING for 20-40 mile-an-hour winds would get boaters attention. Also, as soon as the back edge of the rain clears the west edge of the warning, or the front edge goes beyond the east end of the warning, they could extend the warning. This should be updated at 5-minute scans. Anyway, those are my thoughts concerning the warning system we have in place.
The spotter issue can be resolved by only allowing reports from people with a certain number of certified, in-person, training hours with their local news station or the NWS. The spotter number concept but on crack, anyone without a spotter number will not count as valid reports unless they are EMS. On top of that, to retain that number, you should have to renew that training annually. That is one solvable problem. But you're right, the wx community has created a culture that promotes small timers and discredits the NWS, and that's not okay. It's up to the people that know it's a problem to work on creating a culture that combats that mindset.
The one issue I see is the fact that social media meteorologists, ESPECIALLY on youtube, have largely taken over so much that people are in a sense trying to put their faith into their forecasts and nowcasts over what the NWS is doing. That's a serious issue and I have seen it too much on youtube and now people saying to specific weather enthusiast with no degree in weather that "I trust you over the weather service" and I am just stunned.
Like how?! Why? But then the youtube people sometimes then will capitalize over this more and more with merch promotions and donations and they make a LOT and I mean A LOT of money on it. Tune into many of the streams on a big event and you will see THOUSANDS of $$$ being donated....even $200-$500 donation regularly. I mean again there's no way to control the narrative that is being done now but I just hope people come to reason that professional meteorology people, we mostly know what we are doing and spotters giving us false info is not the way to go. I almost think this is also a problem where people are not just educated enough to chase and there so many amateur chasers now in the field with no meteorology training to understand what they are seeing. Everything these days is being reported as a "large, violent tornado" when it's literally just a skinny small tornado sitting in a field and you can tell it's far from "large and violent". That just seems to be a "get views" terms and people become de-sensitized when it is real.
Just a civilian here but.. for the longest time we were told that outdoor weather sirens were “tornado sirens”. Now every town has different rules for when they sound the sirens. There’s a town near me that sounds them for darn near everything. It’s like chaos trying to figure out if it’s pea sized hail or tornado warning.
That plus the social media cowboys you’ve mentioned, and no wonder people don’t pay attention. For those of us that do.. we better have a smart phone and an app because turning on the tv to look at a radar or turning on the radio to hear a report are so hit and miss (assuming we are without a NOAA radio, and I’m sure there are a lot without). Let’s wait and see these 5min of ads or scroll down through the cluttered mayhem of your site of choice to find the hidden weather radar and hope you’re safe already while you wait for it to load.
Network news repeatedly will hype just about any weather event. From the ABC reporter who excitedly reported that dime size hail was falling to the NBC anchor who warned us that 100 million people were in the risk for severe weather even though 90% of that was a low end marginal risk. This all happens too often.
@RyanHallYall
What do you propose to do when that hypothetical EF-0 that you want to ignore, goes thru a cycle and ramps up to EF-2 and hits a town or a school, or a large populated area? Probabilistic risk data might be one answer, but to ignore a tornadic storm just because it's not an EF-1 or above is pure BS. If you really and truly want to stop the hype or the crying wolf, educate the public about the differences between the "uneducated storm chaser hunting for clicks", and the legitimately credentialed professionals. The onus should never be on the radar operators, it should be on the unprofessional hypers. Also, concentrate on nailing these deliberate false reporters to the wall, and educate people on what a tornadic storm looks like in the field.
james you are right with these false alarms it makes the tornado warning loses its crediblity and meaning and unfortunately some people ignore these types of warnings and i think the tornado emergency meaning needs to be raised to higher meaning and it would help the national weather service make better decisions when having these kinds of warnings
How about this: Treat severe weather the way Ryan Hall treats it: Be Prepared: Don't Be Scared. Oh, another thing; there are way too many tornado warnings for rotating thunderstorms where much of the time, they do not produce a tornado. The original intent of the upgraded tornado warnings was to issue them based on vortices aloft. The idea was to increase warning time BEFORE a vortex touched ground. The proactive system seemed good at the time, but what I have noticed is after many years of live storm coverage of storm warnings, the tornado warnings a lot of the time turn out to not be needed. So, they should just say severe thunderstorm warning with a tornado tag on it, for POSSIBLE tornado, but not a tornado warning. Also, time to do away with the overlapping thunderstorm and tornado warning polygons; again, there's too many warnings often for the SAME THUNDERSTORM for slightly different geographical areas, and they often overlap too much. It's a wonder folks have lost interest in the warnings. In the winter, we've had occasional thunderstorm warnings for a sharp line of heavy rain and gusty winds, here in N.Y. State, with no thunder and lightning!! Even in the summer I have seen them do this. I think they are abusing the thunderstorm and tornado warning system. Also, if spotters are going to give KNOWINGLY false reports, they should be kicked out of the spotter network, out of SKYWARN, whatever. Spotters need to be well-trained, and to join the network, SKYWARN classes should be REQUIRED. They need to be honest spotters, and not make things up. It seems that in the 70's, convective weather warnings used to mean something. They were special warnings. Even the "special weather statements" are not "special" anymore. Special Marine Warnings??? HAH!! They too are too common, and they even issue those for "heavy strong showers"!! That's another thing I have seen them do in summer or winter. Also, why are there small craft advisories every day for winds of only 10 to 20 miles an hour? They need to do away with those and replace them with the old small craft WARNINGS. Even THOSE should only be issued for winds of maybe 20 to 40 miles an hour. This would be a step short of GALE WARNINGS. A small craft WARNING for 20-40 mile-an-hour winds would get boaters attention. Also, as soon as the back edge of the rain clears the west edge of the warning, or the front edge goes beyond the east end of the warning, they could extend the warning. This should be updated at 5-minute scans. Anyway, those are my thoughts concerning the warning system we have in place.
The spotter issue can be resolved by only allowing reports from people with a certain number of certified, in-person, training hours with their local news station or the NWS. The spotter number concept but on crack, anyone without a spotter number will not count as valid reports unless they are EMS. On top of that, to retain that number, you should have to renew that training annually. That is one solvable problem. But you're right, the wx community has created a culture that promotes small timers and discredits the NWS, and that's not okay. It's up to the people that know it's a problem to work on creating a culture that combats that mindset.