Impact Briefing from Derecho Event from NWS

[NaoPos]

I'll admit, whenever the scroll comes across the bottom with the "beep beep beep" and it's not my county, I don't read it... I believe that's the average joe's viewpoint. I still think the best way would be what they're implementing now on text messages. And it has to be worded a little simpler.

[Boch23]

I'll admit, whenever the scroll comes across the bottom with the "beep beep beep" and it's not my county, I don't read it... I believe that's the average joe's viewpoint. I still think the best way would be what they're implementing now on text messages. And it has to be worded a little simpler.

To expand on this. The fact that in some cases its scrolled once maybe twice doesn't help. The day in which the line fizzled as it went into SE PA the warning scrolled across the screen twice. If you flip a channel or step away from the TV you miss it. I realize its only a smaller issue in the bigger issue but keeping the warnings scrolling on all news stations wouldn't hurt. It would be no different then when school closings scroll at the bottom of the screen during winter storms.

And as you said it all comes down to the average joe. As long as they neglect and ignore the warnings these issues will be around.

[MGorse]

Don't want to hear the patented reply "it struck with little or no advance warning", Seaside Heights is within the southeast part of the warning polygon, they got the most advanced warning of nearly anyone in this specific warning. That being said we have to get people to respond quicker to these storms, our job is not done when the warning is issued.

But if people do not actually get the warning, naturally many tend to say "it struck with little or no warning". I agree that our job is not done when the warning is issued, however there is only so much we can do.

There was some mention in this thread about TV crawls. While these are great to get the warning out there, many times the warning that scrolls on the TV screen is rather brief, only mentions entire counties, and does not mention the actual threat.

[HM]

It's the fricken media companies fault in my opinion. That's TV/FM stations they don't step it up and help out in giving the timely warnings right that are provided by the NWS it's a fricken scroll people don't want to read it, they want it read to them, so the tv stations and fm stations need to flash cut in with some on the air staff to get the warnings out better thus helping the nws. The NWS did their job perfect.

Well, I don't know about that end of things. But what makes sense to me logically is that any outdoor activity should have someone monitoring or someway of monitoring the weather. This isn't really that tough. I don't know anything about the way Seaside operates but clearly they weren't prepared for this thunderstorm.

[CoastalWx]

Well, I don't know about that end of things. But what makes sense to me logically is that any outdoor activity should have someone monitoring or someway of monitoring the weather. This isn't really that tough. I don't know anything about the way Seaside operates but clearly they weren't prepared for this thunderstorm.

I think this is slowly starting to come around. Even on the 4th of July here, towns had fireworks cancelled due to the threat of rough weather and the city of Boston did a great job bringing 500,000 people into a tunnel to take cover from an impending storm. Instances like that concert tragedy last year in Indiana really made organizers think about the ramifications.

However, I agree that we need to do a better job. Someone has to make these people realize that rough weather is a possibility and to monitor local outlets and wx radio for warnings. This is not the NWS job, but rather some higher up organizer. They simply need to communicate that. Unfortunately, we can't fix lack of common sense and stupidity. You can see storms coming from far away, especially on the beach. You mean to tell me nobody had the thought to either stop the ride or listen to the weather when they saw this thing coming in from 20+ miles out? That bothers me more than anything.

[HM]

I think this is slowly starting to come around. Even on the 4th of July here, towns had fireworks cancelled due to the threat of rough weather and the city of Boston did a great job bringing 500,000 people into a tunnel to take cover from an impending storm. Instances like that concert tragedy last year in Indiana really made organizers think about the ramifications.

However, I agree that we need to do a better job. Someone has to make these people realize that rough weather is a possibility and to monitor local outlets and wx radio for warnings. This is not the NWS job, but rather some higher up organizer. They simply need to communicate that. Unfortunately, we can't fix lack of common sense and stupidity. You can see storms coming from far away, especially on the beach. You mean to tell me nobody had the thought to either stop the ride or listen to the weather when they saw this thing coming in from 20+ miles out? That bothers me more than anything.

We are only going to hear about the failures, nationally-speaking of course, and that may not be a fair assessment of our current alerting system (when locally, there may be several cases of great warnings and proper actions by the public and no one cares outside of that area).

If I'm going to produce a contract to an organizer / highest official of any outdoor event, I would certainly put in something about the protection of the public from nature. There really is no excuse to have people on a chair lift almost 40' above the ground at the time of impact. Clearly, this is out of the WFO's hands and in the hands of Seaside. Like I said, I know very little about Seaside.

I see that you and especially the guys at Mt. Holly in this thread seem to think we need to do more. I say, as long as the warnings are done properly and timely, it is a bit out of your hands. I don't really see where we can do more. From our end, the main issue continues to be the forecasts before watch-warning time. This is especially true about the derecho a couple of weeks ago.

[CoastalWx]

We are only going to hear about the failures, nationally-speaking of course, and that may not be a fair assessment of our current alerting system (when locally, there may be several cases of great warnings and proper actions by the public and no one cares outside of that area).

If I'm going to produce a contract to an organizer / highest official of any outdoor event, I would certainly put in something about the protection of the public from nature. There really is no excuse to have people on a chair lift almost 40' above the ground at the time of impact. Clearly, this is out of the WFO's hands and in the hands of Seaside. Like I said, I know very little about Seaside.

I see that you and especially the guys at Mt. Holly in this thread seem to think we need to do more. I say, as long as the warnings are done properly and timely, it is a bit out of your hands. I don't really see where we can do more. From our end, the main issue continues to be the forecasts before watch-warning time. This is especially true about the derecho a couple of weeks ago.

I should clarify. I don't mean we as in the meteorological community, I meant more from the organizer standpoint as you seem to agree on. I agree the NWS did all they can. I'm sure that some folks in the NWS may feel like they need to do more, but they already did their job in issuing warnings to protect life and property well in advance and are extremely busy in severe wx days. I think there is only so much you can do. You issue accurate and timely warnings in advance, but I'm not sure the burden should be put on them for doing even more to communicate this. I don't work for the NWS so I'm not trying to throw points around about an environment which I never worked in, but I support them and their mission.

That was my bad earlier, for wording that in a manner that wasn't clear.

I will say that I still think it's a matter of time before we have an awful tragedy at some sort of a sporting or concert venue because of the shortfalls we discussed. We have come awfully close to that already. I hope that I'm wrong.

[Grothar]

Why can we not simply have an ambler alert to turn into a red alert for extreme weather events, tornado warning, severe thunderstorm warning, blizzard warning, ice storm warning etc and only mark red alerts as weather warnings only? Allow all phone companies to issue immediate red alerts on their phones, on billboards and of course on tv/radio like they do with ambler alerts. We care enough about lost or missing children, why not the safety of the entire family?

[dryslotted]

Why can we not simply have an ambler alert to turn into a red alert for extreme weather events, tornado warning, severe thunderstorm warning, blizzard warning, ice storm warning etc and only mark red alerts as weather warnings only? Allow all phone companies to issue immediate red alerts on their phones, on billboards and of course on tv/radio like they do with ambler alerts. We care enough about lost or missing children, why not the safety of the entire family?

They even do Silver Alerts for stolen cars. I see them posted on the highway signs heading into the city some mornings. It seems they could throw a wx warning up there if it was significant enough. Not sure how much red tape would need to be cut through to accomplish something like this and have the warnings be timely and succinct...

[nesis]

Here are some pics from that severe storm on June 24, 2010 from Citizens Bank Park. Never felt winds last that long. Anytime I'm let down by a storm I just think of that one.

[phlwx]

RE: the media's end of it...

The technology is out there and is used in a number of markets in the Midwest to use the polygon based warning graphics in crawls for severe weather. There's no reason that TV market #4 can't have this technology in place. Reason why I bring this up is because a warning graphic or a crawl on TV showing the whole of a county under a warning is 90% of the time not valid/accurate...especially with big counties like Burlington, Montco (which stretches 35 miles from west to east), Bucks, and Chester. Since every TV station w/ a news operation (except for WFMZ and WMGM down in SNJ) is owned/operated by their parent network in this market, the money should be there to spend on getting a better warning/graphic system in place.

I don't think you need "break in" coverage for stuff like severe storms but you do need a more accurate graphic/warning crawl that highlights the towns in the path of the warning.

If we're going to improve the warning/communication process, let's get the right warnings in place and put the polygons on TV instead of showing the whole county...or misaccurately telling viewers and those on twitter that a whole county is under a warning when it's a portion of it.

/rant.

[snowlurker]

RE: the media's end of it...

The technology is out there and is used in a number of markets in the Midwest to use the polygon based warning graphics in crawls for severe weather. There's no reason that TV market #4 can't have this technology in place. Reason why I bring this up is because a warning graphic or a crawl on TV showing the whole of a county under a warning is 90% of the time not valid/accurate...especially with big counties like Burlington, Montco (which stretches 35 miles from west to east), Bucks, and Chester. Since every TV station w/ a news operation (except for WFMZ and WMGM down in SNJ) is owned/operated by their parent network in this market, the money should be there to spend on getting a better warning/graphic system in place.

I don't think you need "break in" coverage for stuff like severe storms but you do need a more accurate graphic/warning crawl that highlights the towns in the path of the warning.

If we're going to improve the warning/communication process, let's get the right warnings in place and put the polygons on TV instead of showing the whole county...or misaccurately telling viewers and those on twitter that a whole county is under a warning when it's a portion of it.

/rant.

Your point regarding "90% of the time not valid/accurate" is quite an excellent one. Such a failure rate unfairly erodes the credibility of meteorologists. In other words, it's the boy who howled wolf all over again. It's not the meteorologists' fault that the news manages don't insist upon the specific kinds of warnings that Tom mentions.

[BucksCO_PA]

I guess the issue is who is liable in situations like this? You don't have to pay to walk on the boardwalk, but you do have to pay to use the beach. I'm guessing a warning (in appropriate time) should have gone out to beachgoers (townships responsibility?). Similar case with those who would have been at a place like Great Adventure in Jersey. I hope a warning went out well in advance of the incoming storms (theme park responsibility?).

N. Wildwood & Wildwood authorities do an outstanding job of broadcasting the NWS severe t-storm warnings & subsequently clearing the beaches and with the size of those beaches it's no small feat.

On the flip side I was really suprised at the manner in which Hershey Park handled the weather situation this past Thurs. Despite the elevated potential for severe weather & that warnings went out over an hour in advance of the storms the park waited until 20 mins before the storms arrived to close only the water park. They simply announced that due to inclement weather the water park was temporarily closing, no mention at all that severe t-storm warning has been issued by the NWS. Even more shocking was they didn't completely close the remainder of the rides until after the gust front had blown through - seriously there were still people on rides and had this storm come through with 60-70mph winds you would have had some big time problems.

[BucksCO_PA]

http://www.philly.com/philly/news/local/20120729_Strong_words__Are_weather_warnings_dramatic_enough_to_make_you_run_for_cover_.html?page=1&c=y

Some more ink for our Tong G.

The short & sweet IMO, combination of "warning fatigue" and more so the mainstream media's nauseating sensationalism of weather events has numbed the general population.....

[phlwx]

the "lack of good warning" factor with the derecho is rooted in the fact that it was poorly modeled, came through during the night, and that the forecasts until the last few hours were calling for the storms to weaken or miss completely to the south.

Even at 4 PM the SPC still had this thing going south of NJ and most every forecaster was saying Delmarva or weakening with the storms.

The only time that a risk was issued for the region was at 9 PM, three hours before the storm hit.

That said, Thursday was well modeled and pretty well forecast several days out...probably overhyped (the "d" word was probably ill advised on the SPC's part) but it was a much better forecast than 6/29.

This doesn't dispute the NWS' assertion that warnings verified (they did) but it does show that there's a big reason why people were caught off guard and felt like this snuck up on them...because in reality it pretty much did. This isn't a blast on the NWS because all forecasts were pretty much off...and it goes to show that we still have a long way to go to get MCS/derecho/severe events nailed in advance.

[MGorse]

http://www.philly.co...html?page=1&c=y

Some more ink for our Tong G.

The short & sweet IMO, combination of "warning fatigue" and more so the mainstream media's nauseating sensationalism of weather events has numbed the general population.....

This quote I find a little interesting "It's not that meteorologists had muffed the forecast; they actually had gotten it right. So why did so few people get the message? Why didn't the forecasts grab their attention?" This is somewhat misleading I think as the forecasts leading up to the June 29-30 derecho were not stellar. There were still 20 pops in the forecast across southern NJ late that evening despite a severe thunderstorm watch in effect (not ripping my office, just looking for ways to learn and improve from this). A review has taken place at my office, which I was a part of. Also, a service assessement is ongoing regarding the entire event. I think several interesting finds/recommendations will come out of this.

[SouthernNJ]

With severe warnings, stronger wording has a drawback as well. It may not

reach the levels described. For instance, the SVR for Duluth MN a few weeks

ago called for winds 80+ MPH, said it was "an extremely dangerous situation",

and the line only knocked down a couple of trees in the polygon. The same for

the New York City warning a couple days ago. Called for winds 70+ MPH, had

numerous strong-worded action statements, and also only downed a few trees

with many adjacent marine gusts measured in the 50's. Then, of course, is

not having that wording for bigger events, such as last night. The warning for

Freehold and areas called for Quarter hail and winds 60+, did initially say the

storm had a history of 60+ MPH winds, but did not increase the threat in the

SVS despite the radar suggesting stronger winds. I did not see this as a big

problem since the warning was out in plenty of time, but some folks claiming

they were "caught off-guard" would find a way to complain about it.

All this said, I do not believe anyone in the above affected areas would have

cared if the wording or expected threats were different. They would have

seen a SVR, and decided to either act quickly or not at all based on their normal

routines during storms. There is no way to tell people anywhere that "a strong

group of localized hurricane-force winds will hit your neighborhood and not the

one next to it". Just not possible at this point in time.

Every warning forecaster has a different style. Some enjoy improv wording, and

others use default statements exclusively. I am sure most can indentify a greater

danger of storm, it's just less time-consuming in the WARNGEN process to use

programmed options. Ultimately, its getting a product disseminated quickly that's

most important, everything else can be further debated until a better way is found.

[famartin]

Ultimately, its getting a product disseminated quickly that's

most important, everything else can be further debated until a better way is found.

Something this warning forecaster always makes sure to remember... though I certainly know others who get mired up in other things.

[Parsley]

On the flip side I was really suprised at the manner in which Hershey Park handled the weather situation this past Thurs. Despite the elevated potential for severe weather & that warnings went out over an hour in advance of the storms the park waited until 20 mins before the storms arrived to close only the water park. They simply announced that due to inclement weather the water park was temporarily closing, no mention at all that severe t-storm warning has been issued by the NWS. Even more shocking was they didn't completely close the remainder of the rides until after the gust front had blown through - seriously there were still people on rides and had this storm come through with 60-70mph winds you would have had some big time problems.

[MGorse]

Myself and a few others at my office put together this summary of the June 29-30, 2012 derecho (better late than never). This page may get updated some down the road. Hopefully everyone finds this useful.

http://www.erh.noaa....cho-June29.html

[NaoPos]

My partner at the firehouse is also a part time flight medic for a hospital..

Apparently this was out from AC from that day.

[snowlurker]

Myself and a few others at my office put together this summary of the June 29-30, 2012 derecho (better late than never). This page may get updated some down the road. Hopefully everyone finds this useful.

http://www.erh.noaa....cho-June29.html

My thanks go out to you and the other coauthors - very interesting!

[MGorse]

My thanks go out to you and the other coauthors - very interesting!

You are welcome, and thanks for checking it out.