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SPC modifying risk categories in 2013


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That's what the convective outlook text is for...

Usually with high risks or moderate risks, you'll see a header reading something along the lines of...

"A POTENTIALLY SIGNIFICANT SEVERE WEATHER OUTBREAK IS EXPECTED THIS AFTERNOON AND EVENING ACROSS X LOCATIONS."

People who aren't weather hobbyists don't usually read those. As many have pointed out here, people don't take slight risks seriously.

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I think maybe it's time to be a bit more descriptive, and actually say what these terms mean. In layman's terms, this is how I interpret the categories.

Slight -> Severe storms possible

Moderate -> Severe storms likely

High -> Dangerous severe storms likely

 

This is why I do not like the word "slight" in this case. The majority of the severe weather events occur during "slight risk" days, especially in the east.

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Check it ooouuut! New SPC home page: http://www.spc.noaa.gov/new/

 

Yeah, real good stuff. One quibble is I don't think the line graph is optimal for the Storm Report Trend as that will always move upward as a day progresses (unless there are reports early and then none the rest of the day - the chart in there now for 3/21 shows a line just ending after a couple hours with just two wind reports). On a particularly busy day/night the line will go parabolic but you'd only be able to determine the "busiest" time by trying to see where the slope steepens. I think a column chart with # reports per hour or every two hours would be more informative, so you can easily see the spikes. A text box could still give the total number of reports for the day, as in the existing display. However, if tornado + hail + wind are in the same display, clutter could be an issue, unless perhaps if the columns were kept very narrow (barely more than vertical lines) and/or the time interval were increased to three or four hours.

 

It also might be useful to be able to toggle that chart between the calendar day and last 24 hours, in the case of systems that don't fade after sunset but keep marching on overnight. Of course the trends will be confounded on days when there are multiple systems in different parts of the country - ideally there would be a way for a user to set which WWs to include in the trend chart, but admittedly that would be a non-trivial programming task.

 

(yes I am submitting these thoughts to the SPC web feedback email address)

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I would like to see the SPC include southern canadian cities. When you look at a map with no borders, you cannot differentiate. Like Southern Ontario and Southern Quebec. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quebec_City%E2%80%93Windsor_Corridor

 

18 millions people.

 

 

It would be welcomed with open arms since EC is no match for the SPC.

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I would like to see the SPC include southern canadian cities. When you look at a map with no borders, you cannot differentiate. Like Southern Ontario and Southern Quebec. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quebec_City%E2%80%93Windsor_Corridor

 

18 millions people.

 

 

It would be welcomed with open arms since EC is no match for the SPC.

Except SPC doesn't get southern Canadian tax money.

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The Sounding Analysis page (under Forecast Tools) is really nice...had this been live before the revamp and I just had trouble finding it on the old site?

The tornado data double-click feature is EXTREMELY nice. I especially love the statistical breakdown for tornado/severe occurrences at various levels of instability, shear, etc. I assume that the pink lines on each chart show the analyzed values for the present time in the selected area? If so, that's AWESOME. Makes comparing present conditions to "ideal" ones very easy.

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I would like to see the SPC include southern canadian cities. When you look at a map with no borders, you cannot differentiate. Like Southern Ontario and Southern Quebec. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quebec_City%E2%80%93Windsor_Corridor

 

18 millions people.

 

 

It would be welcomed with open arms since EC is no match for the SPC.

 

As an all-around severe weather nerd, I too would love to see some sort of comprehensive severe weather/tornado climatology done for Canada, particularly for the area you mentioned. I find S. Ontario/SW Quebec to be one of the more fascinating tornado "mini-alleys" in N. America, and according to some maps it may be the most tornado-prone region of Canada. Certainly there have been several major events there (e.g. 31 May 1985, 7 August 1979, 2 August 2006).

 

2011-06-ESN-002Map-600WUse2.gif

 

But like a previous poster said, there are various funding issues that would make this sort of work most likely beyond the scope of what the SPC can do.

 

It would be nice to have an independent non-government agency for severe weather research in North America similar to ESSL and TORRO in Europe. ESSL in particular maintains this database of European severe weather events, which seems to rely on a lot of crowdsourcing for severe weather reports (which are then scrutinized for veracity and ranked accordingly). Obviously, such a database shouldn't supercede whatever official data the SPC and EC have, as there would be quality control issues (the ESWD doesn't always distinguish between waterspouts and true tornadoes, for example), but having an umbrella agency would be a boon for the study of events that are "on the border" (or just across it).

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