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James Spann blasts number of false tornado warnings
Birmingham News ^ | 15 Jun 2011 | Thomas Spencer

Posted on 06/15/2011 6:52:50 AM PDT by relictele

BIRMINGHAM, Alabama -- In the wake of the April 27 tornadoes, veteran television meteorologist James Spann is questioning whether too frequent tornado warnings are causing people to ignore them.

"I firmly believe apathy and complacency due to a high false alarm ratio over the years led to inaction in many cases that could have cost lives," Spann wrote in a wide-ranging blog post that has generated debate among weather watchers and fellow meteorologists.

(Excerpt) Read more at blog.al.com ...


TOPICS: Culture/Society; News/Current Events; US: Alabama
KEYWORDS: broadcasting; tornados; warnings; weather
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Hype and sensationalism are nothing new to broadcasting but every station in every city has a 'Storm Team' thanks to the TV consultants who are happy to sell old rope for money. The promos usually show stock footage of wrecked homes and downed power lines while back at the station grim-faced meteorologists act as if they are launching a moon shot. Programming is interrupted with maps covering 1/4 of the screen and ear-splitting beeps.

Broadcasters are a cynical lot - they will use weather and its aftermath to attract and hold an audience even if it borders on inciting a panic. The problem, as Spann points out, is that these tactics become counter-productive when the audience tunes them out literally and figuratively.

The word 'ratings' does not appear in the piece but it should have since most populated areas have no shortage of weather information (NOAA, Accu Weather, etc.) in addition to the local broadcast outlets.

It's amusing to note that audiences in football-mad Alabama preemptively called ABC affiliates and warned (threatened?) them not to interrupt the game broadcast with frivolous weather bulletins about routine thunderstorms. The affiliates grumped about 'an important service to our viewers' etc. but they complied in the end.

1 posted on 06/15/2011 6:52:53 AM PDT by relictele
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To: relictele
One of the concerns emerging from Joplin is the apparent fact that many weather radios did not alert as they should have.

Sadly, many did not heed what warnings were given and did not take cover as they should have. Driving around when tornado sirens are blowing is never a good thing...

2 posted on 06/15/2011 6:57:54 AM PDT by donozark (British Army, Fighting Proudly in Afghanistan-Since 1839)
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To: relictele

I understand the need for alerting people to bad weather, but the TV stations take it to the extreme. They go wall to wall and repeat the same information over and over. They should only go live if the tornado is on the ground. The continual hype and non stop blathering play a part in people not being weather aware.

I remember one TV weather caster go so excited he had a tornado on TV to show the audience. Turned out to be smoke from a smokestack in the distance :-)


3 posted on 06/15/2011 6:58:31 AM PDT by Nashvegas (What do you get if you offer a liberal a penny for their thoughts? Change)
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To: relictele
It's a two-edged sword.

Tornado warnings are routinely issued when Doppler radar detects rotation in a thunderstorm, as such can be the sign of a developing tornado.

Often times, the rotation stays up in the cloud and no tornado hits.

But what if the NWS saw rotation, did not issue a tornado warning, and ten minutes a tornado hit with no warning? There would be outrage over that as well.

Folks, this is weather FORECASTING. It is IMPERFECT.

4 posted on 06/15/2011 6:59:56 AM PDT by dirtboy
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To: Nashvegas
And I recall watching a couple of TV weatherman in Alabama over the internet as they did tremendous coverage of the tornado outbreak - work that probably saved some lives.

It's like anything else - there is good, bad and ugly.

5 posted on 06/15/2011 7:01:49 AM PDT by dirtboy
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To: relictele

I remember a Tornado Warning they issued once when a Sheriff’s Deputy in a neighboring county “thought he saw a funnel cloud”!


6 posted on 06/15/2011 7:02:14 AM PDT by Buckeye McFrog
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To: dirtboy
Agree ~ I was watching the local weather radar and saw a tornado forming over where my son lives so I called him and warned him to get in the basement ~ which he'd done.

He was preparing to call me about a tornado forming over my house ~ which it did ~ fortunately both of them moved on and didn't land.

I grew up around these things. When I was about 13 or 14 we had a cluster hit the East side of Indianapolis just North of Indiana 67. Once it was past a bunch of us got on our bicycles and rode over to an overpass to take a look.

Everything had turned to trash ~ the whole neighborhood was gone ~ just gone.

I've never seen the time where I'd rather just dismiss a tornado warning. That's a good way to turn up dead.

7 posted on 06/15/2011 7:06:41 AM PDT by muawiyah
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To: relictele

I met James about four years ago, although he would not remember me from Adam. He is one of the good guys. I knew his banker uncle from early in my career. Good, solid people.


8 posted on 06/15/2011 7:14:11 AM PDT by RatRipper (I'll ride a turtle to work every day before I buy anything from Government Motors.)
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To: relictele
I think they need a new alert level between tornado watch and tornado warning. Right now the watch seems to be sounded for a fifteen county region at once and can last for hours if it gets somewhat stormy. No one pays much attention to that. Then the National Weather Service sounds a warning whenever the radar shows a rotation forming. That is usually limited to one county at a time for maybe a half hour. That same tornado warning is used for an actual sighting of a funnel cloud. Most of the rotational detections on the radar need to be bumped down a notch to something between the current watch and warning.

I have figured out a way to determine how serious a disaster warning is. If the radio station waits until the commercial is over to announce it, it's not to bad. If they will interrupt a commercial to announce the danger then you should be running for safety.

9 posted on 06/15/2011 7:16:26 AM PDT by KarlInOhio (Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice! Tea Party extremism is a badge of honor.)
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To: Nashvegas

You ought to live down here on the Gulf Coast....these weathermen live for hurricane season......you can hardly get through a day without them breathlessly announcing a low pressure system off the coast of Africa that might, maybe, could head into the Gulf and hit land in FL-MS-AL-LA - we were hit pretty badly six years ago but really have had nothing since, thank goodness! Every year it’s the same thing - a prediction of a 1000 named storms.


10 posted on 06/15/2011 7:20:05 AM PDT by BamaDi ("The definition of a racist today is anyone who is winning an argument with a liberal.")
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To: dirtboy

Agree.... Weatherguessers try. Some are bad intentionally like spann states driven by cash cow ratings. Others are sincere.

That is the weak spot in any system ....the human interface.

We are lucky to have a very good spotter crew of volunteers, LEO/FD an EMS that stay up an on the outskirts of our small town on watch during threatening weather.

Our town has a phone dialer alert system as well as sirens.

National an local weather service forcasts an watch alerts put all this in motion.

Works well for our small Texas town ....


11 posted on 06/15/2011 7:31:32 AM PDT by Squantos (Be polite. Be professional. But have a plan to kill everyone you meet)
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To: relictele

As someone who lives in “Tornado Alley”, I agree with Spann.

Our cable system has signed on with the Emergency Announcement System, EAS, and it is a royal PITA.

Example: I’m watching the local news & weather station and they are pre-empting all programing to give a moment by moment report of the storms moving through their broadcast area.

Suddenly, the EAS system breaks in, changes the channel to the Weather Channel and runs a weather announcement crawl across the top of the screen. Well, whoop-de-doop, I was just watching a much more detailed report on the storm and the EAS is now giving me far less useful information.

Also, I estimate that fully 90% of the weather reports telling us we might have tornadoes coming through are wrong.

Even so, here in Oklahoma, when we hear the sirens going off, we walk outside to see if we can spot a tornado, rather than running into our “safe place” right away. We’re either way stupid, or made of sterner stuff than most. Or maybe both.


12 posted on 06/15/2011 7:33:10 AM PDT by savedbygrace (But God.)
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To: donozark
Sadly, many did not heed what warnings were given and did not take cover as they should have. Driving around when tornado sirens are blowing is never a good thing...

20 years ago, the sirens went off when there was a tornado spotted.

Now the sirens go off when "conditions are favorable for a tornado".

I live up the road from Joplin in Springfield. The sirens go off all the time now, because in tornado alley, the conditions are always favorable for a tornado when it is storming.

A simple matter of "The Boy Who Cried Wolf". Eventually, there is a wolf, but no one believes it in time.

13 posted on 06/15/2011 7:37:14 AM PDT by Anitius Severinus Boethius
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To: Nashvegas
TV stations take it to the extreme

Yeah, my 88 year old mother still lives in the Golden Age of television and believes every word they spew. She spends much of her life terrified about severe thunderstorms and lake-effect blizzards that never materialise.

My favorite, though, is when they tell us how to dress when it gets cold. It's freakin' Buffalo! We already know!

14 posted on 06/15/2011 8:01:00 AM PDT by BfloGuy (Money, like chocolate on a hot oven, was melting in the pockets of the people.)
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To: relictele

I agree with Spann that the siren alert system is of limited use. The sirens go off anytime there is a tornado warning in any part of a county. They often go off where I live and the dangerous storm system is twenty miles away and not headed in my direction. That’s for 80% or more of the siren alarms. It’s far more important to know where the dangerous system is, and its direction.

Unless someone has no TV, and no internet and no radio, and no weather warning station, the sirens cause more confusion than anything else. And the weather alert devices work on batteries if the power is off, as do portable radios.

Not sure the tornado warnings are excessive because those systems are often dangerous even if no tornado touches ground. It’s good to take some precautions.


15 posted on 06/15/2011 8:50:51 AM PDT by Will88
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To: relictele
As a long time warning forecaster (over 30 years now), I have experienced the dramatic change in NWS capability as technology improved. I have taught many seminars on warning philosophy, based on both my experiences and those of other warning forecasters. I study warning failures in great detail. Much of the problem with warning verification comes from lack of detection, or ground truth. I always advise warning forecasters to separate reports from events. In other words, just because no one saw the tornado doesn't mean in didn't occur. I have personally worked events where spotters insisted there was no tornado, when in fact it was right in front of them in broad daylight with good visibility. How can that happen? I didn't fit the perceived profile. It didn't “look” like a tornado. Not all tornadoes are visible. Should we wait until a tornado is actually sighted before issuing the warning? What if the tornado spins up in the middle of a populated area? It happens. Who wants to be the mine canary? What about at night when visibility is low and few are awake to see?

Personally, I have always been conservative with warnings (I'm a long-time Freeper. What would you expect?), and tend to set the threshold rather high. Normally, warning forecasters want to see more than just rotation in a thunderstorm. We prefer to see vertical and temporal consistency. That means the rotation occurs over a vertical depth, rather than one level...and over a period of time, rather than just once. The threshold will vary depending on the situation. If it is a wild day with a high threat, the threshold will be lower. You can't take a lot of time to analyze one storm when there are 10 others going on at the same time. You have to decide, and move on to another storm. If they are moving at 60 mph, you also don't have time to dither. Warning decisions are usually made in a matter of seconds.

I always preach that the toughest decision is the one NOT to warn. This is because if you are considering a warning, then you have evidence of a threat. You must conclude that the evidence is not strong enough to go with a no warn decision. Now you are betting the public’s life on things we don't fully understand. The easy approach is to just issue the warning and “be safe”. Of course, this just waters down the value of warnings.

Bottom line, it is a tough job. There is so much uncertainty, and often conflicting information. You are gambling with real lives. I have had numerous fatalities during my watch, but fortunately they all occurred with warnings in place. I have been lucky. I have watched other warning forecasters not so lucky. They will carry the scars of the wrong decision to the grave.

16 posted on 06/15/2011 8:54:02 AM PDT by mesoman7
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To: mesoman7
I thought it was interesting that Joplin decided to test its emergency warning system a few days after the devastating tornado hit - they apparently hadn't tested them for quite some time before it hit.
17 posted on 06/15/2011 8:56:53 AM PDT by jda ("Righteousness exalts a nation . . .")
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To: Nashvegas
They should only go live if the tornado is on the ground.

I respectfully disagree.

I live in an area - NE Oklahoma - frequented by severe weather. Tornadoes, severe thunderstorms with damaging straight winds, damaging hail, etc. Having lived here most of my life, I can make up my own mind as to what precautions / reactions I need to take based on what the radar tracks and storm spotter reports are. With this kind of weather, a few miles difference in location or observed / predicted track can make all the difference, and I pay close attention to these reports. They are a heck of a lot more important to me than some meaningless basketball game or sitcom.

As for repeating the same information "over an over", what I watch for is current information on storm location / track / status.

Perhaps folks who live in areas of the country where this kind of weather is less frequent may look on it differently, but during a severe weather outbreak we monitor radar on the net, reports on TV and on the radio, and by standing outside and looking at the clouds and color of the sky. I don't take shelter if it is not necessary, but I want to be well aware of current conditions so that I can decide if it *is* necessary.

I appreciate the TV (and radio) coverage, and I must point out that it has saved countless lives. If folks ignore it, well, whose fault is that?

18 posted on 06/15/2011 9:10:08 AM PDT by aragorn (We do indeed live in interesting times. NRA, GOA, SAF, CCRKBA. FUBO.)
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To: mesoman7
mesoman7, rest assured that your efforts are appreciated, and take comfort that your warnings have saved countless lives. Thank you for your effort.

I remember when a local TV station installed their new Doppler radar back in the early 80s. One Sunday morning their tracking and warnings surely saved many lives - mine included - as they tracked a storm that hit (among other places) Mannford, OK. Though lives were lost (as I recall), I'm certain that more lives would have been lost were it not for the efforts of Gary Shore in Tulsa.

19 posted on 06/15/2011 9:21:59 AM PDT by aragorn (We do indeed live in interesting times. NRA, GOA, SAF, CCRKBA. FUBO.)
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To: aragorn

Probably a poor choice of words, on my behalf. I should have said they should go live (wall to wall) if there is a real risk to life and limb and property.

I’ve been through the 73 super outbreak and the F5 that hit Huntsville AL in 1989. I have the utmost respect for the weather and what it can do. However, I have also seen the local TV weather clowns use any type of weather as a chance to scare folks into watching their urgent broadcasts. after a while it gets tuned out.

Like you I take the responsibility to watch the radar, go out in my area and spot for NOAA etc... I’ve found one of the best things to do is find fellow storm chasers/spotters in my area and follow them on twitter. I’ve found their reports much more reliable than what I get on TV.


20 posted on 06/15/2011 10:49:36 AM PDT by Nashvegas (What do you get if you offer a liberal a penny for their thoughts? Change)
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