Proposal for events - split nowcasting/forecasting

[MattW]

Hey everyone, I hope this is the right place to post this since this does concern weather events. But I'd like to propose that major events get two threads, one for the realtime "nowcasting" that follows an event as it's occurring, and one for the forecasting for places yet to receive the weather in question. I think the benefit is that for people not yet being affected, the forecast discussions aren't swallowed up by the realtime talk. I'm thinking about this weekend's event where as of now (early Friday) the Texas/Oklahoma area is about to get going, but those of us in AL/GA still have 24 hours before we start nowcasting and are still discussing the models for tomorrow. What do the rest of y'all think about this?

 

[WesL]

Very valid points and something we have talked about as well. I'll wait for the moderating team and other members to chime in, but I'm okay with this concept for this multi-day threats. We've tried in the past with systems that were one day events and it got confusing and required a lot of work to move posts in the wrong thread to the correct thread. Let us know what you think. We will keep this discussion open for 30 minutes or so and see if anyone else agrees or disagrees.

 

[Taylor Campbell]

Please keep in one thread. Everything will be read more likely if in one thread and it also all works together.

 

[MattW]

Wes, for one-day events, I fully agree with keeping things in one place.
Taylor, up until the event start happening, I agree, no sense in splitting until then. But if people want to know what is going to happen in their area, and they have to scroll past 100+ posts of real-time information, will they really be reading information?

 

[Taylor Campbell]

Yes, you have to read it to know what it is about. If someone is looking for something about their specific area they will read everything till they find it.

 

[WesL]

We are going to split it this time around. If it doesn't work well we will abandon the process in the future. Be sure to come back and give us feedback.

 

[MattW]

Awesome! Thank you for taking my suggestion into consideration!

 

[bwalk]

You are fine. I'll duplicate it on both. Thanks for sticking with us as we get this figured out.

Wes, one issue with separate threads for forecasting and nowcasting is forecasting eventually becomes nowcasting as the system arrives. There is no more forecasting to be done when the featured weather system reaches its destination. I think you are saying everyone will eventually switch to the nowcasting thread from this current forecasting thread? That could get a little confusing as different people transition to the new thread at different points. But we can surely toggle back & forth as needed.

I'm just thinking out loud & not criticizing.

 

[WesL]

Wes, one issue with separate threads for forecasting and nowcasting is forecasting eventually becomes nowcasting as the system arrives. There is no more forecasting to be done when the featured weather system reaches its destination. I think you are saying everyone will eventually switch to the nowcasting thread from this current forecasting thread? That could get a little confusing as different people transition to the new thread at different points. But we can surely toggle back & forth as needed.

I'm just thinking out loud & not criticizing.

I totally agree and we've tried this format in the past and to be quite frank, I hated it. It doesn't works well for one day system for sure but with this being a multi-day system it is also confusing to scroll past nowcast information looking for forecast information for an area that might be under the gun tomorrow. That information easily gets lost in warnings and storm reports. The mods will help sort it out and move messages that are dealing with the current threat vs the future threat and hopefully make it easy for everyone.

As always I value your thoughts and opinions. Hope you will join in to discuss this after the event to see if we stick with this format going forward for multi-day threats.

 

[MichelleH]

Here's my feedback - with all due respect, no. Please put it back in the future to one thread. It's very annoying and time consuming having to bounce back between two threads. Just my humble opinion, but I have been a member since 2002.

 

[WesL]

Here's my feedback - with all due respect, no. Please put it back in the future to one thread. It's very annoying and time consuming having to bounce back between two threads. Just my humble opinion, but I have been a member since 2002.

Thanks @MichelleH! I’ll run some analysis but which thread did you spend more time in yesterday? As the storms rolled in today why did you feel you needed to see the forecast information at the same time? Just trying to get a feel as to why people would go back and forth.

 

[MichelleH]

Thanks @MichelleH! I’ll run some analysis but which thread did you spend more time in yesterday? As the storms rolled in today why did you feel you needed to see the forecast information at the same time? Just trying to get a feel as to why people would go back and forth.

During severe weather events, I guess I have "FOMO" (Fear Of Missing Out) Lol! I want to make sure I see every bit of information I can. Yesterday I spent more time in the forecast thread, but of course today I spent more time in the "real-time" thread. But I did keep checking both of them. To me, it's just easier to have one thread because I ended up having two tabs open for TalkWeather, with one thread open on each tab.

 

[WesL]

During severe weather events, I guess I have "FOMO" (Fear Of Missing Out) Lol! I want to make sure I see every bit of information I can. Yesterday I spent more time in the forecast thread, but of course today I spent more time in the "real-time" thread. But I did keep checking both of them. To me, it's just easier to have one thread because I ended up having two tabs open for TalkWeather, with one thread open on each tab.

Yeah yesterday was opposite for me. I was in the nowcast thread more and not worried as much about the forecast since we had stuff blowing in the wind. lol.

I look forward to hearing what everyone else thinks. Would never want to do this for a one day event.

 

[MattW]

At risk of "spamming" this thread, I'd like to provide my own experience now that I've actually used what I suggested. With my own browsing, there was a little bit of overlap. Specifically as the line of storms got to Birmingham, I was in the forecast thread, but also in the nowcast thread looking to see how the system had been performing so far. But, it was still easy to find the forecast information without having to scroll through the nowcast information. Also finding the specific nowcast information was much easier to find without risking missing important forecast information. I knew what time the line was rolling through the Birmingham area, so I just went to the posts from that timeframe and read forward.

The only suggestion I'd make so far is that I don't see a big need to keep the nowcast days separate. Especially in the future if someone is searching, they may not know exactly which day a particular event occurred and having to go through two or more threads could make things a little harder.