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Severe WX Severe Weather Threat 3/14-3/16

Fred Gossage said:
That's why, despite there having been a D6 ENH Risk for this system, our station is taking a very careful approach with our wording and ramping this up. It's no secret that this will probably be an active spring, and it might be a violent one. There may be one or two days here where I need people in my audience to REALLY listen and trust what I say with little or no hesitation. I can't get them to do that if we're sounding alarms for every cold front. If Saturday is going to be one of those days where they REALLY need to listen to me, I wanna make as close to darn sure of it as I can before we sound the alarms. As I told them yesterday in a big post, it's not my job to be first. It's my job to be as accurate as possible while still giving plenty of time to prepare.
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There’s definitely a balance between giving people as much advance warning about a significant severe weather event as possible so that they can prepare for it and not overstating the level of confidence in a forecast. Unfortunately the general public doesn’t have a great understanding of how probability works so communicating uncertainty to them isn’t an easy task, and those of y’all who have to do this for a living have my sympathy.

The people who do the OMG MASSIVE OUTBREAK WEDGES INCOMING hype every time a 15% shows up on the day 4-8 outlook make that task much harder because them doing that once a week dilutes the message for the few times a year where you actually do have the synoptically evident red letter day and need to raise the alarm in advance. And as we’ve seen all too well the last few years, the generally low level of media literacy among the public means people aren’t able to distinguish what is and isn’t a reliable source of information so the social media hypemongers drown out the actual experts, and then people turn around and blame the experts when the OMG MEGA WEDGES that the weed trimmers of the world are screaming about don’t materialize. Super healthy information economy we’ve got here.
 
I understand the "hyping up" a system and scaring my wife first hand and I'm not meaning to do it, actually it's not hyping anything up it's more like "hey we need to watch this system coming in this weekend." I get where she is coming from though,she went through the April 8th 1998 Oak Grove F5 and ever since she has been a little gun shy. Now my daughter on the other hand will hype up the slightest marginal risk with a doomsday scenario.
 
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Parker Copeland said:
still a lil bewildered that SPC is calling for damaging tornadoes 5 days out and strong tors 4 days
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I mean given what the models are currently showing (especially for Saturday) that’s not an outlandish prediction. At the moment Saturday is throwing up more red flags than a Soviet May Day parade.
 
This is my opinion alone and a wag on my part. But I feel like as professionals (NWS, broadcast mets, and local EMs) we are messaging to ~40-45% of the population in our communities. Those are the ones we can influence, but so can the extreme doom and gloom people.

The remaining 55-60% have their minds made up already. A small percentage will do the right thing every event. They have multiple ways to receive watches and warnings and take cover.

However, a larger percentage of that group will never do anything. They rarely bother to know the forecast for their region on a given day, except for when they use a smartphone app to see the temp before going outside or when planning a birthday party three weeks out (real accurate!). They will never receive the warning or just ignore it. Sometimes, they have the, “it will never happen here” mindset. These are always the ones that will say “it’s easy to be a meteorologist only being right 50% of the time” or “we had no warning!!!!!”. They arrive at this conclusion by numerous paths, and perhaps the nightly news/wx Twitter doom influenced some, but we are never going to reach them. They are the ones that annoy me the most but I worry about the most during every event.
 
Fred Gossage said:
That's why, despite there having been a D6 ENH Risk for this system, our station is taking a very careful approach with our wording and ramping this up. It's no secret that this will probably be an active spring, and it might be a violent one. There may be one or two days here where I need people in my audience to REALLY listen and trust what I say with little or no hesitation. I can't get them to do that if we're sounding alarms for every cold front. If Saturday is going to be one of those days where they REALLY need to listen to me, I wanna make as close to darn sure of it as I can before we sound the alarms. As I told them yesterday in a big post, it's not my job to be first. It's my job to be as accurate as possible while still giving plenty of time to prepare.
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This forum absolutely could use better moderation. I’m a 40 year old hobbyist who has been on weather forums for almost 20 years now. Many would do better to ask questions or read vs posting all the time and wishcasting. Maybe I should be better about blocking folks - but 70% of the banter on each model run seems to be folks who are parroting stuff from hype posters on twitter or who literally have no idea what they are talking about.

Weather is one of those things that, even if you know how to read model output, experience and wisdom and messaging are just as important. Anyone saying a storm system is certain to be X 4 days out for severe or snow is not someone you should be listening to.
 
Parker Copeland said:
still a lil bewildered that SPC is calling for damaging tornadoes 5 days out and strong tors 4 days
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Keep in mind, the SPC “simply” analyses the environment from all available models in their arsenal, and then make a forecast based on the data at hand. (With the help of OBS, recon, upper air soundings, weather balloons, etc.)

While yes these events are days out the general consensus of the kinamactics calls for a heightened risk of particularly strong tornadoes.

Obviously there’s failure modes and there’s just as high of a chance absolutely nothing comes out of this, but that’s the reality of weather forecasting.

You make an observation and use your knowledge gained from countless other experiences forecasting to inform the public if there’s something that needs to be taken seriously or not.
 
jiharris0220 said:
Keep in mind, the SPC “simply” analyses the environment from all available models in their arsenal, and then make a forecast based on the data at hand. (With the help of OBS, recon, upper air soundings, weather balloons, etc.)

While yes these events are days out the general consensus of the kinamactics calls for a heightened risk of particularly strong tornadoes.

Obviously there’s failure modes and there’s just as high of a chance absolutely nothing comes out of this, but that’s the reality of weather forecasting.

You make an observation and use your knowledge gained from countless other experiences forecasting to inform the public if there’s something that needs to be taken seriously or not.
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Yeah, unlike the various paid services and social media grifters, the SPC doesn’t have any monetary incentive to hype an event. Getting clicks doesn’t benefit them financially, unlike some people.
 
One thing, especially as we talk to our friends and neighbors as this event approaches, to keep in mind is that different people have different ways of processing and synthesizing information. No two folks handle strong messaging exactly the same, and some might be more receptive than others, or maybe even too receptive. So for those who are the resident weather geek in your family or community, it's worth remembering how people might interpret the same information in different ways. At the end of the day, the goal is keeping people safe, not clicks or likes or banter or discourse.
 
jiharris0220 said:
Keep in mind, the SPC “simply” analyses the environment from all available models in their arsenal, and then make a forecast based on the data at hand. (With the help of OBS, recon, upper air soundings, weather balloons, etc.)

While yes these events are days out the general consensus of the kinamactics calls for a heightened risk of particularly strong tornadoes.

Obviously there’s failure modes and there’s just as high of a chance absolutely nothing comes out of this, but that’s the reality of weather forecasting.

You make an observation and use your knowledge gained from countless other experiences forecasting to inform the public if there’s something that needs to be taken seriously or not.
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yes, some people just don't understand how weather forecasting works
 
Clancy said:
There's been a gradual uptrend in thermodynamics over the past several runs of the GFS in the eastern parts of Alabama into Georgia, 12Z appears to be no different.
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To be expected with a secondary low sub 1000mb being modeled with some consistency, Dangerous event. I've always associated bright red/ bright pink supercell composites on the GFS with bad weather days. No meteorological basis to this of course and lots of other factors that contribute to bad weather days as well like this upcoming one. But watching weather over 10 years it usually correlates some lol.
 
Fred Gossage said:
The problem isn't that something like that gets posted here. It's that that type of clownology is out there in the internet world to begin with. I hope most people aren't coming to a place like here to actually get weather information. I mean not the slightest bit of disrespect to this forum or anyone here. I cut my forecasting teeth on the original iteration of this forum way back in the days when ABC 33/40 owned it and John Oldshue moderated it. I was excited about weather and knew just enough back in high school to be a little hype machine myself until people like Brad Travis, Jason Kelley (RIP), and others that used to be here long ago took the time to help me understand the correct approach to things long ago. But this is a place for weather novices to weather professionals to mingle with one another and talk shop. While there are some brilliant minds here that deliver good information, this isn't the type of place for John Q. Public or Sally What's It Gonna Do Next Week to come get critical weather information.
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I would like to pin this somewhere very visible!
 
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