Daniel Lamb

Dear Amazing Race,

You are supposed to be an escape, not a trigger.

Sincerely,

And that's not to say it's not a concern or that it means we should just shotgun warnings. But studies suggest that people take wx information seriously and consider it in their actions - vulnerabilities and societal obstacles are much bigger negative factors than FAs (or other meteo issues).

If the expectation is that warnings come with sufficient and improving lead times, we must recognize that different situations call for different tactics to achieve this. And again, I'm not saying it means that blanket warnings are always the solution. Just that there are times when they are.

The overwhelming majority of SBS research I have seen suggests meteorologists way over concern themselves with false alarms

In a high end QLCS situation, I'd rather have my warning meteorologist free to quickly recognize a TDS and blast out "CONFIRMED!" to the public and partners, than constantly worrying about expiration times while running a higher risk of lesser lead time or even missing something altogether.

Consider also from the operational side of things. The more time that is spent trying to (stealing an abused phrase) "play whack-a-mole", the less time that is spent analyzing radar data, and providing clearer, actionable communication.

What I'm really trying to posit...It is not automatic that people will be made more cynical of warnings because of scenarios in which warnings are necessarily larger and less specific. I don't think this assumption is at all realistic.

However, many others who are not directly impacted will recognize the quantity of damage around them, the power outages. More of them are likely to have experienced strong winds with the passage of a line even if not tornadic.

But how does a non-meteorologist perceive a larger warning in this scenario? Again, it will vary from person to person. Until they are directly impacted, many will still say "it's never happened to me" just as they did with the tornadic supercell.

Let's be very clear. Not every QLCS is prolific and calls for this approach. There's rarely comfort in the responsibility of the hot seat. If there was, we wouldn't have a job.

Though the warnings are larger, multiple tornadoes are occurring within these warnings, and damage, while maybe not as intense in any one location, is widespread. Power outages may impact a larger number of people.

So on the flip side, consider larger, less targeted warnings during a very active QLCS. It is nearly impossible to provide a targeted warning for individual features with any measure of useful lead time. Both because they are transient and brief, and because they are shallow and harder to detect.

Of course, most meteorologists wouldn't suggest this. But public perception varies greatly. While many of them would recognize the warning as valid because there was a tornado, some people will maintain a perspective of "it's still never happened to me."

Few meteorologists would dare to question such a warning, much less suggest it was detrimental to those who happened to be within the polygon but not directly impacted. However, the reality, even in this situation, is the vast majority of people warned are not impacted. Is this a false alarm?

Consider some situation with a textbook tornadic supercell for which there was an appropriately targeted warning with good lead time.

How does a person define a false alarm? Perception is such an important aspect of false alarms that many intelligent people don't bother to consider.

Tornado near McCall Creek, MS.

The Big Black River is Mississippi's Sand Mountain

Hmm maybe a wall cloud from our Jonesville, LA mesonet site? I think it would check out based on radar at that time. @dlambwx.bsky.social

Agreed. It's very disappointing.

Back in my day, YouTube TV was only $35

This is the content I've been missing

Well this is one way to avoid having to play in the SECCG

Okay, found those accounts. Just need some notification functionality from BlueSky now.

I'd really miss getting notifications for those IEM PDS watch/warnings accounts too.

In many ways for me, Twitter filled a void left by Google Reader way back when. Can anyone recommend a decent, independent source for news push alerts. Not too many, just the really important stuff?

There needs to be some sort of email revolution. The way things are going just don't cut it.

Well that escalated quickly

Cybertruck spotted on my trip back home