Another NWS exaggeration

[altivo]

As usual, the dire threats issued by the National Weather Service this weekend turned out to be overly dramatic and highly exaggerated. Yes, I suppose there were a lot of morons who ignore anything less strongly stated and get into trouble, but in fact there were apparently a lot of morons who ignored even these extreme warnings and got into trouble, and that even though conditions were nowhere near as bad as the forecast.

Apparently these bureaucrats have never heard Aesop's fable about the boy who cried wolf, and have now dug themselves into the same hole. Every time there's a snowflake on the horizon, it means a deadly blizzard is coming and we're all going to die. Every time there's a puff of wind, it means that dangerous winds capable of demolishing high rise buildings and turning automobiles into airplanes are on their way. Every time there's a drop of rain, the entire populace needs to be warned again and again not to drive into a flooded river. Consequently, more and more people fail to believe the hyperbolic warnings, and do get into trouble.

Worse, when they get into one of their frenzies of dire warnings, the avalanche of repeated verbage chokes their communications systems so they can't get all the warnings out in time. This of course is because they have to repeat all that boilerplate about "Don't drive into running water" or "Take shelter in a sturdy building or basement" on every single warning, instead of just giving them once.

Horses and sheep a bit grumpy about the weather, but no one has frozen to death nor have they been buried in snow or blinded by it so they couldn't find their way into the barn. Humans, of course, drive like maniacs all the time, warning or no. They also find it impossible to change plans or avoid traveling under bad conditions. Hence numerous wrecks on high speed roads in the area, not due to really severe weather but just to moderately obstructive weather and idiot drivers who can't slow down even to save their own lives. Think of it as evolution in action, I guess.

Comments

[casey382]

Yeah, I fell for the hype. I stayed indoors.

[avon-deer.livejournal.com]

Snow is the single most over-forecast phenomenon in the UK. A snow forecast again?! Problem is that my cynicism DID catch me out the other week. I went out in a T-shirt and it actually snowed. Badly. In fact the worse for decades.

[altivo]

Well, that wasn't necessarily a bad idea. The roads were clogged by idiots who just couldn't seem to take any precautions at all.

[altivo]

I didn't realize you had the over-forecast phenomenon there. It's irritating all right. And you experienced the result. Everyone quits paying attention to the warnings, so when it's real, the results are worse than need be.

[avon-deer.livejournal.com]

I think half the problem is that they are not specific about what areas the snow will fall in, despite knowing. If they specified that it would be up in the Dales only, then the Dales lot could prepare, and us lowlanders could sit back and relax.

[hrrunka]

Yeah, the snow a couple of weeks back, particularly in the south east, was very oddly distributed. Here we had the best part of two feet fall over three or four days. Folks not much more than twenty miles away had only a sprinkling.

[altivo]

That's fairly normal here. And I think it's true that they could often predict more accurately. The NWS web site has a feature for "microforecast" to cover small areas, and it ought to take into consideration elements such as elevations and wind patterns. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to do so. We are in the "shadow" of a glacial moraine here, so that if the snow-bearing winds or rain-bearing clouds come from the west or northwest, we can expect much less precipitation than the general forecast. If the wind is in the east, however, all bets are off and we may get an excess particularly if snow is involved. I imagine wind speed is a factor too, though. Turbulence can pile snow up in the shadow of a windbreak as well. We have such heavy tree cover here, though, that we don't see that effect.