Wall 'o weather

[altivo]

There's an arc of severe thunderstorms due here in ten minutes or so, thunder rattling now. In case power goes out, and because DW is slow again, I'll post this quickly.

It looks even nastier out toward the Mississippi, where there's a tornado warning live. We have a watch here, but that clump of supercells is probably headed this way too.

Work is starting to calm down as summer reading club closes out this week. They already had their pool party on Sunday, but there are prizes and drawings to be held this week, and then it's done. I think everyone has had more than enough of it this time.

Gary found a tree down in our back field today. A wild cherry, no idea why as there were no severe winds or anything in the last 24 hours and it had to have fallen then. I suppose we may know once we cut it up.

There goes the weather radio again, so that's it for tonight.

Comments

[altivo]

The weather radio is a special VHF receiver that can be programmed to come on automatically when the NOAA Weather service issues alerts or warnings. Their system covers most of the US, and broadcasts local weather information on six channels in the 162.x MHz range. You can tune in to the local channel manually to listen to the forecast with any FM receiver that covers the range. The special alert radios have a monitor mode that listens for a packet burst containing codes for specific areas (generally by county) and those bursts are transmitted when there is an official watch or warning. The receiver activates automatically when a bulletin is issued with any of the user-selected regional codes. It sounds an alarm tone, then turns on the audio so the bulletin can be heard. Some receivers shut off after a fixed time period, others are shut off by a short trailer burst containing a digital command...

In theory that is. Five years ago it worked really well. Lately they've been erratic. The system is largely automated, and the bulletins and forecasts are read by synthesized voices, including typos and errors. Those are bad enough, but more and more often the operators seem to be miscoding the region codes, garbling or omitting some. I suspect this is due to repeated budget cutting that has left many of the weather service offices understaffed and with poorly trained staff.

We've had one at the farm for many years now. A few years ago we got one at the library. Then last year we received another one, issued by a state emergency management office. Two weeks later they came and took it away. No explanation.

Nine months later, they delivered another one. I set it up, and programmed it, then put our old one away in a cupboard. This new one issues the most horrendous alarm sound I've ever heard, and apparently that can't be moderated. We may unplug it and put the old one back out.

[hrrunka]

Thanks. Sounds like a good idea that was costed optimistically, omitting things like ongoing maintenance and training, probably with back-scatter from tax-cuts. That's fairly typical of government-funded technical initiatives over here, anyway...

[altivo]

I think it was probably budgeted correctly when it started. The "cut everything" Republicans in Congress have been trying for some time to kill the entire weather service, and turn the responsibilities over to private corporations. Fortunately, the Pentagon is unwilling to allow this, so the repeated proposals have been squashed. That doesn't prevent the persistent "cut here first" attitude that gets applied to budget bills. We can't take away gigantic tax breaks that benefit people and corporations who are already obscenely wealthy, but we can keep reducing funding for educational and safety services year after year.

[hrrunka]

Rotten politics... :(