• Hello, please take a minute to check out our awesome content, contributed by the wonderful members of our community. We hope you'll add your own thoughts and opinions by making a free account!

Misc 2019 Banter & Friendly Conservation

Social media has changed the perception of severe weather. But it's not just severe weather; we see it in winter also, and with hurricanes. There is this weird race now to make everything sound as dire and as extreme as possible. Most of the time the extreme nature of the expectations do not match the mundane event that inevitably follows.

The SPC outlined a Moderate risk area. That probably worked out well. Moderate risks are not uncommon, as much as they get hyped up. Farther east, in the Enhanced and Slight areas, severe weather occurred, but it was nothing super noteworthy...more like your average spring severe weather event, where you might get a few tornado and severe storm warnings and spotty wind damage. The big difference is, you have everyone and their brother commenting on the potential for severe weather, advising everyone to stay alert and abreast and aware day and night. I suppose that is good, but it ends up creating this sense of cataclysmic anticipation of something that doesn't turn out.

We have models and models and more models, and we love to look at and post the output all over the place that shows the most extreme scenario. Weenies and laypeople gravitate toward that and expectations grow wildly out of line. In winter, we end up with a mixed event, instead of 36" of snow. In spring, we end up with a low-end twister or two and a handful of severe-warned storms, instead of a wild PDS tornado outbreak.

This is just an artifact of the world we live in now.
 
Rain Cold said:
Social media has changed the perception of severe weather. But it's not just severe weather; we see it in winter also, and with hurricanes. There is this weird race now to make everything sound as dire and as extreme as possible. Most of the time the extreme nature of the expectations do not match the mundane event that inevitably follows.

The SPC outlined a Moderate risk area. That probably worked out well. Moderate risks are not uncommon, as much as they get hyped up. Farther east, in the Enhanced and Slight areas, severe weather occurred, but it was nothing super noteworthy...more like your average spring severe weather event, where you might get a few tornado and severe storm warnings and spotty wind damage. The big difference is, you have everyone and their brother commenting on the potential for severe weather, advising everyone to stay alert and abreast and aware day and night. I suppose that is good, but it ends up creating this sense of cataclysmic anticipation of something that doesn't turn out.

We have models and models and more models, and we love to look at and post the output all over the place that shows the most extreme scenario. Weenies and laypeople gravitate toward that and expectations grow wildly out of line. In winter, we end up with a mixed event, instead of 36" of snow. In spring, we end up with a low-end twister or two and a handful of severe-warned storms, instead of a wild PDS tornado outbreak.

This is just an artifact of the world we live in now.
Click to expand...

Thanks for your reply. I think a lot of it makes sense as social media has changed the way a lot of things are treated from politics to wx.

I don’t think this event was “mundane” overall by any stretch and I assume you’re not saying that about THIS event. There’s nothing mundane about an outbreak with almost 20 tornadoes, including several very strong ones that lead to the tragedy of several deaths, in addition to numerous nontornadic severe incidences. I’d call it a major severe wx event that likely met or exceeded the worst of many recent years for the ENTIRE area from TX to NC and also VA. But I got the impression that many of the models and related discussion made it seem like this was headed toward a historically bad event (perhaps multidecadal event) especially in LA. Am I right about this impression? Regardless, as bad as it was, thank goodness it wasn’t as bad as it could have been in LA and other areas outside of TX and MS.
 
Last edited:
It’s unfortunate that Mets get bashed all the time just for trying to give out a warning, it’s sad
 
GaWx said:
Thanks for your reply. I think a lot of it makes sense as social media has changed the way a lot of things are treated from politics to wx.

I don’t think this event was “mundane” overall by any stretch and I assume you’re not saying that about THIS event. There’s nothing mundane about an outbreak with almost 20 tornadoes, including several very strong ones that lead to the tragedy of several deaths, in addition to numerous nontornadic severe incidences. I’d call it a major severe wx event that likely met or exceeded the worst of many recent years for the ENTIRE area from TX to NC and also VA. But I got the impression that many of the models and related discussion made it seem like this was headed toward a historically bad event (perhaps multidecadal event) especially in LA. Am I right about this impression? Regardless, as bad as it was, thank goodness it wasn’t as bad as it could have been in LA and other areas outside of TX and MS.
Click to expand...

The bolded is the point I'm driving at. I think what you wrote is correct. And my use of the word "mundane" wasn't to describe every event. I probably didn't write that part very well. I mean to say that often times, the outcome vs. the expectations ends up being mundane. This entire event was a decent severe weather event, no doubt about it. But I wouldn't call it historic. It certainly wasn't historically noteworthy around this area, for all of the attention that it received.
 
Myfrotho704_ said:
It’s unfortunate that Mets get bashed all the time just for trying to give out a warning, it’s sad
Click to expand...
I think it goes back to social media. This is kind of an aside, but I think there is a great expanse of problems across many facets of society that stem directly from social media. Regarding weather, a meteorologist could observe all available technical and model data of an impending event, incorporating all of their training and experience and develop a forecast that outlines the threat for a few severe storms. Simultaneously, social media weather warriors find and post the most dire and disastrous maps and charts, which spread all throughout the public arena. The met has a choice to address the hype or not. Each choice, I suppose, has consequences. In the end, if the weather warriors end up being right about the outcome this time, the met will inevitably get bashed. And if the met doesn't play up the event beforehand, they'll get bashed for being too conservative.

It's really a difficult time for meteorologists, because conservatism and objectivity are not part of our culture today. We tilt greatly toward the extreme and often teeter toward an unhealthy desire for disaster. At the very least, we have a driving need to be the first to relay information, to get a lot of likes, thumbs-ups, retweets, and clicks. It's very much indicative of and a direct input to an ego-driven culture, which plays no small role in the ever-increasing problem of mental illness that we're facing as a society. We've turned much too far inward. It is not a good or profitable path that we're traveling.
 
Last edited:
If you're in one spot, odds are much better you'll be lucky and miss on a tornado, but if you're covering 260 miles in a day you could drive yourself into a problem with a severe event, and that was my main deal from the get go (that was my first post in that thread). And we did get close once to a creepy situation when I was eating at the KFC. The wind picked up for a minute to where sheets of water were blowing on the road.

The only crazy part of the day though was dad does insist that for the stretch I was napping, it started raining hard (again, as it had stopped for a while) and the wind really started to blow, with debris all over the interstate, with one big piece of debris that made him switch lanes. I'm not a weenie though, I was periodically checking the radar but I was not going to make him stop unless there was a tornado warning that was right in our pathway and that did not happen.
 
GeorgiaGirl said:
If you're in one spot, odds are much better you'll be lucky and miss on a tornado, but if you're covering 260 miles in a day you could drive yourself into a problem with a severe event, and that was my main deal from the get go (that was my first post in that thread). And we did get close once to a creepy situation when I was eating at the KFC. The wind picked up for a minute to where sheets of water were blowing on the road.

The only crazy part of the day though was dad does insist that for the stretch I was napping, it started raining hard (again, as it had stopped for a while) and the wind really started to blow, with debris all over the interstate, with one big piece of debris that made him switch lanes. I'm not a weenie though, I was periodically checking the radar but I was not going to make him stop unless there was a tornado warning that was right in our pathway and that did not happen.
Click to expand...
You can't be napping through severe weather! That is not prime time player execution....although, you did somewhat redeem yourself with lunch at KFC. :)
 
Rain Cold said:
You can't be napping through severe weather! That is not prime time player execution....although, you did somewhat redeem yourself with lunch at KFC. :)
Click to expand...

I honestly thought that we were off scot free after we got past being around that area that was severe warned around Covington but because I can get a bit nauseated when looking at a book/phone/anything other than outside in a moving car, I wasn't really looking TOO hard. The band had finally started to break up and I knew there was a chance to get in some more rain, but it wouldn't be a big deal. But thinking about it, it's obvious I was wrong because I think dad would probably choose to straddle something before changing lanes. He decided that the debris that was in the road was too big to straddle. So the wind was notable at times.

It also became a nice thing late at night. It's not been REAL hot late but the wind felt so good coming in my opened window when I was close to it at night.
 
I don't think it was as bad as it could have been based on the potential the models showed, and compared to other severe outbreaks with similar parameters. I am speaking specifically for my backyard and the Triangle area, but since the tornado outbreak we had in April 2011, the severe weather here has been very isolated. And personally I continue to experience storms that are worse when there is not a watch at all, and hardly even get a storm when we do have a watch. Not sure why, but that is the way it has been for my area.

And I still think only three categories are needed for the severe weather risk. Slight, moderate, and high are enough.
 
This is how you win at weather!! Can’t buy an inch of snow, but 2 tornadoes in about 2 years!!! Winning!! ??76ED8CAD-AC74-4C45-81AA-4304982F2E4F.png
 
GaWx said:
Wow, I never had heard of this dangerous bird (cossawary) that killed someone near Gainesville, FL: :(

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/l...n-owner-in-florida/ar-BBVUP4i?ocid=spartanntp

It can't fly, but it has four inch long dagger like claws and can run 31 mph! I wouldn't wantr to be anywhere near this bird.
@pcbjr did you hear about this?
Click to expand...

i Heard that the US military was ordered to steer clear of this bird in Vietnam back when the war was progressing, becuase these birds claws can easily tear into flesh and gash/open a artery
 
I’m thinking about making a video of all the tornado producing supercells back from the super outbreak in 2011 with the respect the wind theme song edit, should I ?
 
GaWx said:
Thanks for your reply. I realize there often is overhype but what about the worst event of last month? I think saying events are always overhyped is not correct. I recall last month may have actually been underhyped overall due to the terrible hits in AL and GA. Am I remembering that correctly?
Click to expand...

Not to diminish the damage, death and destruction that took place on Saturday/Sunday, but IMO, it was definitely more bark than bite in compared to the tornado outbreak in March.

The March event was tied to a lower amplitude (open/fast moving) shortwave with much more marginal instability (only 1000 to 1500 J/KG). Thus, you didn't really expect too much in terms of significant weather from it and mother nature surprised big time beyond expectations

Given the parameters, Saturday/Sunday could have been much worse had the forcing been more sporadic combined with less speed shear and thus the storms more discrete.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top