Improving effective messaging in the wake of Helene

[Pas_Bon]

I think something that may be getting understated here which may actually end up playing a major point in the death toll from Helene actually has nothing to do with warnings. But instead on how employees don't have the right to refuse to come to work in inclement weather conditions without the fear of being fired. There is currently a story circulating out of Tennessee that there is at least 17 missing employees who were ordered to report into work in Erwin, Tennessee at Impact Plastics that was in the flood zone. (This is where the hospital rescue images took place.) And I have heard similar stories coming in of employees being on the road/needing to get to work in North Carolina. It seems unacceptable (to me as a Canadian at least) that there is not some sort of legal mechanism in place where when the weather is predicted to be above a certain threshold of risk that employees should not have the ability to refuse unsafe work. I don't think expecting employers to self-regulate is acceptable here at all, and there are going to be a massive amount of lawsuits over this coming up.

https://www.yourtango.com/news/employee ... -hurricane

I agree with this wholeheartedly.
To the people that will chime in that people can easily refuse and risk their job…..to a lot of people, they NEED their jobs. Many may not have the skillset or means to just get another.

[kassi]

I think something that may be getting underappreciated here which may actually end up playing a major point in the death toll from Helene actually has nothing to do with warnings from the NHC/NWS. But instead on how employees don't have the right to refuse to come to work in inclement weather conditions without the fear of being fired. There is currently a story circulating out of Tennessee that there are at least 17 missing employees who were ordered to report into work in Erwin, Tennessee at Impact Plastics that was in the flood zone. (This is where the hospital rescue images took place.) And I have heard similar stories coming in of employees being on the road/needing to get to work in North Carolina. It seems unacceptable (to me as a Canadian at least) that there is not some sort of legal mechanism in place where when the weather is predicted to be above a certain threshold of risk that employees should not have the ability to refuse unsafe work. I don't think expecting employers to self-regulate is acceptable here at all, and there are going to be a massive amount of lawsuits over this coming up.

https://www.yourtango.com/news/employee ... -hurricane

A company should never put their employees at risk like this. Their safety should be first. If true, which it seems to be, this is disgusting!

[Category5Kaiju]

I think something that may be getting underappreciated here which may actually end up playing a major point in the death toll from Helene actually has nothing to do with warnings from the NHC/NWS. But instead on how employees don't have the right to refuse to come to work in inclement weather conditions without the fear of being fired. There is currently a story circulating out of Tennessee that there are at least 17 missing employees who were ordered to report into work in Erwin, Tennessee at Impact Plastics that was in the flood zone. (This is where the hospital rescue images took place.) And I have heard similar stories coming in of employees being on the road/needing to get to work in North Carolina. It seems unacceptable (to me as a Canadian at least) that there is not some sort of legal mechanism in place where when the weather is predicted to be above a certain threshold of risk that employees should not have the ability to refuse unsafe work. I don't think expecting employers to self-regulate is acceptable here at all, and there are going to be a massive amount of lawsuits over this coming up.

https://www.yourtango.com/news/employee ... -hurricane

A company should never put their employees at risk like this. Their safety should be first. If true, which it seems to be, this is disgusting!

Yeah, that seems like an avalanche of lawsuits coming. Absolutely abominable that a company would force their employees to work under such inclement weather, indirectly killing them.

[caneman]

Great post wxman57. I can however tell you that far to much emphasis is put on wind and not water. Maybe there also needs to be a Category rating for surge events and or flooding risks due to rain?. People seem to pay more attention when you say category. For example, Helene could have been rated perhaps as a Cat. 4 surge event or something like that. Either way, we somehow need to put equal emphasis on water as we do wind. I've noticed that people get far more caught on wind than water.

That's a discussion point after every hurricane (or tropical storm) landfall. There's always a talk about adding different ratings for surge, rainfall, even tornado potential. At the various hurricane conferences, we discuss how to best convey the threats to the people. Storm surge is more a function of wind field size than peak intensity. There's no such thing as a "Cat 5 surge". A large Cat 1 can produce a larger storm surge than a small Cat 5. The best the NHC can do is to advise of potential inundation levels in a probabilistic way. I do think that their surge levels were a bit low for Tampa Bay, given the storm size. However, people tend to stay or evacuate from the coast or from barrier islands based on their memory of the last storm, no matter what the warnings say. They'll remember storm "X" was a similar category and they didn't flood with that storm. But, like I said, each storm is different. Storm "X" may have been much smaller and didn't hit the coast in a way that produced much surge. In each advisory discussion, I saw the NHC mentioning how large Helene would be. That's a big red flag for coastal residents.

I know that we and the NHC were talking about catastrophic or historic flooding in the advisories. How do you word an advisory more strongly than that? You can't say a "Cat 5 surge", as a tropical depression can produce greater rainfall than the most powerful hurricane. In early June of 2001, the remnants of TS Allison drifted south through Houston and dumped 36" of rain overnight. In 2017, Cat 4 Harvey struck the lower TX coast, but the upper coast had 15 counties measuring over 25" of rain, including over 60 inches in the Beaumont area, a long way from the landfall point. In the Carolinas, what could you do differently to prepare for "catastrophic" or "historic" flooding vs. "level 5 flooding"?

I'm sure this hurricane will be discussed in conferences next year as far as how to get the people to listen to the potential threat. However, people don't like to evacuate and they tend to think it won't happen to them or it won't be as bad as they're saying.

Wxman, to be fair, you could tattoo it on folks’ foreheads and far too many still won’t listen.
The profession absolutely needs to brainstorm to figure out ways to convey messaging efficacy, but there is a certain group that will never get it.

That certain group is someone that has never seen anything like it nor know anyone that has. In fact, most times surge has always under performed. You don't know what you don't know. Experience creates wisdom

[caneman]

Great post wxman57. I can however tell you that far to much emphasis is put on wind and not water. Maybe there also needs to be a Category rating for surge events and or flooding risks due to rain?. People seem to pay more attention when you say category. For example, Helene could have been rated perhaps as a Cat. 4 surge event or something like that. Either way, we somehow need to put equal emphasis on water as we do wind. I've noticed that people get far more caught on wind than water.

That's a discussion point after every hurricane (or tropical storm) landfall. There's always a talk about adding different ratings for surge, rainfall, even tornado potential. At the various hurricane conferences, we discuss how to best convey the threats to the people. Storm surge is more a function of wind field size than peak intensity. There's no such thing as a "Cat 5 surge". A large Cat 1 can produce a larger storm surge than a small Cat 5. The best the NHC can do is to advise of potential inundation levels in a probabilistic way. I do think that their surge levels were a bit low for Tampa Bay, given the storm size. However, people tend to stay or evacuate from the coast or from barrier islands based on their memory of the last storm, no matter what the warnings say. They'll remember storm "X" was a similar category and they didn't flood with that storm. But, like I said, each storm is different. Storm "X" may have been much smaller and didn't hit the coast in a way that produced much surge. In each advisory discussion, I saw the NHC mentioning how large Helene would be. That's a big red flag for coastal residents.

I know that we and the NHC were talking about catastrophic or historic flooding in the advisories. How do you word an advisory more strongly than that? You can't say a "Cat 5 surge", as a tropical depression can produce greater rainfall than the most powerful hurricane. In early June of 2001, the remnants of TS Allison drifted south through Houston and dumped 36" of rain overnight. In 2017, Cat 4 Harvey struck the lower TX coast, but the upper coast had 15 counties measuring over 25" of rain, including over 60 inches in the Beaumont area, a long way from the landfall point. In the Carolinas, what could you do differently to prepare for "catastrophic" or "historic" flooding vs. "level 5 flooding"?

I'm sure this hurricane will be discussed in conferences next year as far as how to get the people to listen to the potential threat. However, people don't like to evacuate and they tend to think it won't happen to them or it won't be as bad as they're saying.

 https://x.com/TVHWX/status/1840512556802183604



The solution IMO is to amplify the HTI graphics. The graphic does a great job illustrating the extreme risk in WNC was as threatening to life and property as the Big Bend. I would have to look back, but I'd bet good money every WPC high risk results in 1+ fatality.

Just like in Tampa Bay, I think everyone believes something catastrophic can't happen until it does. Now, people in these areas will be more vigilant. It sucks that people have to learn the hard way, you can't make a horse drink.

In Tampa Bay it's a 1 in 100 year experience. No one alive could share experience. Further, most times surge forecasts under perform here and or were never that serious. You don't know what you don't know.

[bob rulz]

I wonder how you could properly convey inland rain impacts. It's very difficult to predict precise rain amounts, especially when you're getting into mountainous areas, and predicting impacts is even more difficult, because it can vary so much even from town to town. Ultimately I would be concerned with adding too much complication to hurricane warnings. What would you make of a hurricane that has "cat 4 winds, cat 3 surge, cat 2 rain potential" or something like that? The Saffir-Simpson Scale has faults and I think the NHC should always be thinking about messaging, but I'm not sure if there's much more they could do to warn people. Granted I don't live in a hurricane-prone area, but people are stubborn and most people aren't going to believe warnings if they've never experienced something like it before. How could someone who lives in Asheville for example appropriately prepare for all-time historic flooding? How could they even know for sure? Yes there were warnings about floods, but I don't know if there's any way we could've known with certainty it would be THIS bad.

Ultimately you can do the best you can to warn about potential impacts, but there's a lot of variables that go into how bad the weather impacts will be, and no matter what you do some people just won't listen, won't believe the warnings, or won't care.

I'm from Asheville, having moved there shortly before the catastrophic flooding in 2024.

I drove today from Asheville to Charlotte, about 150 miles with detours.
The devastation was EVERYWHERE. Literally everywhere. Every creek we crossed, every town we saw was majotly affected. No cell service for most of the drive, no power for 90% of it. (Even here...Parts of Charlotte are still dealing with the Catawba apparently). How do you begin to evacuate the entire Western NC area, when upstate SC, N GA, and East TN were also devastated? Where do you tell people to go? With a land-falling hurricane, it's easy: inland, higher ground.
But this is a vast, vast area in which almost all waterways flooded, almost all slopes are vulnerable to landslide, trees uprooted everywhere, or snapped by heavy gusts. Which direction should Asheville have evacuated towards?Exceptionally heavy rainfall hit the whole area before Helene, leaving driving already very hazardous by the time warnings came out for our area.
Asheville (and surrounds) definitely ended up trying to evacuate all lowlying areas to higher ground, but many areas flooded that were well outside recommended flood zones and had no history of *any* flooding in either 1916 or 2024. Lots of the same areas were hit too, but hit massively harder.
I'm sure some stubborn people stayed in places they shouldn't, and yes, a few people drove stupidly, but I think it's reductionist to claim that is the biggest problem here. Most people did listen, but there are not many options when an area this size is at play and there is no clear 'safe area' to evacuate toward. Every house in Asheville and WNC was at risk, in the end.

Hopefully you don't believe that I am blaming the people for this. My point was more about how messaging is very difficult, and no amount of messaging would have helped in this case. We are still at the whims of mother nature sometimes, and the best you can do in some situations is hope you're prepared, and maybe hope for a dash of good luck as well. Unfortunately, there are potentially hundreds of people who were not so lucky, and had no way of ever knowing how bad it was going to be, or anything they could've done even if they did know.

[KyleEverett]

I consider myself generally weather aware. I knew Helene was a risk to the Southeast even before the PTC was declared, but even I struggled to believe the warnings the NHC gave about widespread landslides in the southern Appalachians. It was just something I had never heard of happening to the extent the NHC was saying.

It's hard for anyone to understand what unprecedented in our records amount of rainfall will do. As the climate changes and we get more of these "worst ever storms" things will only get worse as people have no frame of reference for what could happen.

Even Hurricane Hugo which affected inland areas of the Piedmont was more of a wind event than a rain event, even that storm is 35 years old so that's almost two generations of people born since then that have no memories of that.

The NHC warnings were amazingly on point in the text format. There's even written advisories going over key impacts in English and Spanish(When applicable).

I can't say what we can do to get people to listen better, but I just don't think you can when all you can say is "This has never happened before, it's going to be bad." Humans just don't want to believe something can be worse than they ever experienced.

[HurricaneBelle]

Two links of interest:

https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/news/sep2 ... elene.html
NOAA imagery from after the storm. It's not complete of course, and there's basically no inland areas but you can see a lot of slabs in those communities around the coast. Very extensive tree damage where the eyewall moved ashore as well.

 https://x.com/hwind/status/1840839647426957355


Some hwind tweets about Helene. That account has some great information, including a nice visual of the wind field while the storm was over Georgia.

The problem with metrics like ACE and IKE is that they're cumulative and mainly for the statisticians and weather nerds (myself included). They have little to do with the actual human impacts of a storm because they're entirely landfall-agnostic and actually landfall-hostile since the numbers stop accumulating at that point. Close-in storms like Helene and Otis score low in these metrics yet cause extreme devastation.

[Pas_Bon]

That's a discussion point after every hurricane (or tropical storm) landfall. There's always a talk about adding different ratings for surge, rainfall, even tornado potential. At the various hurricane conferences, we discuss how to best convey the threats to the people. Storm surge is more a function of wind field size than peak intensity. There's no such thing as a "Cat 5 surge". A large Cat 1 can produce a larger storm surge than a small Cat 5. The best the NHC can do is to advise of potential inundation levels in a probabilistic way. I do think that their surge levels were a bit low for Tampa Bay, given the storm size. However, people tend to stay or evacuate from the coast or from barrier islands based on their memory of the last storm, no matter what the warnings say. They'll remember storm "X" was a similar category and they didn't flood with that storm. But, like I said, each storm is different. Storm "X" may have been much smaller and didn't hit the coast in a way that produced much surge. In each advisory discussion, I saw the NHC mentioning how large Helene would be. That's a big red flag for coastal residents.

I know that we and the NHC were talking about catastrophic or historic flooding in the advisories. How do you word an advisory more strongly than that? You can't say a "Cat 5 surge", as a tropical depression can produce greater rainfall than the most powerful hurricane. In early June of 2001, the remnants of TS Allison drifted south through Houston and dumped 36" of rain overnight. In 2017, Cat 4 Harvey struck the lower TX coast, but the upper coast had 15 counties measuring over 25" of rain, including over 60 inches in the Beaumont area, a long way from the landfall point. In the Carolinas, what could you do differently to prepare for "catastrophic" or "historic" flooding vs. "level 5 flooding"?

I'm sure this hurricane will be discussed in conferences next year as far as how to get the people to listen to the potential threat. However, people don't like to evacuate and they tend to think it won't happen to them or it won't be as bad as they're saying.

Wxman, to be fair, you could tattoo it on folks’ foreheads and far too many still won’t listen.
The profession absolutely needs to brainstorm to figure out ways to convey messaging efficacy, but there is a certain group that will never get it.

That certain group is someone that has never seen anything like it nor know anyone that has. In fact, most times surge has always under performed. You don't know what you don't know. Experience creates wisdom

I grew up in a coastal parish in Louisiana and live in a coastal county in Texas now.....trust me....there are folks in both places (and in all Gulf Coast counties) that will NEVER leave. I know them personally. I'm not talking about people with no experience, necessarily.

[caneman]

Wxman, to be fair, you could tattoo it on folks’ foreheads and far too many still won’t listen.
The profession absolutely needs to brainstorm to figure out ways to convey messaging efficacy, but there is a certain group that will never get it.

That certain group is someone that has never seen anything like it nor know anyone that has. In fact, most times surge has always under performed. You don't know what you don't know. Experience creates wisdom

I grew up in a coastal parish in Louisiana and live in a coastal county in Texas now.....trust me....there are folks in both places (and in all Gulf Coast counties) that will NEVER leave. I know them personally. I'm not talking about people with no experience, necessarily.

And I live in an area affected. Any many simply had no clue due to no past experience

[chaser1]

I think something that may be getting underappreciated here which may actually end up playing a major point in the death toll from Helene actually has nothing to do with warnings from the NHC/NWS. But instead on how employees don't have the right to refuse to come to work in inclement weather conditions without the fear of being fired. There is currently a story circulating out of Tennessee that there are at least 17 missing employees who were ordered to report into work in Erwin, Tennessee at Impact Plastics that was in the flood zone. (This is where the hospital rescue images took place.) And I have heard similar stories coming in of employees being on the road/needing to get to work in North Carolina. It seems unacceptable (to me as a Canadian at least) that there is not some sort of legal mechanism in place where when the weather is predicted to be above a certain threshold of risk that employees should not have the ability to refuse unsafe work. I don't think expecting employers to self-regulate is acceptable here at all, and there are going to be a massive amount of lawsuits over this coming up.

https://www.yourtango.com/news/employee ... -hurricane

Fantastic post and this is a very big issue. Unfortunately, there are some states whose city, county, or state leadership govern in the best interests of business. There really should be a unified policy that protects employees at the point where Severe Weather threatens.

[al78]

I think something that may be getting underappreciated here which may actually end up playing a major point in the death toll from Helene actually has nothing to do with warnings from the NHC/NWS. But instead on how employees don't have the right to refuse to come to work in inclement weather conditions without the fear of being fired. There is currently a story circulating out of Tennessee that there are at least 17 missing employees who were ordered to report into work in Erwin, Tennessee at Impact Plastics that was in the flood zone. (This is where the hospital rescue images took place.) And I have heard similar stories coming in of employees being on the road/needing to get to work in North Carolina. It seems unacceptable (to me as a Canadian at least) that there is not some sort of legal mechanism in place where when the weather is predicted to be above a certain threshold of risk that employees should not have the ability to refuse unsafe work. I don't think expecting employers to self-regulate is acceptable here at all, and there are going to be a massive amount of lawsuits over this coming up.

https://www.yourtango.com/news/employee ... -hurricane

When money is prioritised over human life to that level, it is time to take a long hard look at your society and reassess whether it has the right to be called civilised.

[al78]

Two links of interest:

https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/news/sep2 ... elene.html
NOAA imagery from after the storm. It's not complete of course, and there's basically no inland areas but you can see a lot of slabs in those communities around the coast. Very extensive tree damage where the eyewall moved ashore as well.

 https://x.com/hwind/status/1840839647426957355


Some hwind tweets about Helene. That account has some great information, including a nice visual of the wind field while the storm was over Georgia.

The problem with metrics like ACE and IKE is that they're cumulative and mainly for the statisticians and weather nerds (myself included). They have little to do with the actual human impacts of a storm because they're entirely landfall-agnostic and actually landfall-hostile since the numbers stop accumulating at that point. Close-in storms like Helene and Otis score low in these metrics yet cause extreme devastation.

I don't think Helene's overland ACE is that low, at least not the way I calculate it and not in relation to other destructive storms. The big issue with ACE is it is only constructed from peak sustained wind. Wind is lower down on the primary destructive and deadly elements in a hurricane, and two hurricanes with the same peak wind hitting the same areas can have massively different impacts, because storm size, storm translational speed and storm surge are all important factors which are not included. Having said that, I use overland U.S. ACE as one of the predictands for the TSR seasonal forecasts, and there is a strong correlation between this and U.S. insured losses at the seasonal level, so I would hesitate to go as far as saying ACE index is useless despite its shortcomings.