Improving effective messaging in the wake of Helene

[storm_in_a_teacup]

Texas Gulf Coast my whole life. What are seasons?

We are in the midst of a big move across the country as well. Getting OUT of Florida. I've been here for over 65 years....seen a LOT of hurricanes, but in my "old age" now, I just don't see myself rebuilding each time a hurricane tears everything down.

Unfortunately, we can't make the move till December, so we've still got to "endure" whatever this season is going to bring (and hope we still have a house standing to sell when we DO go!).

How is it different than if a major earthquake hits, say, California - or tornadoes that devastate communities in the Plains, Midwest or South? Almost everywhere has serious risks.

With tornadoes the effect is more localized. Huntsville was hit by 19 tornadoes earlier this year, but nothing happened to me. They just hit part of a town and leave the rest unscathed. Hurricanes are huge. If a city gets hit, the whole city gets affected, and life is abnormal for months after.

Major earthquakes hit Calfornia a lot less often than major hurricanes hit the Gulf Coast. The last big one was the 1906 earthquake, which has no survivors in living memory. You cannot see them coming and so they kill more people, but they happen so much more rarely, I'm not sure which causes more total losses to be honest.

In any case my parents are probably moving to a place that, at least according to FEMA's risk assessments, has a much lower natural disaster risk overall than Houston or Los Angeles (which I have lived in and both have very high risks). All places have risks, but some definitely have less than others.

[redingtonbeach]

I think it is imperative a MET or the NWS does an article on “there is no safe place in Florida” if a hurricane is coming at you. Over the last couple of years more and more people are claiming things like “Gainesville is the safest place in Florida during a hurricane” leading more and more people into complicity. Yesterday I must have read 100 Facebook posts in the UF discussion forums prior to the storm so students didn't leave (that coupled with the very late announcement by UF they would only close Thursday).

Gainesville was only 75 miles from Helene’s closest path and while wind gusts only hit the 60’s there this time, a slight late shift in the track could have imperiled tens of thousands of student lives who would have been caught in town during the storm, many of them living in rickety off campus housing.

That’s a disaster waiting to happen.

[wxman57]

We plotted the max sustained wind and gusts for Helene and the results were similar to Idalia and Francine (and 2002's Lily, 2020's Zeta). There were no reports of sustained hurricane force wind (1 min avg) inland across Florida or Georgia. However, there were plenty of reports of 95-110 mph gusts all the way up to the SC border along its track. Inland, the experience was of a strong tropical storm with Cat 2-3 wind gusts. So, what happened?

Clearly, the plane found very strong wind aloft, and maybe there were Cat 4 winds at the surface at some point offshore. However, Lily, Zeta, Idalia, Francine and Helene encountered a SW-NE jet as they approached the coast. Initially, the jet enhanced outflow and helped each storm to strengthen offshore. What aids strengthening eventually becomes detrimental wind shear. In each of these storms, the surface wind became decoupled from the stronger wind aloft. The effect was to lower the sustained surface wind but allow those stronger winds aloft to dip down. Wind gusts were nearly twice the sustained surface wind. Double the wind, four times the wind force. It doesn't take a 1-min average 100-120 mph wind to cause damage, a 10-20 second gust will produce a similar result.

Next time, keep a close eye on the predicted wind aloft as a storm nears landfall. If it's going to be encountering a jet, particularly later in the season, watch for this effect. Early season storms usually don't have to contend with the Polar jet when making landfall. They can sometimes strengthen during and even just after landfall, which produces very strong sustained wind inland but with gusts only 15-20% above sustained wind.

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.

[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.

Great points. I mentioned some of this in several other posts. Many times worse case surge predictions have rarily verified here. Like with kids, we can try and warn them but most times it's experience that creates wisdom. You dont know what it looks like until you experience it.

[sasha_B]

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.

I know there's been some talk of an approach based on MSLP as opposed to wind, given its closer correlation with storm surge impacts (and due to its correlation with size, probably rainfall impacts as well). According to the current/operational best track & full advisories, Helene retained a low-pressure center comparable to a Category 3 hurricane (<=960 hPa) for around four hours after landfall, comparable to a Category 2 hurricane (<=975 hPa) for around 12 hours after landfall, and comparable to a Category 1 (<=990 hPa) for around 24 hours after landfall. I agree that the advisories regarding the hazards were sufficiently (& necessarily!) strongly worded, but I wonder if the use of a system of classification that allowed for stronger terminology with regard to the storm's characteristics (up to and including the word 'Hurricane' and an appropriate category #), conveying that Helene would be a deep and intense cyclone as it passed through Georgia and the Carolinas, rather than a weakening system that's no longer a hurricane, might've allowed the message to get across more clearly to peoplel who may not be reading the advisories closely. I know a lot of people - probably myself included - would react more strongly/take more seriously a system that had a name and classification. My brother in Asheville was left unprepared in part because he didn't have the kind of points of comparison that the numbered scale used for hurricanes typically provides.

The NHC does good work & I'm not trying to diminish that at all. But with Helene, as with Sandy, Fiona, and even Katrina - to name just a few systems w/ unusually low minimum pressure relative to sustained winds at landfall/inland - the Saffir-Simpson Scale's weaknesses are really on display here. If wind isn't the primary threat, and we have a metric more closely correlated with the primary threats, mightn't it make sense to transition to a scale based on that metric instead?

[Gatos del Sol]

We are in the midst of a big move across the country as well. Getting OUT of Florida. I've been here for over 65 years....seen a LOT of hurricanes, but in my "old age" now, I just don't see myself rebuilding each time a hurricane tears everything down.

Unfortunately, we can't make the move till December, so we've still got to "endure" whatever this season is going to bring (and hope we still have a house standing to sell when we DO go!).

We’v been in the Florida panhandle since 1998 and had talked about retiring to the Tampa area at some point. After Michael hit about 60 miles east of us, it was like

‘I’m not going through that when I’m 70’
‘Nope, I’m not either’

So we’ve been researching since then, and current top pick for relocation is the Front Range of Colorado, which has a certain wildfire risk if you’re too close to the foothills but in general seems significantly lower risk. I just hope our house is still worth a fair amount of money when the spousal Unit gets his 30 years in 2028. Colorado housing costs are expensive even though most other stuff seems to be on par or cheaper than what we pay now, and we need to sell here for a decent price.

[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.

[mpic]

I moved from Galveston county some 50/60 miles north right before Harvey. That rainfall amount, at that time, made a believer out of me I thought. Ater what this has done as far north of Asheville over-solidfied making a believer out of me. I have just started a savings account dedicated to evacuation of myself and 6 dogs. If I can only pack them in the car and need to live in it until it's safe to come back, that's what I will do!

[Pas_Bon]

Thank you for this post.

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.

[MEANINGLESS_NUMBERS]

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.

I think it is fair to say that the general public did not expect to see so much inland flooding from this storm. Is it your opinion that the damage is what weather forecasters expected (ie there was a communications failure) or that the damage exceeded professional expectations? Or perhaps a forecaster would have said this is a possible but low-probability outcome?

[Tekken_Guy]

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.

I think it is fair to say that the general public did not expect to see so much inland flooding from this storm. Is it your opinion that the damage is what weather forecasters expected (ie there was a communications failure) or that the damage exceeded professional expectations? Or perhaps a forecaster would have said this is a possible but low-probability outcome?

Yeah, I think people expected damage to be in the Michael/Laura tier rather than Ida or even Ian levels.

[saltcod]

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.

[typhoonty]

Thank you for this post.

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.

[Pas_Bon]

The HTI graphic needs to be the main graphic displayed on the NHC's website. Period.
Not simply the cone.
The NHC website also needs a streamlined overhaul. In order to get to the cones, impacts, etc., people need to click at least 2 links to get there. Make images the default when visiting the website and force folks to click 2 links to get information otherwise.
General public needs streamlined, prominent imagery with minimal hurdles to access said information.

[CrazyC83]

The HTI graphic needs to be the main graphic displayed on the NHC's website. Period.
Not simply the cone.
The NHC website also needs a streamlined overhaul. In order to get to the cones, impacts, etc., people need to click at least 2 links to get there. Make images the default when visiting the website and force folks to click 2 links to get information otherwise.
General public needs streamlined, prominent imagery with minimal hurdles to access said information.

How would the HTI work with non-US threats?

[Pas_Bon]

The HTI graphic needs to be the main graphic displayed on the NHC's website. Period.
Not simply the cone.
The NHC website also needs a streamlined overhaul. In order to get to the cones, impacts, etc., people need to click at least 2 links to get there. Make images the default when visiting the website and force folks to click 2 links to get information otherwise.
General public needs streamlined, prominent imagery with minimal hurdles to access said information.

How would the HTI work with non-US threats?

Perhaps they can segregate/main stage the ones that could threaten the US within 5 days and have a secondary segment for all others. Perhaps the HTI graphics/assessments don't even factor in with fish storms. If any landmass is affected, that's when they're performed.
I'm not sure, but as simple as we all find navigating the NHC site, you can bet there are many, many people who could care less about fumbling around with it.
Additionally, I think the responsibility lies mainly with local media outlets disseminating the information. Professional forecasters and meteorologists already do what they do best.

[Woofde]

I really do agree there is a need for a shift in messaging for Hurricanes. The major change I think is that the cone should be removed from the public messaging altogether. The public has no idea what the cone means, being on the ground for multiple of these, the number of times I've heard "Well we are no longer in the cone" and I'm sitting there trying to explain to them that they are on the dirty side and will receive extreme winds and surge anyways. This was the case with Helene as well, too many residents were not ready just east of Perry for Helene. In their minds the cone was over Tallahassee so not their problem.

The problems with the cone are only further exacerbated once inland when circulations decouple and impacts spread out from the center. I know a lot of people want to just educate people on what the cone means, but the reality of the situation is that the cone will always be confusing the average layman, keep it away from the public. We need graphics depicting wind risk, surge risk, rain risk etc. not where the center is going.

[wwizard]

The HTI graphic needs to be the main graphic displayed on the NHC's website. Period.
Not simply the cone.
The NHC website also needs a streamlined overhaul. In order to get to the cones, impacts, etc., people need to click at least 2 links to get there. Make images the default when visiting the website and force folks to click 2 links to get information otherwise.
General public needs streamlined, prominent imagery with minimal hurdles to access said information.

How would the HTI work with non-US threats?

Perhaps they can segregate/main stage the ones that could threaten the US within 5 days and have a secondary segment for all others. Perhaps the HTI graphics/assessments don't even factor in with fish storms. If any landmass is affected, that's when they're performed.
I'm not sure, but as simple as we all find navigating the NHC site, you can bet there are many, many people who could care less about fumbling around with it.
Additionally, I think the responsibility lies mainly with local media outlets disseminating the information. Professional forecasters and meteorologists already do what they do best.

You can also bet there are many, many people who don't bother with the NHC site because they get all their info via social media. So I don't think an overhaul of their site would make much difference.

30 years ago all we had was TV and radio and all of us watched or listened because that's all there was. Even more so before cable. Now there's a billion outlets to get information from and who knows how much of it is reliable or how much of it people are getting.

And even if local TV weather people are doing everything they can to get that critical info out, with the cord cutting ways of the world now, their reach is limited. I can honestly say I haven't seen a local news broadcast in 15 years at the very least. Watched it every single day when I was younger because that's the only place you got your info. Or a day later in the newspaper.

And I don't think it helps that when a storm is coming, all of these news outlets are sending people in to show their guy struggling to stand up in the wind, and all the storm chasers coming in too to get video to bump their followers, when officials are trying to get people to leave. I mean if all of these people are coming in to do their thing in the storm and people are watching that on their TVs or phones, some people are definitely thinking why do I have to leave?

All of that said, I do think you try everything you can to save a life. What more can be done? That I don't know. What I do know is people are still gonna people. Nothing anyone can do about that.

[Woofde]

How would the HTI work with non-US threats?

Perhaps they can segregate/main stage the ones that could threaten the US within 5 days and have a secondary segment for all others. Perhaps the HTI graphics/assessments don't even factor in with fish storms. If any landmass is affected, that's when they're performed.
I'm not sure, but as simple as we all find navigating the NHC site, you can bet there are many, many people who could care less about fumbling around with it.
Additionally, I think the responsibility lies mainly with local media outlets disseminating the information. Professional forecasters and meteorologists already do what they do best.

You can also bet there are many, many people who don't bother with the NHC site because they get all their info via social media. So I don't think an overhaul of their site would make much difference.

30 years ago all we had was TV and radio and all of us watched or listened because that's all there was. Even more so before cable. Now there's a billion outlets to get information from and who knows how much of it is reliable or how much of it people are getting.

And even if local TV weather people are doing everything they can to get that critical info out, with the cord cutting ways of the world now, their reach is limited. I can honestly say I haven't seen a local news broadcast in 15 years at the very least. Watched it every single day when I was younger because that's the only place you got your info. Or a day later in the newspaper.

And I don't think it helps that when a storm is coming, all of these news outlets are sending people in to show their guy struggling to stand up in the wind, and all the storm chasers coming in too to get video to bump their followers, when officials are trying to get people to leave. I mean if all of these people are coming in to do their thing in the storm and people are watching that on their TVs or phones, some people are definitely thinking why do I have to leave?

All of that said, I do think you try everything you can to save a life. What more can be done? That I don't know. What I do know is people are still gonna people. Nothing anyone can do about that.

Yes this is definitely a growing problem in the storm chasing community. There is a very large number of irresponsible chasers out there now. There is a right way to approach these storms, you chose a relatively less risk area and document the storm. You stay out of the way of law enforcement, respect the communities and help out when and where you can.

That mindset is increasingly being replaced by people treating these storms as games and playing around in them while laughing. Hell I mean you've got influential people like Reed Timmer driving around in storm surge during Beryl, returning cars absolutely decimated by hail cores, etc. It's a very bad look for the community, and I understand why locals and law enforcement have become more restrictive in trying to keep storm chasers out. Its frustrating to see for many of us in said community too. It's something I had a long winded discussion about with another chaser.

[Xyls]

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