February 12, 2012

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Corps: Missouri River reservoir prep on schedule

January 20, 2012 By

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ effort to open up storage space on upstream reservoirs to receive runoff this spring is going according to plan.

The Corps updated the media tonight and Water Management Division Chief Jody Farhat said already about 500,000-acre-feet more storage is open now than a year ago. “The total system storage in the main stem reservoir system is currently at 56.4-million-acre-feet. That’s 400,000-acre-feet below the base of annual flood control pool, thus providing an additional 400,000-acre-feet of additional flood control storage for the 2012 runoff season. Last year at this time system storage was at 56.9, about 100,000-acre-feet above the base of annual flood control zone.”

Farhat says that gives the Corps some wiggle room. “What this additional storage gives us is the opportunity perhaps in the spring to hold additional water back if we get rainfall events downstream. Having that additional storage provides just a little bit of additional flexibility.”

The extra space also allows more room for higher inflows upstream as well, but right now Farhat says the snowpack does not look threatening. Farhat says the snow-water equivalence on the plains reported by the National Weather Service remains less than one inch, with few exceptions. NWS shows a below-normal mountain snowpack throughout the Missouri River basin as well, though storms this week have increased that amount.

With the River and most of its reservoirs having frozen up this week, Farhat says the Corps will increase flows into the River beginning tomorrow. “We’ll step up our releases from Garrison at a rate of about 1,000-cubic-feet-per-second every other day until we reach 26- or 27,000 in early February.”

Filed Under: Fires/Accidents/Disasters, Flooding, Military, News, Politics & Government, Weather Tagged With: , ,

Some Joplin residents outraged at ‘tornado tourism’ efforts (AUDIO)

January 16, 2012 By

Tornado tourists and gawkers in Joplin have filtered through the city since the May 22 storm … and now a bus tour is proposed. That’s raised the ire of some locals, who say it’s insensitive.

The Joplin Convention and Visitors Bureau is giving out tornado maps, with a description of the storm and rescue effort on the back, and the best routes through the zone on the front. It’s led to outrage from some residents, but CVB Director Patrick Tuttle says they don’t have all the facts.

Tuttle says he was part of the documentation team that tracked damage and progress immediately following the storm; he says it’s a living history of the city.

Convention and Visitors Bureau Director Patrick Tuttle says it’s not about making money, but about reacting to the interest from the public.

There has been a proposal to offer bus tours, but Tuttle says that idea did not come from the CVB.

AUDIO: Darrin Wright, KZRG, reports. (1 min.)

Filed Under: Fires/Accidents/Disasters, News, Travel, Weather

Warm weather continues, just like in 1983, 1966

January 7, 2012 By

Missourians are enjoying this April weather in January, and weather forecasters say it will stick around for a few more days. Today’s high will again be in the 50s and temperatures aren’t expected to drop until Thursday. Even then, highs will be in the 30s … warmer than average.

Metoreologist Chris Sanders with the National Weather Service in St. Louis says it’s actually weather patterns in the Arctic we can thank for the unseasonably mild conditions.Sanders says those weather patterns in the Arctic that are causing pleasant conditions now can also cause rather unpleasant conditions. If oscillation patterns turn negative and mix with low-pressure fronts and increased precipitation from La Nina … the result is typically blizzard conditions like we saw last February.

Sanders says St. Louis hit a record temperature of 66 Thursday, breaking a record of 65 set in 1955. In fact, lows that day in many parts of the state were higher than average high temperatures this time of year.

The National Weather Center reports his winter has been very mild, especially when compared to last year. The average temperature so far this winter in St. Louis has been 41 degrees compared to 30 degrees last winter during the same period. ”This ranks as the sixth warmest winter on record through Jan. 6,” the weather service says. The warmest winter on record was in 1890 with an average temperature of 48 degrees, followed by similarly warm winters in 1878 and 1876.

The last time we saw temperatures like we’re having now in recent history was nearly 30 years ago when the average mark was 40 degrees … that was in 1983.

Filed Under: News, Weather

Joplin pastor uses Governor’s Prayer Breakfast to say ‘thank you’ (AUDIO)

January 5, 2012 By

A pastor from Joplin says the support that as followed the devastating May 22 tornado is one of the state’s “finest hours.”

Pastor Randy Gariss of College Heights Christian Church keynotes the 2012 Governor's Prayer Breakfast.

Some will remember College Heights Christian Church pastor Randy Gariss for presiding over an internationally televised memorial service a week after that tornado, attended by President Barack Obama and Governor Jay Nixon. Gariss was the keynote speaker at the annual Governor’s Prayer Breakfast, Thursday morning.

He used the opportunity to express gratitude to all those who have come to his community’s aid in the last seven months.

“I don’t know where you say ‘thank you.’ I don’t know what crowd…this is the most appropriate place I know of. By the thousands you came. You came in ones and twos and you came as families in pickups and SUVs and you came as busload after busload. We looked up and there you were. I don’t know how you got there so quick. You were right beside us and you stayed. A great movie with a director and music in the background could not do justice for what it was like to see you.”

Life now in Joplin is a mixed bag, says Gariss. People who have relationships and connections in the town are faring the best. “The individuals that are struggling the most are the individuals that were renters, didn’t own or perhaps didn’t have extended family in town, perhaps a little more the broken families. If they didn’t already have pretty strong relationship ties it’s still a hard winter for them.”

Gariss says what people who have not been to Joplin since the tornado need to understand is difficult to relate. “I would say that it would be that sense of deep, abiding loss and fear. That you think life has sort of a normal pace to it, normal elements you can handle, and the rug entirely comes (out from under you). Even individuals that are building back, they’re afraid of that next rug. They find a great terror about when’s it going to happen again…not necessarily that thing but the next thing.” Gariss says Joplin’s counseling centers are full of people trying to figure out how to handle fear.

He says there is a flip side, however. “There are individuals who will tell you they’ve never had deeper friendships than they have now. We can live isolated until you have a crisis. The one experience now is that you watch, people hug each other…I watched two men stand there to be the John Waynes holding and hugging and talking to each other that have never ever before. Friendships are deeper.”

AUDIO:  Listen to Pastor Randy Gariss’ keynote address from the 2012 Governor’s Prayer Breakfast – 27 minutes

Filed Under: Featured, Fires/Accidents/Disasters, Human Interest, News, Weather Tagged With: , , , ,

NWS to begin using new warning templates in 2012

December 23, 2011 By

The National Weather Service has developed templates for new products that will replace the watches and warnings that have been used for decades.

The National Weather Service plans to begin in 2012 using new templates to get out the warning of events like this, the May 25, 2011 Sedalia tornado as seen in doppler radar velocity imagery. Image courtesy of the National Weather Service.

Warning Coordination Meteorologist Andy Bailey with the Kansas City/Pleasant Hill office of NWS says work stepped up to develop those templates in response to the toll taken by severe storms this year.

Bailey says when assessors looked back at the work of the Service, the lead time given to the public and the quality of the warnings issued, “it was a pretty phenomenal performance, and we still had more than 500 people killed by tornadoes this year, and that’s something we take very seriously.”

Bailey says the Weather Service wants to find a way to get information to the public that it will better respond to. “What we’re really trying to do is we’re trying to look at exactly how we’re communicating this information. We’re looking for ways to better communicate it in ways that the public can make use of better. We want to make sure the message is as clear and consistent as possible.”

Teams met in the Midwest over the last couple of months to develop the new templates. “What those templates are really meant to do is make it easier for our media partners to quickly pick out the details and exactly what the impacts are for each individual warning so they can relay that information more concisely, more accurately and quicker to the general public.”

The plan is for those warnings to go into use March 1, in time for the 2012 severe weather season. Bailey explains, “We’ll have a document internally in the National Weather Service…a ‘product description document,’ that basically details the changes that are going to take place and kind of the methodology and the reasoning why we’re doing this. That’ll most likely be released by the end of the year.”

While new warning products may be heard in 2012, Bailey says the effort to create and refine the way NWS gets its message out will likely continue for several years.

Filed Under: Fires/Accidents/Disasters, News, Weather
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