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NWS: Shutdown won’t impact service as severe weather possible this week

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Storms between tomorrow and Saturday will bring severe weather to the Midwest, but not much of the strong stuff is expected to hit Missouri.

The National Weather Service office in Pleasant Hill created this graphic outlining the risk for severe weather later this week.

The National Weather Service office in Pleasant Hill created this graphic outlining the risk for severe weather later this week.

National Weather Service meteorologist Andy Bailey says the chances of severe weather in Missouri are only slight.

“This going to be a pretty potent severe weather system, just maybe not so much for Missouri,” Bailey tells Missourinet. “At this point, the bulk of the severe weather should occur to our north up in Iowa. They’re even expecting some fall tornadoes up there. For us down here in Missouri we’re more probably going to see hail and maybe some damaging straight-line winds from these storms. Certainly the far Northwest corner of Missouri does stand the best chance of seeing the most severe weather with this event, at least that’s the way it appears now, for Friday evening.”

Bailey says the storm is still far enough away, having not yet made landfall on the West Coast, that the timing and track could change significantly. Severe weather could prove to be less of a Friday evening event and instead occur into Friday overnight and Saturday morning.

The latest U.S. Drought Monitor information, updated last Tuesday and posted last Thursday.

The latest U.S. Drought Monitor information, updated last Tuesday and posted last Thursday.

He also says it won’t do much to alleviate the drought, which, in Missouri, is the most severe in the northern half of the state.

“The problem is, as I look at the forecast for seven-day rainfall totals, over about the northwest half of the state we’re still looking at less than three-quarters of an inch over the next week,” Bailey says. “So, this is certainly not a drought buster but at least it will help keep the drought from getting worse.”

Bailey says Missouri should see a quarter-of-an-inch to a half-inch of rain in storms beginning tomorrow.

He adds that despite the federal shutdown, the job of the Weather Service will not be impacted, including the tracking and reporting of severe weather.

This message appears when one attempts to access the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's main website, NOAA.gov.

This message appears when one attempts to access the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s main website, NOAA.gov.

“We’re going to continue to provide all services directly related to our mission of protecting life and property. All the warnings and forecasts we always issue will continue. We’re going to be here 24-7 despite the shutdown.”

Bailey says no meteorologists have been furloughed due to the shutdown.

Some weather-related government websites have been deactivated, but those considered important to protecting lives and property remain up, including regional Weather Service office websites, are up and running.

National Weather Service says severe weather possible this weekend

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Most of Missouri has a chance of thunderstorms this weekend, and the northern half of the state could experience some severe weather. The chances for severe weather Saturday afternoon and evening extend as far south as around the Truman Lake and Lake of the Ozarks areas, to north of St. Louis.

The severe weather outlook for Friday and Saturday. (courtesy; National Weather Service, Pleasant Hill)

The severe weather outlook for Friday and Saturday. (courtesy; National Weather Service, Pleasant Hill)

National Weather Service Meteorologist Chris Bowman says a disturbance coming up from Texas will meet an unstable atmosphere in Missouri.

“The chances for tornadoes looks relatively low … I’m not going to rule it out … but really the biggest threat’s probably going to be from large hail and damaging winds.”

Bowman urges Missourians, particularly those who plan to be outside enjoying the weather this weekend, to be prepared to take shelter.

“Thunderstorm winds of 60 to 90 miles-per-hour can still do a fair amount of damage, especially in a mobile home. It could roll that and cause quite a bit of damage, so thunderstorm winds are nothing to take lightly.”

Missouri has already experienced a lot of localized flooding this year, and Bowman says that’s a possibility again.

“Especially if you get a slow-moving thunderstorm. The amount of moisture that’s going to be available to them, a slow-moving thunderstorm could cause a lot of localized flooding. Right now you don’t see a lot of potential for widespread flooding like we had a little bit earlier, a couple of weeks ago, but you just can’t rule out … a thunderstorm’s able to drop localized three-plus inch amounts of rain so that’s always a possibility, flash flooding.

Bowman says Missouri will NOT be seeing activity from a derecho, a type of widespread and damaging wind storm that had been predicted for other parts of the midwest, earlier in the week.

For the latest weather information in your part of the state, listen to your local Missourinet affiliate station and visit these National Weather Service websites:

Pleasant Hill: Northwest Missouri including Kansas City, Kirksville and Moberly

St. Louis: Northeast and eastern Missouri including St. Louis, Columbia and Hannibal

Springfield: Southwest Missouri including Springfield, Fort Leonard Wood and the Lake of the Ozarks

Paducah, KY:  The Bootheel in Southeast Missouri

Davenport, IA:  Scotland and Clark Counties in Northeast Missouri

Weather Service begins test of new warnings today

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Beginning today and for the next few months, when weather turns severe the National Weather Service will be trying some new things with the warnings it issues in most of Missouri.
 

The National Weather Service will use new language to tell the public when events like this tornado near Bellflower on May 25, 2011 are happening. (photo courtesy, tNational Weather Service)

These warnings will include new hazard, impact, source information and updated Call to Action statements. The weather service hopes the new warnings will get members of the public to take potentially life-saving actions faster.

St. Louis Warning Coordination Meteorologist Jim Kramper says this is the beginning of a test. “We think the warning process and the result is going to be overhauled eventually in a bigger fashion, but we just can’t do it at once. We’re going to take steps, and this is probably the first step.”

The warnings are being tested in five weather service offices covering most of Missouri and parts of Illinois and Kansas. Kramper explains why the Weather Service chose these offices. “They wanted to try to get offices that have been effected by strong tornadoes recently, and try to get a variety as well. Kansas sometimes looks at their storms differently than a lot of people in St. Louis do. So we’ll have a lot of variety in terms of the people that are going to be exposed to this new type of warning.”

Those offices’ coverage areas do not include the Bootheel and Scotland and Clark counties in far northeast Missouri.

The updates are based on the findings of the Weather Service and social scientists, who have studied people’s behavior when severe weather hits in events like the May 22, 2011 Joplin tornado.  Kramper says they’ve learned that most people, upon hearing a warning, will look for more information.

“They hear ‘tornado warning,’ in most cases they’re going to take a look outside, they’re going to see what’s going on. Is there anything right there in the vicinity or does it look clear? Maybe they can see the dark cloud off in the distance. Or, maybe all of a sudden they can see the wind howling outside. That’s what we have found people do. They don’t really take action just because they hear this warning. They’re going to assess the situation their situation and find out, ‘What do I really need to do?'”

See our earlier story on the new warning language.

Some things might not change, however. Kramper says for instance, the Weather Service has no say in what county and city officials do with local outdoor warning sirens.

“The local warning systems are controlled by local authorities. We’re hopeful that they will take this additional information that we’re going to try and make it easy for them to see the warnings and they’ll use that when they make their decisions … but what they decide in terms of turning them on or not is still going to be totally up to them.”

Much of the time, the public does not read these warnings with their own eyes. Rather, they get the information from media outlets. Kramper says how media outlets will pass it along is up to them. Then, it’s up to the public what they do with that information.

See examples of the warnings being tested, with the new language highlighted:

 

Weather Service to test new warnings in most of Missouri this year

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Residents in most of Missouri might notice something different about the severe weather warnings they hear this year. Whether they notice or not, the National Weather Service will be watching for results.

The Weather Service will issue updated warnings this year when seeing images on its radar like this April 15, 2011 tornado in Pike County. Image courtesy, National Weather Service.

The Weather Service offices that serve all of Missouri except the bootheel and Scotland and Clark Counties will be among the five testing new warning language beginning April 2. The changes have been developed following years of work by the Service and social scientists studying what people did in events including the Joplin tornado. The test is called the “Impact Based Warning Experimental Product.”

St. Louis Warning Coordination Meteorologist Jim Kramper says the goal is simple. “We’re just trying to get as much critical information in a very easy format so people can make quick decisions very easily.”

What’s new

One addition is a set of three new lines. “One line is going to simply say ‘Hazard,” and then we’ll put what is the storm producing, whether it be strong wind gusts, hail or potentially a tornado. The next line will be ‘Source.” Is this a radar indicated only event or do we have actual reports of it from spotters or somebody else? Then the next line will be the impact. What do we expect this storm to do? So for example if it’s hail, we’ll put we expect the hail to dent cars, damage roofs … or if it’s mainly a wind storm, we may say we expect trees and power lines to be down along with minor roof damage or structural damage; something like that.”

Another change will be an update to the Call to Action statements; the part of the warning where the Weather Service tells the public what to do. These have been updated by the social scientists. “They’ll simply say something like, ‘You need to move to shelter now.’ Very quick, short and sweet, this is what you need to do. Maybe not a lot of explanation, but that’s OK. This is not the time for explanation. It’s the time for very quick … this is what you need to do, otherwise you could be in big trouble.”

Kramper says the Weather Service will be looking for feedback. “From our partners in the media, to see what they think about it, how did they use it, what did they use, what parts of the new stuff in the warning did they feel is helpful, what parts would they like to see changed, what maybe could be added to make their job easier. Then also we’re going to try to get some feedback from the emergency managers. How did they use it, did it help them? There will places where the public can actually respond to the things that we’re doing as well.”

Visit this webpage to offer feedback to the new warnings this year.

Kramper says more changes could be coming, but the Service had to start somewhere. “We think the warning process and the result is going to be overhauled eventually in a bigger fashion, but we just can’t do it at once. We’re going to take steps and this is probably the first step.”

Why here, why now?

This map shows the areas covered by the five offices that will be testing the new warnings this year. Image courtesy, National Weather Service.

The five offices that will be testing the new warnings are St. Louis, Pleasant Hill (Kansas City), Springfield, Topeka and Wichita. Each has in the last year received an upgrade to its radar that will help the weather service in issuing the updated warnings.

Kramper says of the new dual-polarization radar, “In most cases it should help us differentiate between hail versus rain a little bit better. We should be able to get better train estimates from the radar so that should help in flash flood situations.”

If a tornado is occurring and throwing debris into the air, that should also show up. “If we see that debris and that lines up with everything else that we’re looking at … here’s a circulation, there’s a good signature, now we’ve got a debris signature as well, so far the research has shown, that’s like 90 to 95 percent sure there’s probably a tornado there.”

See our story on the Pleasant Hill Weather Service Office radar upgrade.

The upgrade to radar systems was not the reason the Service chose the five offices it did. Kramper says, “They wanted to try to get offices that had been effected by strong tornadoes recently and try to get a variety as well. Kansas sometimes looks at their storms a little bit differently than a lot of people in St. Louis did, so we’ll have a lot of variety in terms of the people that are going to be exposed to this new type of warning.