[BC] Sage updated web page

[Mike McCarthy]

While TOR's are issued for confirmed sightings,  they're also issued for 
imminent development as detected by radar or funnel cloud observation.

One of the problems with the polygon system they're now using is they 
tend to cover small sections of a given county in multiple county 
warnings.  Case in point. we have multiple instances where TOR's and 
FFW's are issued for the same county multiple times covering different 
storms.  Last year, we had 4 concurrent TOR's for one county here and 6 
total for that one county in s single weather event in addition to two 
FFW's.  Our EAS box was going nuts that evening.

Activating the subdivision aspect of the FIPS code is now really 
necessary for proper code handling of polygon warnings.  Especially for 
larger counties which can have very different weather at distant 
locations and a station serving one end of the county shouldn't be 
forced to air all or nothing.

In so far as the NWS and their more recent TOR happy issuances, NWS is 
well aware of the cry wolf problem.  This was clearly a component of the 
high death toll in the 2011 Joplin tornado.  That area sees weekly TOR's 
and most are for radar detected circulation in a storm.  Few tornadoes 
develop however.  And that type of overuse created the level of hum-drum 
which in part contributed to the higher death toll.

MM

On 6/8/2012 1:25 PM, Keith Hammond wrote:
> The best possible example that I can use is a tornado warning which, 
> by definition, means that a tornado has been confirmed and is 
> approaching someone. Keith Hammond