[EAS] An Open "Letter" to the National Weather Service - now posted on the EAS Forum

[Mike McCarthy]

Richard,

One other thing is missing from the letter.  The broad strokes many warnings now employ.  Instead of a warning being issued for a targeted area under the greatest hazard, the NWS is issuing 5, 6 7 or more counties in a single SVR. Most of which will never see any categorically SVR weather. Additionally, many of these warnings only cover a portion of a county which is then repeated in a downstream warning for the other part not previously covered.  The polygons are simply non-nonsensical at times.

We stopped carrying SVR's long ago when the NWS started getting warning happy bases only on radar. We limit to TOR and FFW of the COL's county and the next downstream if much is within the 70dBu contour. Never the less, that doesn't even preclude warning happy forecasters. In a recent year, I had one county in a single storm event with four distinct geographically separated concurrent TOR's issued within 20 minutes of each other based only on radar signatures. The county is less than 600 sq. miles.  Only one had any observed ground truth.

The pendulum of being cautious and maybe missing one has swung so far the other direction that cry wolf is an understatement.  Joplin, Mo. is text book case of this reality.  Many people there said they no longer paid any attention to the NWS radio as it was squawking TOR's all the time and nothing ever came of them.

MM