[EAS] National Weather Service Message Flooding

[Mike McCarthy]

Maybe it might be time to press for implementation of the county 
subdivisions. The subdivisions being more geopolitical or conditions 
based than simply geographical.  Such as a major city being it's own 
subdivision within a county. Or a valley between mountain ranges. I will 
say the NWS is now including more specific municipal and congregation 
points in their warning's text.  Which is a good thing for folks and 
visitors not familiar with a given area.

It also may be time to revisit the criteria for issuing some warnings. 
This past summer, the vast majority of SVR warnings here were based on 
WSR-88D observations and algorithm product alerts. In the vast majority 
of those warnings, particularly wide swath warnings, ground verification 
meeting the SVR criteria were limited in scope and breadth. Further, 
sequenntial wide swath SVR's provided even less or still limited ground 
truth verification over the warned area.

The same could be said for blizzards. Last year saw more Blizzard 
Warnings in a season than I can remember.  And except for one, all of 
them issued for around here saw Winter Storm Warning criteria barely 
met...or not.

I agree it's a double edge sword paradox. But at some point, another 
Joplin will occur. And one can only wonder what will come of it given 
the public's senses dulled by the flood of SVR's. That when a TOR is 
issued based on ground verification, they won't take heed of the 
distinction. The $64,000 question is how changes can be made without 
necessarily increasing risk as well as minimizing the costs to make the 
changes.

MM

On 9/27/2013 11:30 PM, Clay Freinwald wrote:
> The Event Code list for WEA is pretty short - much shorter than EAS.
>
> We've already had very deceptive WEA warnings (like Blizzard Warnings for
> Downtown Seattle)...
> The wireless industry is very sensitive to doing things wrong.
>