[EAS] NWS starts sending WEA for destructive thunderstorms next week

[Dave Kline]

Cable interruptions for EAS alerts is an issue here, as I suspect it is most everywhere.
Most often it happens during the weather break-ins done by the local TV stations. You have an active tornado, the TV weather person is tracking it in real time, showing the exact location, then along comes a TOR that covers over what the TV station is doing, and only informs you of a tornado somewhere in your general area. Stations that provide this level of coverage are allowed to do so in lieu of EAS alerts. Yet cable companies have yet to catch up with the times. They still just shotgun alerts across all channels without regard to local, and often much better coverage.

On another note. I find it interesting that someone had to make a mandatory vs voluntary decision about weather related alerts in a state plan. Weather alerts are optional under FCC regulations. Any alerting mandates beyond that required by the FCC and/or FEMA has no place in a state plan. I have it on first-hand authority that the FCC frowns on state plans overstepping federal authority.

In an email I received last year from an attorney in Lisa Fowlkes office, it was stated: "The (FCC) rules, of course, govern." As a result, I was granted the relief I sought from a state plan directive that was more restrictive than FCC regulations.

There is nothing wrong with discussing these alerts in a state plan. And certainly it is OK for these plans to encourage participation in optional alerts. But to force a station to do something that federal regulations don't require is beyond the scope of any alerting framework.

On Fri, Jul 23, 2021 at 9:46 AM Suzanne Goucher <suzanne at mab.org> wrote:
>Spot on, Dave.  EAS and WEA should be reserved for sudden, unforeseen, or unpredictable events, the nature of which preclude advance warning.  We can see thunderstorms coming two or three days out.   I had a battle royal with our local Weather Service folks some years ago when we decided to make t'storm alerts optional, not mandatory, in our state EAS plan.  Now, the Weather Service folks are complaining about all the complaint calls they get when our major cable operator, which apparently has a corporate policy of carrying t'storm warnings, locks folks' cable boxes with alert after alert after alert, as a storm cell moves through various counties.

>Suzanne Goucher
>Maine Association of Broadcasters

>> On Jul 23, 2021, at 10:16 AM, Dave Kline <dklinefmtv at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Thunderstorms, in and of themselves, are not the concern. Rather it is the other weather events that may (or may not) be triggered.
>>
>>

>__________________________________________________________
>The EAS Forum Discussion List is hosted by the BWWG (Broadcast Warning Working Group). http://eas.radiolists.net
>Please invite your friends to join our Forum! The sign up is at: https://lists.radiolists.net/mailman/listinfo/eas
>___________________________________________________________

--
-------------------------------------
Dave Kline - Solder Jockey
-------------------------------------