Saturday, October 27, 2012

Communication and products

An excellent twitter discussion broke out this evening. A quote to consider about public products:
"MUCH too much science" .

And consider that the Impacts might be placed in briefings from last to first, followed by the science for the why of the impacts.

Now this all assumes we have a fundamental grasp on the Impacts. I argue sometimes we do sometimes we don't. Not all meteorologists are skilled communication experts. Not all meteorologists have skills in impacts or training in engineering to assess potential impacts.

Tuesday, October 2, 2012

Bull$hit: The other winter storm

Dear Choir-
You may have heard that Winter Storms will now be named. After all Greek is the new American. Unless of course you are the letter Q. Or that random Finnish name (Sorry Finlanders, don't really know how you got sucked into this). But don't worry, all storms will get a name. I mean they have a potpourri of names, all 26 of them. Assuming winter is 20 weeks, and a "storm" brews on average every 5 days from November thru March, well that comes in at 28 storms (#arithmetic).

But the rules are fair. A storm dropping a few feet in the Sierra's won't be named, and never-you-mind about the weekend. We can ignore those too, because you get the message then. We have our priorities on the east coast. Dusting of snow in Atlanta? Name it. Alberta Clipper in upstate NY? Houston we have a problem.

How about we sit back and actually put all that brain power into thinking of something more useful in communication than thinking of clever hashtags that we can use to communicate? (BOOM!) Did you know that not everyone has a tweety account? And that not all snow that falls can be "blamed" on a "storm"? I am looking at you  Mountains.

Names are awesome for babies! I hear every baby (eventually) gets a name. But have you not heard about switching up the letters? I mean for Pete's sake, man, names have to be unique, Peat! And if you are going to use unique names, well, you better have more than 26. Cause next years winter is going to be worse than this years (maybe not, my skill at 25 days is horrible).

And boy I just cant wait for the train of zipper lows followed by a double barrel Low. I can hear it now: "Bonney will split from Clyde as Clyde goes bezerker in the Atlantic and Bonney drifts into Canada where it will be called...($#*!, they dont name them in Canada! )." Followed by those crazy socialists over in Europe who called it Lothar, totally giving our naming convention so much more street cred. I mean what kind of European would be named Lothar? Oh, ...right...German. Pretty fitting for Europeans. So yeah, well, stop interupting, you are breaking my train of thought.

In conclusion, a low is a Low right? And the most important point is that we have names that the public can use to recall how we failed to name that 6 incher in Dubuque, but gave 6 names to inch storms in NYC ...where (surprise!) no one actually noticed the frost on the ground!

Can we give the proper attention to the things that actually matter? How about (just throwing this out there) consistency of message. Lets focus on being skillful. Skilled at communicating threats. Attentive to your concerns. Putting some useful information out there that helps people plan, manage their risk, stay safe, and protect life. Better information to help you make informed decisions and finding ways to keep you informed and updated and hopefully prepared and not panicked. How does naming storms help you do that?

Sincerely,
Iam Makingfunofyou