North Carolina

Tonight we examine recent failures in journalistic coverage of meteorology.

EXHIBIT A: A story, written by Mitch Weiss of A.P., has been making the usual wire-service rounds regarding the tornadoes in North Carolina a few days ago. In every case I’ve seen so far (out of about 30), the headline was some variant of the most common one: Killer storm system caught N.C. by surprise. Wrong! Wrong! Wrong! Get your facts straight!

The truth: this event was well-warned and well-forecast! Not only were all but one of the tornadoes in advanced warnings, the area had been highlighted in some form of official severe weather outlook for days prior, culminating that morning with a highly uncommon “HIGH” risk at 1630Z, driven by the extreme probabilities for tornadoes. A “Particularly Dangerous Situation” tornado watch was issued before the first tornado. Fortunately, author and private meteorologist Mike Smith, followed by the Washington Post weather BLOG, stepped forward to set the record right. They shouldn’t have had to. Better knowledge and awareness on the part of the reporter would have saved others’ time and his own credibility.

EXHIBIT B: The ongoing Texas wildfires and their contributing drought are insanely destructive, the blazes having torched over a million acres so far this year. That definitely deserves media attention, not just in the USA but worldwide. This photographically stunning story from the (London) Daily Mail is an important one; but it is disappointing to see the British media getting as sloppy as American news outlets with poor writing technique, factual errors, overgeneralizations, and misspellings. One would be tempted to credit the English for mastery of English. Apparently, that’s a fallacious assumption.

I could nitpick or even cavil over a non-trivial quantity of flaws in that piece. Instead, I’ll go after one particularly head-turning whopper: “Texas usually receives up to 15 inches of rain a year…”, as if it were a point location instead of a land area extending over 600 miles in different directions. Get your facts straight! The reality is that average annual rainfall in Texas ranges from over 50 inches in the Golden Triangle area of the southeast to less than 14 over most of the Trans-Pecos and far west. Indeed, far more of the state averages above than below 15.

EXHIBIT C: Finally, this story, “Are We Getting Better at Predicting Tornadoes?” by Matthew Philips of Freakonomics, is a steaming heap of pseudo-journalistic dog dung. The best I can say is that the intent is noble; from there, the story festers with malodor.

First, the headline asks a question that long ago has been answered with a resoundingly loud “Yes” that screams forth in booming echoes across every square millimeter of this land. What kind of skill is there in being the town crier of the obvious? I would expect their next headline to be, “Is the Sunrise Somewhere in the Eastern Sky?”

Next, the story violates a basic ethical tenet by using a blatantly bogus, altered “photograph” apparently supplied by some outfit called “iStockphoto”. Someone quite obviously took this actual tornado photo from 1981 in Oklahoma, changed its coloration, flipped it horizontally, and pasted it onto a different foreground and background. That is grossly deceptive and unethical image manipulation! Even if Freakonomics didn’t know they were being given a bogus tornado image by iStockphoto, they should have known. It’s called verifying your sources. That’s Journalism 101.

[There goes iStockphoto’s credibility too, while we’re at it.]

Proceed into the text. Glossing through the hackneyed old clash-of-airmasses oversimplification, using a “blend of arctic and tropical air currents” to explain tornadoes, emits screaming warnings that this story is rolling around the bowl and down the hole, right from the outset.

They mention dual-polarization of Doppler radars as “specifically designed to improve tornado spotting”. Get your facts straight! That’s a load of contrived rubbish on two fronts:

Dual-polarization technology actually is aimed at better identification of various forms of precipitation in storms, as well as airborne biological targets such as birds.

Tornado spotting is done with human eyeballs, not radar.

At best, dual-polarized radar will aid in ascertaining lofted debris, assuming the tornado is raising detectable debris high and wide enough to be sampled. Unfortunately, by then the tornado is ongoing, and the radar-based warning for it becomes a projection and not a true forecast.

Lastly, we encounter another made-up whopper: “The current master of tornado prediction is Dr. Greg Forbes of the Weather Channel, whose recently developed Tornado Condition Index system, or TOR:CON, is widely seen as the most accurate at the moment.” By whom, exactly? Not in the atmospheric science community, it isn’t. Hey, I know Greg. I like Greg. He’s a very smart guy and is respected in the field. But “TOR:CON” hasn’t seen a sniff of formal, scientific peer review (nor has Henry Margusity’s differently aimed “TS Scale” for tornadoes, mentioned earlier).

By contrast, such statistically established indices as the Energy-Helicity Index and Significant Tornado Parameter have (e.g., scroll down to begin at pp. 1255-1259 in this formal journal paper). I doubt Greg himself would be very comfortable with being called the “master of tornado prediction” either. Such a person probably doesn’t exist, even if it were possible to devise a consistent and objective basis to assign that title. Who is qualified to crown anyone as “master of tornado prediction”? Absolutely, positively not the writer of this story!

Finally, the addendum appears: “Post has been amended to remove mention of meteorologist Kevin Martin”. Why? Could it be some backtracking after discovering stuff like this? Inquiring minds want to know.

After reading those stories, I feel the strong need to take a shower and scrub off all the grime. Where can we instead find consistently true, representative and reliable media coverage of weather stories?

I’ve been bereft of BLOGging of late, at least in this medium.

Truth be told, I’ve had an intermittent case of writer’s block. When the block lifts and I get an imaginative spurt, I’m in bed, in the shower, driving, at work, or otherwise indisposed from capturing prosaic lightning in a bottle that can be expressed here; and its luster fades fast along with my memory of specifics. Lacking the time, opportunity or creativity lately to devise much of my own prose while in a position to compose it, I shall divert loyal readers’ attention to some thought-stimulating entries by friends and colleagues of mine in the BLOGosphere, along with recent chase and photo entries I’ve made elsewhere.

My beautiful and enormously gifted wife Elke, a writer and thinker of an extraordinarily insightful and gifted nature, recently began a BLOG, Sojourner between the Eternities. She doesn’t write much these days, but when she does, it’s powerful. Here was her entry as her father lay in what would be his death bed. The few entries she has so far are but a tiny tip of the vast and seemingly limitless reservoir of spiritual and natural insight she possesses, and which I get to behold on a daily basis. Maybe I’ll be able to dig up some absolutely dazzling old e-mail writings of hers on natural wonders that she may post there too. In the meantime, check out the fine tribute to their dad that her brother Gernot wrote (edited lovingly by Elke before publishing online). She also took the photo of her dad and his wonderful wife Sue, who is a dear friend of ours and beloved as a grandmotherly figure by my kids.

Weatherwise, please check out Patrick Marsh’s discussion on preliminary tornado reports versus actual tornadoes. In the aftermath of the recent three-day severe episode from Oklahoma to the Atlantic Tidewater, the issue of tornado-report confusion has reached a crescendo. Simply put, tornado reports are not the same as actual tornadoes! In fact, at least 30 different reports of the same Sanford/Broadway/Holly Spring/Raleigh NC tornado came in, all now distilled to one tornado. I cannot emphasize this enough; daily report logs are PRELIMINARY and WILL change as events are surveyed and Storm Data compiled over a span of weeks. Do not take same-day or next-day tornado counts literally!!!!

Mike Smith, in one of his latest entries, gave much-appreciated kudos to convective outlooks, watches and warnings for the recent Carolinas/Virginia tornado outbreak, with a nice discussion leading into how much more deadly an event like this might have been in the days before the integrated warning system got this reliable. In addition, the 1630Z outlook (before any tornadoes) was upgraded to tornado probabilities supporting a “HIGH RISK” in the area that later got hardest hit. Mike’s plea for tying down of mobile homes is one that should be heeded. While this step won’t do much good against EF3+ tornadoes, it can save lives in the great majority of events that are weaker, and the residents are not afforded time to reach adequate shelter nearby. I would take it a step further and urge mobile home residents, whether in tied-down units or not, to leave and position themselves in or within a few minutes’ access of a sturdy permanent structure whenever a tornado watch is issued. Yes, the probability your particular place gets hit is low, even on a major outbreak day like that; but I suspect the families of those who were severely hurt or killed would testify that it is a chance not worth taking.

Chuck Doswell just posted a slam-dunk piece on Monday-morning quarterbacking, specifically the second-guessing of official, national severe storms forecasts by pompous little second-guessing ignoramuses who seem to appear out of the woodwork from time to time in the storm-chasing world. Hey: Talk is cheap. Back it up! I used to live in Missouri, so…show me. Prove your self-proclaimed superiority on a consistent basis, with daily and publicly available advanced forecasts of all three specific forms of severe weather all year long, and the post-event verification statistics to back up your claim. Any blind chicken can get a worm sometimes; and even a busted clock is right at once or twice a day (depending on if it specifies a.m. and p.m.). Who can outperform the experts time and again? Step up and take Chuck’s challenge…if you dare. Otherwise, I call BS to any second-guessing fools.

Storm observer and saxophonist Bob Hartig posted a fine rant on the failure of highway department contractors to account for severe weather in their work. I agree with some of his critics who say the chasers (and public at large) need to be aware of these construction zones and severe weather threats themselves. While that’s true, it doesn’t absolve the managers of these projects and crews for their responsibility to minimize hazards also—and that includes advanced awareness of severe-storm situations.

I actually have been doing a little BLOGging–summaries of my first two storm intercept trips of the season to reactivate our Storms Observed This Year BLOG for…this year! If you’re interested, check out my reports, with a few photos, on the US-412 storm in northern Oklahoma, and three supercells (including the tornadic Tushka storm) in southeastern Oklahoma.

Finally, I have been keeping up with Image of the Week, adding a new personal favorite from my outdoor photography portfolio on a weekly basis, in hopes that others can enjoy the images and gain inspiration in some way regarding the outcomes of God’s handiwork in the land, water and sky around us.

Epic Failings in Recent Weather Media

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