Time to be a Monday Morning Quarterback on Friday's severe weather event....
SCHOOL CLOSING EARLY: Seems like lots of anger came from parents and others over many Alabama school systems closing early Friday due to the threat of severe weather. Let me say up front I appreciate school administrators showing concern over the threat of severe weather, and putting the safety of students and teachers at the highest level if priority. I understand the thought process; you don't want a child, or anyone else, on a bus or other type of vehicle during a severe weather outbreak. Get them home before severe storms develop.
But, long time readers here know I am not a big fan of closing schools on severe weather days. The greatest problem is that a large percentage of Alabama children in rural systems live in mobile homes, and a most of those who die from tornadoes here in Alabama are in either mobile homes or vehicles. School buildings, generally speaking, offer excellent protection for children, especially when compared to mobile homes.
That issue aside, most people had problems with kids being sent home on a sunny, warm day. We expected MOST of the big problems after dark; here is a quote from the blog discussion Thursday of last week:
"I still think most of the severe weather problems in Alabama will come in the 6:00 p.m. until 3:00 a.m. time frame (tomorrow night into the pre-dawn hours Saturday), but a few isolated afternoon storms cannot be ruled out, and those could become severe. Go, as a broad-brush statement, the general risk time here will be from 3:00 p.m. through 3:00 a.m. "
You can read that entire post here:
http://www.jamesspann.com/bmachine/post/wxtalk/3997/High-Severe-Weather-Risk-Ahead
I don't know how most school systems get their weather information; I would imagine they get a briefing from local emergency management agencies; who in turn get their weather from the National Weather Service.
Bottom line is while I would not have dismissed early if I were calling the shots (for the reasons above), I APPLAUD the school systems for their "safety first" attitude. Sure, I am sure they will get the angry phone calls and nasty e-mails, but that is just part of the game.
STORM PREDICTION CENTER: These guys, generally speaking, do a great job. I think the high risk forecast was as good one; although I suggest the idea of forecasting a high risk a day in advance might need to be reconsidered. You cannot look at the damage in Alabama, and especially Tennessee, and call it a bad outlook. I am sure many people not in Birmingham (but in other parts of the Deep South) thought the high risk April 8, 1998 was a bad outlook because they didn't have a strong/violent tornado in their community. We tend to be pretty self-centered these days; "if it doesn't happen in my neighborhood then I really don't care". See Brian Peters excellent post:
http://www.jamesspann.com/bmachine/post/wxtalk/4042/High-Risk-Bust-or-Brilliant
TV COVERAGE: There was very little "hate mail" on this one; probably because we didn't cut off a popular program. Probably not many fans of the Ginzu Knife or Pocket Fisherman informercials that run in the middle of the night. I do want to thank our news department; their support was remarkable. Seemed like reporters and live trucks were everywhere. I will never forget Chris Tatum doing a live report from Walker County with hail bouncing off his body!
Amazing to see the ratings; at 1:30 a.m. Saturday ABC 33/40 had a 19.5 rating and a 43 share! That was considerably more than all of the other local stations combined. Once again, we thank you for your confidence in our coverage. We take the responsibility seriously.
I was also amazed by the response from people watching our live stream on the Internet. Even had one note from a viewer in Germany. Amazing.
Our new SKYCAM cameras were extremely useful. Sure, they don't show too much at night, but I thought the images were simply fantastic. By the way, you can see still images from our cameras on the web now:
http://www.abc3340.com/static/skycams/skycamsmain.html
I will take a look at our coverage and see what went right, and went wrong. As always, there is room for improvement.
INTERNET COVERAGE: We are aware of the problem with the blog and the ABC 33/40 web site slowing to a crawl Friday and Friday night. We simply were not able to handle the volume of traffic. I will be working on a solution for the blog in coming weeks; we have plenty of bandwidth... the problem is with the blog pulling files from a database (MySQL) everytime someone reads the blog.
Was this the last big severe weather threat of the tornado season? Probably not; while the weather looks quiet for the next couple of weeks, we still have a long way to go. For now we need to pray for our friends up in Tennessee. We sure understand their pain from our experiences here over the years.
SCHOOL CLOSING EARLY: Seems like lots of anger came from parents and others over many Alabama school systems closing early Friday due to the threat of severe weather. Let me say up front I appreciate school administrators showing concern over the threat of severe weather, and putting the safety of students and teachers at the highest level if priority. I understand the thought process; you don't want a child, or anyone else, on a bus or other type of vehicle during a severe weather outbreak. Get them home before severe storms develop.
But, long time readers here know I am not a big fan of closing schools on severe weather days. The greatest problem is that a large percentage of Alabama children in rural systems live in mobile homes, and a most of those who die from tornadoes here in Alabama are in either mobile homes or vehicles. School buildings, generally speaking, offer excellent protection for children, especially when compared to mobile homes.
That issue aside, most people had problems with kids being sent home on a sunny, warm day. We expected MOST of the big problems after dark; here is a quote from the blog discussion Thursday of last week:
"I still think most of the severe weather problems in Alabama will come in the 6:00 p.m. until 3:00 a.m. time frame (tomorrow night into the pre-dawn hours Saturday), but a few isolated afternoon storms cannot be ruled out, and those could become severe. Go, as a broad-brush statement, the general risk time here will be from 3:00 p.m. through 3:00 a.m. "
You can read that entire post here:
http://www.jamesspann.com/bmachine/post/wxtalk/3997/High-Severe-Weather-Risk-Ahead
I don't know how most school systems get their weather information; I would imagine they get a briefing from local emergency management agencies; who in turn get their weather from the National Weather Service.
Bottom line is while I would not have dismissed early if I were calling the shots (for the reasons above), I APPLAUD the school systems for their "safety first" attitude. Sure, I am sure they will get the angry phone calls and nasty e-mails, but that is just part of the game.
STORM PREDICTION CENTER: These guys, generally speaking, do a great job. I think the high risk forecast was as good one; although I suggest the idea of forecasting a high risk a day in advance might need to be reconsidered. You cannot look at the damage in Alabama, and especially Tennessee, and call it a bad outlook. I am sure many people not in Birmingham (but in other parts of the Deep South) thought the high risk April 8, 1998 was a bad outlook because they didn't have a strong/violent tornado in their community. We tend to be pretty self-centered these days; "if it doesn't happen in my neighborhood then I really don't care". See Brian Peters excellent post:
http://www.jamesspann.com/bmachine/post/wxtalk/4042/High-Risk-Bust-or-Brilliant
TV COVERAGE: There was very little "hate mail" on this one; probably because we didn't cut off a popular program. Probably not many fans of the Ginzu Knife or Pocket Fisherman informercials that run in the middle of the night. I do want to thank our news department; their support was remarkable. Seemed like reporters and live trucks were everywhere. I will never forget Chris Tatum doing a live report from Walker County with hail bouncing off his body!
Amazing to see the ratings; at 1:30 a.m. Saturday ABC 33/40 had a 19.5 rating and a 43 share! That was considerably more than all of the other local stations combined. Once again, we thank you for your confidence in our coverage. We take the responsibility seriously.
I was also amazed by the response from people watching our live stream on the Internet. Even had one note from a viewer in Germany. Amazing.
Our new SKYCAM cameras were extremely useful. Sure, they don't show too much at night, but I thought the images were simply fantastic. By the way, you can see still images from our cameras on the web now:
http://www.abc3340.com/static/skycams/skycamsmain.html
I will take a look at our coverage and see what went right, and went wrong. As always, there is room for improvement.
INTERNET COVERAGE: We are aware of the problem with the blog and the ABC 33/40 web site slowing to a crawl Friday and Friday night. We simply were not able to handle the volume of traffic. I will be working on a solution for the blog in coming weeks; we have plenty of bandwidth... the problem is with the blog pulling files from a database (MySQL) everytime someone reads the blog.
Was this the last big severe weather threat of the tornado season? Probably not; while the weather looks quiet for the next couple of weeks, we still have a long way to go. For now we need to pray for our friends up in Tennessee. We sure understand their pain from our experiences here over the years.
The storms wher servere in NW Alabama storm after storm if anything needed to be done was move the high risk to the north. Now by the time the storms came down here in central Alabama they fell apart some. Yes we still had servere storms but not like they where in the NW part of the state. So to me the high risk WAS NOT A BUST.
on April 10, 2006, 8:09 am
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