COOL AIR ROLLING IN--Long Siege About Over

March 27, 2005, 7:52 pm
Posted by J.B. Elliott in Severe Weather
Rating: 0/5   Votes : 0
Our long siege of being under the gun for a severe weather threat is about over...these late notes:

.....At 7:45 tonight, a long north-south line of showers and thunderstorms extended from near Guntersville southward to Gadsden, Talladega, Alexander City and Tuskegee.

.....I use the word "thunderstorms" even though there is very little lightning. It is mostly showers near a cold front moving quickly eastward.

.....The cold front has passed Huntsville, Cullman, Birmingham, Montgomery and was near Gadsden. West winds in the cooler air behind the front were gusting as high as 35 mph at Birmingham.

.....While a Tornado Watch continues till midnight over on the east side of the state, we can say that the weather is much quieter than this afternoon. No recent warnings although some flooding continues over some eastern counties.

.....Officially, in the last 24 hours 6.23 inches of rain at Auburn and 6.12 inches at Montgomery's Dannelly Field!

,,,,,Time to relax. I am at least 5 cups behind on my normal coffee quota for today. And I just gotta play with LMM (Little Miss Molly)

Life goes on. I, for one, am extremely happy that this was not a major severe weather episode. In fact, as soon as we started talking about a major threat, I said a silent prayer that it would not happen. Isn't that a strange business to be in--praying that you will be wrong?
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Posted by Josh  
on March 27, 2005, 7:59 pm
Yep, things are calming down:
DAY 1 CONVECTIVE OUTLOOK:
http://www.spc.noaa.gov/products/outlook/day1otlk.html

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Posted by  
on March 27, 2005, 8:01 pm
JB, I just want to say to you and the others that you did a great job this weekend. I know you are all tired. I also want to mention the fact that there are complainers all over the place about his being a bust . It was not but may have been to the ones who wanted destruction. I wanted to copy my comments over from the previous blog post. Thanks for all you and the others do.


I've been looking at some of the complaints about a bust. Tell that to the people in South Central and South Alabama having to repair damaged cars and the roofs on their homes or worse yet the probable tornado damage in East Montgomery. I do volunteer work for the NWS BHM as a ham radio operator and I have taken many trained storm spotter reports from the above mentioned areas this afternoon. I was working at the NWS when the call came across the ham radio of a tornado on the ground. A few minutes later a second tornado spotted on the ground. Chills came across me as I was relaying the reports to the forecasters on duty wondering if people were being hurt or worse killed. Luckily there were no reports of injuries however there is structural damage reported just to the east of Montgomery. So to you complainers that nothing happened maybe you should go to Montgomery and tell the people who had damaged cars from goflball to baseball size hail and damaged homes from the apparent tornado touchdown that this was a bust. Maybe you should also consider making good use of your spare "I'm going to complain" time and do something constructive and help the people who had damage.

Nathan
KG4VVU Ham Radio Operator
ALERT


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Posted by Josh  
on March 27, 2005, 8:05 pm
Yes, I agree with you Nathan.

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Posted by Craig  
on March 27, 2005, 8:29 pm
Hello to all bloggers out there! I'm out in Ft. Worth, TX tonight and the cold core upper low dumped a little unexpected snow on us this morning. The forecast low for this a.m. was 47... when I woke up it was 33-35 and snowing quite heavy, wet snow. It didnt last long and only stayed on the ground a few hours, but those things create their own weather! Thank God last night didn't get too bad there in AL... let's keep our eyes open for this next one on the way! Blessings

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Posted by   www
on March 27, 2005, 9:48 pm
Nathan I hope you have gone back to look at my posts and see they are not complaints about no severe weather or saying the guys at 33/40 were wrong. It is about the common person, people who don't get into weather as we do, who become numb to it when it is built up like it was twice this week and nothing happened. Hopefully you will go back and read mine and see the different concern I had. Forecasts, computers and people can be wrong, overdone or underdone and I do understand that. Just reread some of my posts and you will see in sidepoint I thought was worth making. Glad central AL came out ok again.

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Posted by  
on March 27, 2005, 10:16 pm
Chris, I'm certainly not talking about you. I'm referring generally speaking to the many people complaining. Anyway, We didn't get what could have been and that was good.

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Posted by Andy  
on March 27, 2005, 11:01 pm
Hey Nathan,
Wipe your nose man you have some brown stuff on it..... I have to say it is unfortunate what happened in Montgomery, luckily no one was injured!!! BUT THAT WAS MONTGOMERY PEOPLE!!! NOT EVEN IN THIS STATION VIEWING AREA!!!!! I am just sick of being built over NOTHING! I understand that weather is just prediction. But wait a little later get more data before you announce the end of the world. I couldn't begin to count how many times i have seen on this website the "WEATHER MEN" talking about an event that's 2 weeks ahead of when it comes in. That is not necessary! People including some of my family members watch this stations weather report and take it to heart like the BIBLE! All I'm asking is to make sure the facts are there before crying wolf!
Thanks
Andy

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Posted by  
on March 28, 2005, 3:57 am
Chris t,

I think Andy is the kind of person we were talking about. ;)

Andy,

Please keep in mind that when the NWS puts out their reports, the folks at 33/40 do have to take it to heart and report what the data is predicting.

The problem with waiting is that the most concrete data usually does not come in until the morning of or hours before it occurs. If they waited until Saturday afternoon to start talking about the bad weather, how many people would miss it because they were out shopping, with relatives, or just not in front of their tvs? Then if they waited and bad weather *did* happen, what do you think everyone would be doing? They'd be angry at the weather people, or worse, they could be injured or killed.

When it comes to severe weather, the only way to approach it is a "better safe than sorry" method. If you find that you would rather wait to listen to what they are saying the day of the supposed event, then do so. But to ask for them to wait is to ask for people to unnecessarily be put at risk because you just don't want any hype.

Besides, I seriously doubt that JB and the others would have spent the night at the station just for the heck of it if they didn't think this could have been major.

Kudos to the 33/40 team - I don't know how they manage all of the negative feedback, but they do manage it with great professionalism. Keep up the good work!

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Posted by  
on March 28, 2005, 5:19 am
It's all about ratings. If people are panicked, they will "stay tuned to ABC 33/40 for frequent updates" and then, 33/40 gets to sell more advertising to Serra Toyota.

33/40 meteorologists are the best in the business during a severe weather event, but ALL Southern forecasters seem to miss the mark about 98% of the time when it comes to severe weather.

They sure can peg that sunshine though.

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Posted by  
on March 28, 2005, 5:29 am
I know it's about ratings, and this is their job. But I would also like to think it's about keeping folks safe too.

The reason why you may notice this with the south is because the weather here is the most variable in the nation, from my observations. We get a large percentage of the bad storms, we fluctuate between hot and cool a lot during this time of the year, and we don't have as clearly defined "seasons" as folks up north do.

Considering those factors it's not too much of a stretch to see why it is harder to hit the mark in the south. Having lived in the south all of my life, I can say that the science of predicting weather - even in the south - has done nothing but improve.

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Posted by  
on March 28, 2005, 6:58 am
Unless every house in the 3340 viewing area has a nielson media box attached to their tv then ratings has nothing to do with it.

Andy did you ever stop and be THANKFUL that this didn't happen? Have you ever had to rebuild or see up close what happens if a tornado does happen?? If you had then you would be THANKFUL that things didn't pan out.



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Posted by  
on March 28, 2005, 7:00 am
Andy, It's sad to see someone look at things as you do. I'm sorry you were let down so much. Maybe next time you and you only will see some action.

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