New bad-weather alerts will zero in on trouble
By RORY SWEENEY, TimesLeader.com
New system focuses on more warnings and alerts on areas closer to the storm.
For anyone who watched as December’s tornado shattered windows and uprooted trees, or anyone who has witnessed wicked weather, period, imagine this:
Minutes before a storm rolls through, while old outdoorsmen are still debating whether the sky looks ominous or not, cellular phone customers throughout the area receive a message that the National Weather Service predicts bad weather is brewing.
It could be a reality in the near future. The service announced last week that, this fall, it will officially change how it broadcasts bad-weather alerts and will provide global positioning system data on the storms to anyone who wants it, according to one of the service’s meteorologists.
Currently, the service posts storm warnings and watches for entire counties, regardless of where within each county a storm is predicted to hit. Under the new system, the alerts will be event-specific, in that they will only be posted for locations within a roughly 10-mile range of a storm’s expected path, said David Nicosia, the warning coordination meteorologist at service’s Binghamton, N.Y., office.
“Basically, our office has pretty much been doing this for years,” he said, but the new method will allow for multiple warnings in the same area. Nicosia’s office creates forecasts for Luzerne and 23 other counties.
So, if there’s ever a tornado threat and a thunderstorm warning in different parts of the county, “in the past, you’d get one warning, both storms. Now you’ll get two warnings for two storms,” Nicosia explained. “You may see more warnings crawling across the TV screen, but they’ll be more accuracy with those warnings.”
Tom Clark, the chief meteorologist at WNEP-TV, said his team already attempts to give more detailed information than the countywide warnings, but he added the weather service’s new procedure will “greatly enhance our ability to be more focused … on where the threat areas are.”
A more intriguing development, though, is the potential for receiving personalized alerts on GPS-enabled devices for people in a warning area.
Within 10 years, “I can see this in automobiles, anywhere,” Nicosia predicted. “Once people start seeing a more accurate depiction of stuff, that’ll just become the standard.”
It’s difficult to determine, however, if that technology will get utilized.
Spokespersons for several major cellular phone and GPS service providers said their companies had no immediate plans to incorporate a warning service based on the GPS data from weather service, but that they offered various plan options that included weather forecasting and alert applications.
“There’s some possibility there,” said Ted Gartner, a senior media relations specialist at Garmin, a GPS navigation service. He added that Garmin already has an aggregator for the National Weather Service data and recently acquired a company that provides forecasts for cell phones, but didn’t mention any plans to send specific alerts to customers in warning areas.
In an e-mail, Amanda Higgins, the senior director of corporate communications at Magellan, another navigation service, wrote, “We don’t have any specific plans at this point, but … believe that valuable services such as weather updates … or emergency services are essential in the next steps of this growing market.”
Even if GPS services don’t use it, county government has big plans for the weather service data. “We would certainly use that,” said Dave Skoronski, the director of the county’s Geographic Information System mapping program.
“The morning after (the December tornado), the next day, we already had maps produced. EMA had (maps) in their hands of that path,” he said, but added his department’s response time could have been better had it had faster access to information. “Having the other government entities providing us the data real-time is really going to help.”
Nicosia said that’s exactly what the weather service had in mind. “We’re trying to keep up with the rapid advances in technology, and this is one way. That’s the main push behind all this. It’s going to help us provide a better service to our customers, the public.”
New system focuses on more warnings and alerts on areas closer to the storm.
For anyone who watched as December’s tornado shattered windows and uprooted trees, or anyone who has witnessed wicked weather, period, imagine this:
Minutes before a storm rolls through, while old outdoorsmen are still debating whether the sky looks ominous or not, cellular phone customers throughout the area receive a message that the National Weather Service predicts bad weather is brewing.
It could be a reality in the near future. The service announced last week that, this fall, it will officially change how it broadcasts bad-weather alerts and will provide global positioning system data on the storms to anyone who wants it, according to one of the service’s meteorologists.
Currently, the service posts storm warnings and watches for entire counties, regardless of where within each county a storm is predicted to hit. Under the new system, the alerts will be event-specific, in that they will only be posted for locations within a roughly 10-mile range of a storm’s expected path, said David Nicosia, the warning coordination meteorologist at service’s Binghamton, N.Y., office.
“Basically, our office has pretty much been doing this for years,” he said, but the new method will allow for multiple warnings in the same area. Nicosia’s office creates forecasts for Luzerne and 23 other counties.
So, if there’s ever a tornado threat and a thunderstorm warning in different parts of the county, “in the past, you’d get one warning, both storms. Now you’ll get two warnings for two storms,” Nicosia explained. “You may see more warnings crawling across the TV screen, but they’ll be more accuracy with those warnings.”
Tom Clark, the chief meteorologist at WNEP-TV, said his team already attempts to give more detailed information than the countywide warnings, but he added the weather service’s new procedure will “greatly enhance our ability to be more focused … on where the threat areas are.”
A more intriguing development, though, is the potential for receiving personalized alerts on GPS-enabled devices for people in a warning area.
Within 10 years, “I can see this in automobiles, anywhere,” Nicosia predicted. “Once people start seeing a more accurate depiction of stuff, that’ll just become the standard.”
It’s difficult to determine, however, if that technology will get utilized.
Spokespersons for several major cellular phone and GPS service providers said their companies had no immediate plans to incorporate a warning service based on the GPS data from weather service, but that they offered various plan options that included weather forecasting and alert applications.
“There’s some possibility there,” said Ted Gartner, a senior media relations specialist at Garmin, a GPS navigation service. He added that Garmin already has an aggregator for the National Weather Service data and recently acquired a company that provides forecasts for cell phones, but didn’t mention any plans to send specific alerts to customers in warning areas.
In an e-mail, Amanda Higgins, the senior director of corporate communications at Magellan, another navigation service, wrote, “We don’t have any specific plans at this point, but … believe that valuable services such as weather updates … or emergency services are essential in the next steps of this growing market.”
Even if GPS services don’t use it, county government has big plans for the weather service data. “We would certainly use that,” said Dave Skoronski, the director of the county’s Geographic Information System mapping program.
“The morning after (the December tornado), the next day, we already had maps produced. EMA had (maps) in their hands of that path,” he said, but added his department’s response time could have been better had it had faster access to information. “Having the other government entities providing us the data real-time is really going to help.”
Nicosia said that’s exactly what the weather service had in mind. “We’re trying to keep up with the rapid advances in technology, and this is one way. That’s the main push behind all this. It’s going to help us provide a better service to our customers, the public.”
posted by gab admin at 8:15 AM 
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home