Bryan Norcross' Official Blog
Sandy Assessment Ready to Go
Posted by: Bryan Norcross, 2:21 PM GMT on January 02, 2013 +13
NOAA’s Hurricane Sandy service assessment finally gets underway next week. And, not to put too fine a point on it, they need to get it right. The agency, which includes the National Weather Service and the National Hurricane Center, has had a shaky few years, but this is a chance to move past the missteps and misfires and make a big difference. The bottom line: the system we use to package and communicate hurricane-threat information doesn’t work. There are too many good people working too hard inside and outside of government to be satisfied with the outcome from Sandy. We can and must do better.

The prima facie evidence that the system failed is, of course, that the key decision makers in New York City were confused and misguided by the characterization of the threat they received. If the system we use to forecast and communicate during extreme events does not produce an accurate understanding of the danger in the minds of public and private decision-makers, it’s a failure. When top people like the Mayor of New York and the city’s health commissioners end up confused when the meteorology is painting a highly threatening scenario, the system is seriously broken.

Year of Storm Surge

Last year, 2012, was the year of storm surge… so the surge-forecasting and threat-communications systems are a good place for the service-assessment team to start. The National Hurricane Center’s surge forecasts during Tropical Storm Debby and Hurricanes Isaac and Sandy were a clear success story. But, the conflicting water-rise forecasts issued by the local National Weather Service offices in convoluted and confounding formats were equally a failure. As I pointed out in this blog on 12/17, the service assessment done after Hurricane Isabel in 2003 noted that the communication of storm-surge forecasts needs to be cleaned up. There were nine years and a lot of hurricanes between Isabel and the Sandy debacle. The time has past to get this right.

NOAA says the team will focus on “how storm surge products are produced and issued from multiple NOAA Line Offices”. In other words, why aren’t the local NWS offices and the NHC on the same page? Excellent.

Usable Communications

In the end, the “usability” of the forecasts is the key. Are the forecast bulletins in a form that they characterize the threat clearly and succinctly, and are they on a schedule that fits with the needs of emergency managers and the public? In other words, are they usable?

As I discussed here, the National Hurricane Center will begin experimental Storm Surge Watches and Warnings this year for internal evaluation, with the expectation that they will be issued to the public in 2015. That’s a big step in the right direction, but it doesn’t fully solve the usability problem. In Sandy, a Storm Surge Watch would have been issued for the Northeast on Saturday, two and a half days before the peak of the storm. But, discussion of a possible evacuation with the public should have begun on Thursday. Even if the new warning plan were in use, decision makers and emergency-information communicators would not have had the benefit of the NHC’s thinking at that critical time.

Communications and Evacuations

In general, the evacuation process – when a lot of people and multiple jurisdictions are involved – takes four days:

Day 1: Communication that an evacuation is possible
Day 2: Communication that an evacuation will be ordered tomorrow if nothing changes
Day 3: An evacuation is ordered
Day 4: The storm arrives

Sometimes, if the storm is small and arrives late in the day, three days is enough, but the system needs to allow for a 72- to 96-hour process. Any compression of that timeline means a less effective evacuation, less preparation, and more misery. The storm-surge threat-communications system needs to be in sync with this reality. Another good discussion point for the Sandy assessment team.

In addition, NOAA’s announcement on December 11th said the team will look at:

• The philosophies and policies behind the forecast and the weather watch and warning products and how they are communicated
• The web presence as a tool for communicating with the public.

We can hope that “the philosophies and policies” examination will include the decision to NOT issue Hurricane Watches and Warnings for the Northeast, which would logically get into the whole question of Sandy’s technical meteorological structure. This is a huge can of worms, but hopefully those worms will be given free rein to go where they may.
It will be interesting to see where the question about the NWS “web presence” leads. Hopefully the current philosophy that more warnings, watches, bulletins, and graphics yield better messaging will come under scrutiny. I’m betting that a usability assessment of the NWS and NHC websites would conclude that nobody wants to assemble the threat characterization from a kit when a storm is bearing down. Especially when there are no instructions on how to piece the various products together to see the whole picture.

Learning from Tornadoes

The challenge of packaging critical information so people understand it and take protective action has been addressed before, and not that long ago. The question was a key part of the National Weather Service’s service assessment done after the 2011 Joplin tornado. (If you haven’t read it, it’s an excellent piece of work. I recommend it.)

The assessment team interviewed nearly 100 people to try to understand the mechanisms that motivated people to protect themselves and/or slowed their response. The final report concludes that “the NWS should explore evolving the warning system to better support effective decision making.” Three of the recommendations apply to hurricanes as well as tornadoes, and address the Sandy situation:

a. provide a non-routine warning mechanism that prompts people to take immediate life-saving action in extreme events like strong and violent tornadoes
b. be impact-based more than phenomenon-based for clarity on risk assessment
c. be easily understood and calibrated by the public to facilitate decision making

The emphasis is mine.

Translated into Sandy terms, these recommendations mean changes in the way the threat from high-impact events is characterized and communicated. We need a new communications strategy that includes special terms, language, formats, and/or bells and whistles for unusual and extreme events.

The special language would include statements that explicitly convey what will happen if the forecast is correct. This technique was famously used to good effect before Hurricanes Katrina and Ike when the local NWS offices issued provocative statements promising “certain death” to motivate action from residents and public officials. But the tornado people have done more, and done it better. The Sandy assessment team should take note.

If the tornado system for extreme events were directly imported into the hurricane/tropical-storm communications process we would get:

• 72 to 96 hours before peak impact a Risk Area is defined
• 48 hours out a Watch area is defined
• 36 hours out a Warning Area is defined
• 12-24 hours before peak impact a Hurricane Emergency area is defined

In parallel, a Storm Surge Risk Area, Watch, Warning, and Emergency would be issued, as appropriate to the individual storm.

This wording could be improved as well. I’ll address that in another blog. But, even this would be a huge step forward.

There are a dozen other antiquated and convoluted communications systems that deserve dissection and/or improvement inside the National Weather Service and out. Here’s hoping that the Sandy service assessment team builds on the good work of its predecessors, and produces tangible recommendations for bold improvements. It’s hard to imagine how a better opportunity for meaningful action could come along.
Categories:Nor'Easter Hurricane
Updated: 2:32 PM GMT on January 02, 2013   Permalink | A A A
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Unraveling the Sandy Storm-Surge Forecast
Posted by: Bryan Norcross, 4:36 AM GMT on December 17, 2012 +9
The track forecast for Sandy has been widely acclaimed as a success of modern meteorology, and rightly so. The advance notice provided by the European Center’s ECMWF computer forecast model was truly remarkable. And the National Hurricane Center’s forecast showed an alarming threat to the Northeast 4 1/2 days before the worst of Sandy’s surge came ashore. But the little-discussed National Weather Service storm-surge forecast for New York and New Jersey was ...
Categories:Hurricane Nor'Easter
Updated: 11:34 PM GMT on January 01, 2013   Permalink | A A A
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NOAA's Small Step and Big Miss
Posted by: Bryan Norcross, 4:28 AM GMT on December 06, 2012 +9
NOAA confirmed and then unconfirmed on Wednesday that they decided to redefine a Hurricane Warning… slightly. A report issued after last week’s annual NOAA Hurricane Meeting – where they review the past hurricane season and vote on improved policies – includes the new language. It defines a Hurricane Warning as:

An announcement that sustained winds of 74 mph or higher are expected somewhere within the (hurricane warning) area in association with...
Categories:Hurricane Nor'Easter
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Time to Fix Emergency Communications
Posted by: Bryan Norcross, 4:01 AM GMT on December 03, 2012 +11
The hurricane season is over, so the fix-the-system season can begin. There are a lot of tropical takeaways from the last few months, but my biggest one is that the system we have in the United States for communicating a serious hurricane threat is drastically and dangerously dysfunctional.

The communications system is so fundamentally broken that the fact of a clear and present threat to New York City – the most important city in the country – d...
Categories:Hurricane Nor'Easter
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Uncovering the Lessons of Sandy
Posted by: Bryan Norcross, 5:22 AM GMT on November 19, 2012 +17
The toll and trauma from Sandy continue to mount with cost estimates skyrocketing. Sandy could end up with a price tag higher than Katrina's. And the heartbreaking reality that the devastated neighborhoods will take years to put back together, and will never be the same, has set in.

Where will the money come from to rebuild? Many people had no flood insurance. What will they be allowed to rebuild? What should they be allowed to rebuild? Where can ...
Categories:Hurricane Nor'Easter
Updated: 5:48 AM GMT on November 19, 2012   Permalink | A A A
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This is the official blog for Bryan Norcross, Hurricane Specialist at The Weather Channel.

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