Thank you for coming to read my tornado coverage from Saturday and Saturday night. As there were about 100,000 brand new readers, please allow me to introduce myself. I the retired Sr. VP of AccuWeather Enterprise Solutions and retired Fellow of the American Meteorological Society. Specialized for 50 years in extreme weather forecasts and warnings. I invite you to bookmark this site: https://www.mikesmithenterprisesblog.com/ Timely forecasts of tornadoes, floods, blizzards and hurricanes are provided. On slower weather days we talk about global warming, science and issues of interest to society. On Sundays, we usually lighten things a bit. For real-time storm warning bulletins, you can follow me here: @usweatherexpert . Thanks again for reading! ---Last night's Coverage --- After 16 straight hours, I must call it a night. All of the information below is current as of 1:10am. Thank you for reading and goodnight. As of 12:35am, much of south central Oklahoma has no electr
hey mike,
ReplyDeletethanks for writing this blog! i read it often and enjoy your insightful commentary.
however, i wanted to make a comment regarding the post you made a couple days ago about storm chaser traffic. i think the recent events in the oklahoma city area show the dangers of having too many storm chasers out there, especially if the streets are already congested due to rush hour traffic. it seems to me like the added traffic from a glut of storm chasers can clog up roads and make it harder for people to reach safety when a storm is approaching.
it's true that the situation yesterday was exacerbated by people trying to outrun the storms instead of staying where they were and taking cover. however, it's also fair to ask whether storm chaser traffic contributed to the congestion, especially when at least seven of the nine fatalities occurred on the roads.
i understand that many storm chasers are collecting valuable data for scientific research and warning people about developing storms. but i also have a hunch that a number of them are chasing storms just in order to capture video and/or seek thrills. in my opinion, the thrill-seekers, video chasers and attention seekers should stay home.
Certainly a fair comment. As I understand it, there were three chaser cars hit by the tornado. Two were on uncongested rural roads. The third (TWC) was on I-40 and was, apparently, speeding toward the tornado. The road did not appear congested but there were people pulled to the side.
ReplyDeleteIf you go back and read my original post plus comments: http://meteorologicalmusings.blogspot.com/2013/05/more-storm-chase-silliness.html
You see that I call out media chasers as the worst offenders. Two of the three were media chasers yesterday.
I'm not saying there aren't storm chasers behaving badly. There are sometimes. But, that wasn't the case May 19 near Clearwater and the idea that a drive should never be "impeded" is nonsense.
There are a LOT of storm chasers soul-searching today -- as well they should.