Here comes the boom. Ready or not, here comes the boys from the South

This will likely be a haphazard, at best, initial blog entry, but let's give it a go, anyway. Having said that, I sometimes ramble. I know some people are vexed by this, so if I begin to do so, simply go to another site. Good? Good. Here we go...

I have been a weather junkie since I was 8 years old. I have studied this craft far more than I've ever studied any other craft in my 25 years on this earth. Music comes naturally to me. I've never had organized percussion lessons, but learning weather isn't something that just happens. It takes time, reasoning, and understanding. This past Thursday evening and Friday afternoon, I "sounded the horns" for a severe weather outbreak over Mississippi and Western/Northern Alabama as outlined here. The potential existed for this threat to easily push south, but my gut was telling me the areas mentioned above were going to be in the thick of the situation.

I woke up Saturday around noon and turned on my television, and, admittedly, went directly to The Weather Channel. I absolutely loathe that channel, but that's for another post. Anyway... Images of Yazoo City, MS were plastered all over the screen along with video of storm chasers that were hit by the outer edges of the tornado. Many people are criticizing Connor McCrorey and his team for being so close to a tornado. While I don't agree with their proximity to the "bear's cage", I digress.

The National Weather Service has servers for their radar network just as any other web site does. Due to the extremely heavy load they were placed under yesterday, at times the radars we getting behind, leaving you with old data. Also, the terrain in the southern United States is FAR from stellar for storm chasing. The rolling hills with dense vegetation allow for little-to-no visibility of a storm at times. These guys are used to chasing on the Great Plains where you can literally see for dozens of miles with no visual interference. Also, these storms were moving anywhere from 40 to sometimes 75 miles per hour. That's right. 75. That's how fast many people drive on the interstate. Take some old data, poor visibility, and a storm with an (at least) EF-4 tornado on the ground moving at 55 miles per hour (scroll down for warning text), and you're bound to have a close call.

Now the second part of what really frustrates me about Saturday. There are seemingly always people that will cry "We had no warning." Bullshit. I'm sorry. The NWS forecast offices in Jackson, MS, and Birmingham, AL were putting out advisories as early as Wednesday. Wednesday! By my calculations that's at least 3 days warning. The Storm Prediction Center had the area under a Moderate Risk on Friday. The likelihood of the SPC placing a Moderate Risk on their Day 2 Outlook is about as likely as seeing a car accident occur. It rarely happens. 90% of the time, these are the same people that will say "It won't happen to me. It always goes north or south of us. We'll never be hit." This is the kind of attitude that plagues weather forecasters, both professional and amateur, constantly. Public complacency has become so frivolous that when something does happen, we are immediately chastised for not being there. I can assure you that, while there are times that warnings will be missed, and times that warnings will not verify, at least 8 times out of 10, you had warning.

Now that this event is behind us, I hope some valuable lessons have been learned. We have beautiful weather for the week before another threat looms on the forecast models for next weekend. Oh, and that area I mentioned earlier that was going to be "in the thick of the situation"? Tell me if myself and the rest of the weather junkies were wrong for thinking just that. Risk. Verified. Enough said.

Much love.
~Brandon