No, I’m not talking about manners at the dinner table. Let’s talk about social media. I am not, repeat not, any form of expert on these various forms of apps and programs out in the ether. You know, the ones that allow instant communication with text, pictures, even videos. I just don’t get that all my friends want to know I’m out for dinner at Pelican’s Landing eating the cooked beast and having a drink with my best friend. Just old school – noneya – we enjoy some privacy. Now I do enjoy an occasional post of my very cute and special grandkids. It’s rare that I check Facebook and even more rare to look at Twitter. But, I have noticed something you might want to think about.

All of us involved in ARES and especially SKYWARN get calls, e-mails, texts, tweets and inquiries in general from our non-weather-aware friends asking for updates and what’s going to happen when the dark scary clouds show on the horizon. At my place it goes something like this, taken from a real conversation:

“Dad …we are at the ball game, it’s starting to look pretty bad …is it going to storm?”  Me – well, yes it’s probably going to, have you seen lightning, has anyon…  “No, its just gotten cooler and the wind’s acting funny, oops there was a thunder clap… oh, the umps called the game… gotta go, bye”

We are “weather experts” to the unfortunate misinformed friends and family who put us on pedestals because we can operate radios and have a desire to serve our communities. Yes we are trained by the NWS, and yes we operate our Grayson County SKYWARN team at their request; but friends, we are not anywhere near a degree in meteorology. Please don’t fall into that trap. More importantly, don’t let your friends lead you there either.

The NWS and even our own Office of Emergency Management is rethinking how to use social media. You know the training you have received and its repetitiveness, and yet I know some of you would hesitate to use the word “tornado” or even “rotation” in a transmission unless you really could see it. You are trained well enough to verify before you report. And Net Control will back-check the claim through other spotters in the area. It recently happened to several of you at night. Some confided after the event it might have been there but you just didn’t see it clearly in the lighting flashes. Even the NWS folks could see some mid-level rotation in the radar, but we didn’t confirm what they thought they were seeing. We all chose a conservative approach and that’s ok. But consider the alternative:

Four random social media ops screaming “Tornado! I see it! It’s on top of the town!” all spaced a few minutes apart. We all know somebody who thinks they know a tornado when they see one (remember those pictures of “fake” tornadoes at the training?). Now the County and NWS are faced with a dilemma – do they believe the untrained masses or the trained spotters? How do they sort through all the reports in a timely manner? They then ask us to confirm a report of a tornado over town. Valuable time is spent backtracking when we should be focused on storm movement and spotter safety. Now to be fair, not all those concerned public folk are going to be wrong and we are not always going to be where we see everything, but there has to be a way to manage the information, and there is some question as to how to deal with the volume of information that comes thru social media.

So, ARES team, let’s do this: when you get asked about the scary cloud on the horizon by your friend, or when you get the bug to post about your best forecast guess because ARES is at orange, or when you feel the pressure to interpret the data, unless you have a degree in meteorology please DON’T. We are the eyes and ears for the officials who are charged to notify the public. DO refer friends to the NWS or County OEM’s Facebook or Twitter pages. They are the official sources of information; besides, we ought to be busy with our own work of accurate spotting for the NWS so they can interpret ALL the data that makes for a decision to notify the public.

You are appreciated by many, many people in our county. Your professionalism has created this respect. From all four corners I hear from people who are glad you do what you do. It is a pleasure to serve with you.

73
Rick
K5ECX