The Attempt to Mislead Regarding Layoffs at NOAA

You may have awakened to this 'news' at the Drudge Report this morning. 

Drudge links to the Irish Times, an Ireland-based newspaper that detests President Trump. Their headline is below. I believe the preliminary death toll is now up to 36 --mostly from the tornadoes. 

The Irish Times, and others, are -- intentionally or not -- confusing layoffs at the National Weather Service (NWS) with the parent agency the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The former is a lean agency that issues the tornado, blizzard and dust storm warnings that were needed the past few days and the latter has traditionally had lots of fat that has been or could be cut. 

For example, NOAA's cartoonist(s) has been laid off. 

I can assure you the layoffs of the NOAA cartoonist(s) and in-house video staff have nothing whatsoever to do with the quality of the storm warnings mentioned above!

The newspaper focused on the strong tornado that stuck Cave City, Arkansas, Friday night. 

But, here's the thing: The NWS did a fine job with that tornado warning. They gave Cave City 13 minutes of advance notice. That meets the NWS's goal of 13 minutes and is more than enough time to seek shelter from a tornado. 

Here's the warning from 10:23pm. At lower right, you see that Cave City is clearly warned. 

It is important to understand how modern Doppler radar (below, 10:22pm) made all of the difference in this case. Prior to Dopper wind data (right panel), we could not have been able to see the rotational "couplet" (red and green inside the circle). Before Doppler, we would have had to solely rely on the reflectivity data (left) which shows nothing sinister. This tornado would have been missed. 

At 10:36pm, Doppler 13 minutes after the warning was issued, the tornado reached Cave City.

Again: The National Weather Service did its job well. The gratuitous criticism in this case was not warranted as "NOAA's" layoffs had nothing to do with anything. 

But that does not mean the job is finished. Let's to back to the newspaper's story:

"Some were killed in their homes as they slept." Why? We know the warning was timely and accurate. What went wrong?

• Did the people killed "in their sleep" miss our pleas of the previous three days? Below is an item from my blog more than 5 days in advance, followed up many times between the 4:18pm on the 9th and Friday evening:

The day before the tornadoes, the information below was run. "Pink line" refers to an illustration in that post. 

I saw many other online meteorologists plus the NWS pleading for people to get the tools to awaken themselves as we knew strong tornadoes would occur after dark. 

• Had they missed the forecasts and watches all together? 
• Did they know about the forecasts and disregard them?
• Did they have a weather radio or telephone service like StormWarn? Did StormWarn, WEA or other methods, for some reason, fail to alarm?
• If the weather radio tone sounded or if they received a warning call, did they roll over and go back to sleep? Were they tempted not to bother with warnings because they perceived themselves as having no place to take shelter?

I don't have a clue to the above. Know who would? A National Disaster Review Board! They would determine the answers to all of these questions so that if there is a hole or holes in the warning system we can get them fixed before people are killed in the future.

In addition to the tornadoes, this storm system produced a blizzard in the northern Great Plains and caused two interstate highways (70 and 29) to experience severe dust storms that lead to major multi-car pileups. Combined, these killed about 20 of the 36 people. 

Right now, we are doomed to make the same mistakes over and over. The National Disaster Review Board is the only way to break this cycle. 

I'll have much more on this topic tomorrow.