BLOG: About Sirens and Our Coverage Last Night

Good morning all! Whew, what a night. It got very busy in a hurry and I want to thank you for tuning into our coverage on TV and on social media. Last night presented many "challenges" for us in the weather communication business and I wanted to talk about that for a minute.The way severe weather warnings are issued and the methods of getting the word out to the public has changed rapidly in recent years. First of all, the National Weather Service now uses a "polygon" warning system. What does that mean?? It means they do NOT, unless necessary, issue severe weather warnings for ENTIRE counties. The warnings are issued only for the part of a county that will be impacted by the storm.This image shows where the Tornado Warning (red box) was out. Just the northeastern part of Trumbull County.  This is a GREAT advancement and should cut down on the "false alarm" rate of warnings, by excluding parts of counties that are in no danger.BUT, the polygon system does produce challenges. Many of the ways warnings are communicated to the public have not caught up to the polygon system. For example, the "crawl" that runs at the bottom of the screen on TV? This is automatically generated by default and generally just says the name of the county...not the PART of the county under the warning. We DO have the ability to manually edit the crawl but when we are busy doing live cut ins on TV and keeping social media updated, it can be a challenge.One of the ways I keep my social media sites updated when new warnings come out is by using a service that posts those warnings automatically for me. It's great because I often am on live TV and cannot manually type them on Twitter and Facebook. They look like this: Notice, it just says the county name...not the PART of the county. I try, once I am off TV, to supplement these automatically generated posts with a more detailed warning, but again, it is hard sometimes.NOW, LET'S TALK ABOUT SIRENS. Deep breaths. I had a TON of calls and social media comments last night about sirens going off in their communities. Many of these were in western and southern Trumbull County, places that WERE NEVER IN ANY DANGER.On the flip side, on many severe weather days when there is legitimate danger, I get reports of "the sirens didn't go off!!". THIS IS A BIG PROBLEM.Here's the truth about sirens. They are outdated, World War II technology, are inefficient, inconsistently used and in 2014 almost NO ONE should be relying on them for "information". Certainly not as your only source of information. NO ONE should base their decisions regarding seeking shelter based on whether or not a siren can or cannot be heard in their community.Ok, so what should you do? I encourage everyone to have a Weather Radio. They are pretty cheap, readily available, and easy to use. They come in a number of shapes and sizes. Everyone should get text alerts on their phones. Go to wfmj.com/weather and sign up for them on the right hand side. Even if you don't use OUR service, use someone's!To sum up, a siren should be the last way you get a weather warning in these modern times. If you hear a siren, quickly assess the situation. Turn on your TV. Listen to your weather radio. Check Facebook and Twitter. See if there is a need for action.If you see on your phone, on TV, on your weather radio and on social media that you are under a Tornado Warning but DON'T hear a siren....TAKE ACTION! Don't wait to hear a siren that may never sound. There have been FAR too many cases in recent years where people were hurt or killed in tornado outbreaks due to lack of action because "there was no siren". Lastly, a word about our coverage on TV last night. I elected not to preempt our 11:00 news with "wall-to-wall" coverage of the Tornado Warning. Many wondered why, and that is a fair question. The truth is, not all Tornado Warnings are created equal. This one was for a small, relatively unpopulated area of Trumbull Co. It was a warning based on weak rotation being picked up by Doppler Radar. I assessed that the threat for an actual tornado was VERY minimal. That, along with the location of the warning, led me to believe that it was unnecessary for us to cover it on TV for 45 straight minutes. I did do 3 special reports during the newscast (in addition to a 4 minute main weather segment) and updated social media with fresh radar images and analysis every few minutes. We also cut into the Tonight Show a few times.I respect those who changed the channel because we did not cover it as if it were an actual tornado emergency. But I did want to give you a bit of an explanation for that decision.Thanks as always for reading and I welcome your feedback!Eric