After a very long 3-4 days, some thoughts on the recent deadly #tornado outbreak in TN.
1. An off duty NWS employee can easily become part of the "general public" and go to bed unaware of the threats that exist. No social media post or media message will help if not checking.
1. An off duty NWS employee can easily become part of the "general public" and go to bed unaware of the threats that exist. No social media post or media message will help if not checking.
2. WEA does you no good if you go to bed with your phone set to do not disturb. It is true you must have a second way to get warnings. In this case it was my dog waking me up. I need to follow our own advice on that one.
3. It's true that humans will often seek visual confirmation of a threat before acting, even a meteorologist. Even after seeing the warning, it wasn't until I saw the tornado approaching from my back deck that I scrambled to shelter with little time left. Precious minutes wasted.
4. Many (most?) people are relying on cell phones/WEA as their primary warning method now. Every person I spoke to mentioned this, mostly by having alerted them, but sometimes by being caught off guard because it didn't go off. Some mentioned how little lead time it provided.
5. I have had no time to perform a meteorological assessment of this event but it will be very interesting to see what, if any, mesoscale features hinted at potential long-track, strong/violent tornadoes. This surely goes beyond simple CAPE/helicity analysis.
6. Whatever the meteorological reasons, your expert mesoscale analysis is FOR NOTHING if it's not translated into an actionable message that people actually receive. If you think tornadoes are possible, yet people are going to bed unaware of this, then we need to work harder.
7. We surveyed almost every type of community imaginable, from lower-income/minority-majority neighborhoods, to young progressive urbanites, to affluent suburbs, to rural and small town residents. Saw tattered Trump flags, rainbow flags and American flags. In every single one
there was overwhelming community support with people helping their neighbors and keeping their spirits high. It was really amazing to see. Just goes to show that despite our differences, we humans really are amazing at the core.
I should add that I'm very proud of the way our office messaged the threat before and during, including this post which is exactly what we should be telling people 
