An Open Letter To ABC News
January 24, 2012
Communication can seem like an uphill battle, especially when it comes to communicating risk in regards to the weather. Meteorologists can use every tool in our arsenal to give advance warning of severe weather outbreaks, blizzards, floods, hurricanes, and other natural disasters, and still we end up with stories like the one last night when anchor woman Diane Sawyer on ABC News said that the recent tornadic storms in the south struck without warning.
No warning? Really? The Storm Prediction Center issued a PDS (Particularly Dangerous Situation) Tornado Watch hours before the storms got started. On Sunday morning, meteorologists on facebook, twitter, and other social networking sites (myself included) were warning their friends and followers about the potential for a major outbreak that evening. All you had to do was open your eyes. There were warnings everywhere!
So even with social media, the strong online presence of the Storm Prediction Center, the National Weather Service, private companies like weather.com, the weather underground, etc., NOAA weather radios, text alerts from local TV stations, local Emergency Broadcast/Alert Systems, and more, a national news anchor can still claim that the storms struck without warning? What does she or anyone else making that claim want? A knock on the door? “Hello, I’m your friendly neighborhood weather woman. You may want to pay attention today because we have a severe weather threat in the forecast.” That’s not going to happen.
If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound? Of course, it does! The meteorologists were yelling “timber!” on Sunday. Anyone not paying attention can’t claim they didn’t try to warn him or her. All they can do is claim ignorance, and with so many ways available to get warnings now, ignorance is no excuse.
ABC News should issue a formal apology to meteorologists everywhere for insinuating that we weren’t doing our job. The news is not about the anchor’s perspective. It should be about the facts, and the facts are – THERE WAS WARNING. The warnings began days in advance as meteorologists started to see the potential threat develop in the forecast models. When the potential became more concrete, the warnings became more numerous and louder. The day of the event, the warnings were everywhere. The meteorologists were doing their jobs, Ms. Anchor Woman. Why don’t you do yours?
13 Comments
I rarely send comments to news programs, but I did send one – a complaint – to ABC News because of the way that the script writers wrote about that story. (One really can’t blame the news reader; she’s just reading the script, but someone of Diane Sawyer’s stature should know better.) I railed on them (in less than 500 characters) about how they should do their research before they put something like that on the air.
“Without warning” may be justified in some cases, but absolutely not in this event. One would have to be purposely and actively avoiding the news to not hear about the severe weather potential on Sunday. If an interviewee says, “We didn’t have any warning!” maybe the researchers should see if warnings were actually issued. It’s easy to check. Just because it’s “sciencey” (read: geeky) doesn’t mean you can’t look it up yourself.
*shakes head*
comment by Chris B. Critter — January 24, 2012 @ 9:18 am
I would also like to point out that there were only 2 fatalities with this event. It appears that most people got the warnings with this event with last year still fresh in their minds. The media is also referring to this event as ‘rare’ That can not be further from the truth. Severe weather across the Deep South is not uncommon this time of year and most winter season events occur in this area. One only needs to look back to the Super Tuesday Outbreak of February 5-6th 2008 which spawned 87 tornadoes and caused 57 deaths across the Lower Mississippi Valley and into the Deep South. To describe this event in terms of ‘no warning’ and ‘rare’ are very irresponsible and work against everything we as meteorologists try to accomplish.
comment by Bryan Howell — January 24, 2012 @ 9:20 am
I think the news folks confuse the idea that “someone” didn’t get the warning with “there was no warning”. There’s always some person who doesn’t get the message, that doesn’t mean the message wasn’t available to be received.
Kudos to you for this letter. Perhaps you can contact some of the media folks in your area and put this in front of a larger audience?
–Kevin.
comment by Kevin — January 24, 2012 @ 9:35 am
To wit:, there were actually tornado warnings in effect ahead of the event. https://nwschat.weather.gov/vtec/#2012-O-NEW-KBMX-TO-W-0004
https://nwschat.weather.gov/vtec/#2012-O-NEW-KBMX-TO-W-0006
–Kevin.
comment by Kevin — January 24, 2012 @ 9:46 am
Bravo! We’ll see if ABCNews or Diane Sawyer takes note…but don’t hold your breath waiting for an apology.
comment by chuck yengst — January 25, 2012 @ 11:35 am
The forecasting of the weather is never an easy equasion.Categorically speaking once a forecast is made thru dissemenation of data the information then is forwarded to many areas for the spreading of the written word. For television newsreaders they become a target when ever the information supplied does not happen.In deference we can be right,or we can be wrong.As a Fellow of the Royal Meteorological Society the circumstances that occurred, dictated by preceeding natural events, proved quite conclusively that an event in nature would occur, not will definitely occur. Risk is an ever present potential and it takes a very good experienced, forcaster, watching and taking notes of the leading up to an event to get the forecast correct.iow; we cannot blame the news woman as she is just doing her job as to reporting what she has received in writing or on a monitor placed in front of her to read and report.Don’t be judgemental give the news reader the credit she deserves as her position is never an easy one either!
comment by Philip Mew (Fellow) — January 25, 2012 @ 2:28 pm
A similar situation occurred here in Olympia, WA where the publisher of The Olympian newspaper wrote a piece last Sunday knocking meterologists in general (whom he called meteor scientists) and specifically picked on female TV weather people who wear too much hair spray and look like they;re in the 1980s. I quickly sent a letter complaining of the article on many accounts to the newspaper but I seriously doubt it will get published or perhaps even recognized.
comment by Ed Boselly — January 26, 2012 @ 3:14 pm
It is my personal believe that much of the mainstream new media is scientifically illiterate. Add the need to over sensationalize a story, liberally sprinkle in terms like “freak” or “rare”, and you have a recipe for very bad news reporting. This kind of reporting is inexcusable and irresponsbile.
comment by Jerry Crescenti — January 26, 2012 @ 3:35 pm
Did you make sure Diane Sawyer and/or ABC News saw this? If not, I will see to it, very well written and I plan to share this with everyone I know!
comment by Patricia Vollmer — January 28, 2012 @ 12:21 pm
Thank you everyone for the comments!
Patricia, I did file a complaint through the ABC News official comment form on their site, which they will probably never read.
I heard that James Spann, a meteorologist, who was on the air all night during the outbreak did make it very clear to ABC News that the choice of words in the story were both misleading and upsetting. Here’s the link to that story: http://www.mediabistro.com/tvnewser/after-criticism-from-a-local-abc-meteorologist-world-news-will-clarify-report-on-tornadoes_b108416
comment by wwx — January 28, 2012 @ 12:39 pm
[...] A friend posted this open letter earlier this week on her blog, whatever-weather.com. She speaks my sentiment exactly. The National Weather Service has been performing exceptionally well in recent outbreaks, sometimes providing one week’s notice on potential tornadic activity. [...]
pingback by GeekMom » Blog Archive » The Semantics of Weather Awareness — January 29, 2012 @ 7:00 am
I also posted about the weather situations in Florida and Alabama this week, and reminded others to check in if they had family to make sure they were also aware. Of my 1234 followers on Facebook for my official website for a public safety department…I lost 4 followers and didn’t have one person share the information from the Storm Prediction Center.
comment by Greg — January 29, 2012 @ 5:38 pm
Excellent, Nicole.
The meteorologist, forever the brunt of the “I wish I could be wrong 50% of the time and still be paid” joke, is an easy target. And, there is a long history of blaming the meteorologist – meteorology, after all, is not an exact science.
But you’re right – in this day of instant communication people expect a knock on the door. Private, fee-based weather companies are filling that role, but the average “consumer” has to be pro-active. And the media needs to step up their game.
I wonder where DS got that info? She’s in New York, while the tornadoes were far, far away. I hate to generalize, but New Yorkers (it seems) often feel that if it doesn’t happen in New York it’s not important…
comment by Dave Gorham — January 30, 2012 @ 3:06 pm