July 31, 2020

The Weather Channel's "COVIDCANE" Branding Is A Mockery Of This Crisis And Its Own Legacy

7/31/2020 08:25:00 PM 1 Comment

Any hurricane season is stressful when we have a storm aiming for the coast, but this season is particularly harrowing because of the ever-worsening coronavirus pandemic. It's not out of question that coastal communities will face evacuation orders at some point this season due to a storm's surge or inland flooding. When that happens, local officials will have to walk a tightrope to figure out how to safely handle evacuees without exposing folks already experiencing hardship to a coronavirus outbreak at evacuation centers and other gathering points for aid and supplies.

The Weather Channel, bless its heart, decided to call this conundrum COVIDCANE 2020: BRACING FOR DISASTER.

Come on.

The network recently ran a special report titled COVIDCANE 2020 and I held hope, however fleeting, that it was a one-off thing and the folks in charge would think better of this ill-advised branding opportunity.

Nope.


Watches and warnings are up in parts of Florida ahead of Hurricane Isaias. The Weather Channel's on top of it like always. But right next to their coverage tonight is that little COVIDCANE 2020 logo, hanging out on the network's graphics and chyrons like a sorry wasp caught between the screen and the window.

How many desks did COVIDCANE 2020 have to cross before it got final approval to go on television and the internet? How many folks had to give this branding nightmare the green light and no one stopped to think for one blasted minute "hey, maybe we shouldn't do this?"

I have been in that building twice. There are lots of fantastic people who work for the company. And the building has plenty of cozy meeting rooms for any number of those great folks to go over what went wrong and make sure it doesn't happen again.

I've criticized The Weather Channel for plenty of nonsense in the past. Their winter storm names are flawed. They've given some pretty boneheaded advice during emergency situations. One of their reporters ran around in a hurricane a few years ago like a frat guy during pledge week—I hear they even wound up changing the way they cover storms after that incident.

But this is something that's completely out of character for a network that prides itself on leading the pack for weather coverage. They're supposed to be the gold standard—weather you can always turn to!—but this escapade cracks open the vault to find an empty reserve and an intern pecking at a keyboard in the dark.

The Weather Channel didn't invent over-the-top branding during natural disasters. News organizations have been packaging flashy graphics and snazzy music for crises since they got the technology. But the company should know better. More than 150,000 people are dead from a virus in five months. We're adding tens of thousands of new cases every day. A hurricane is heading toward the worst-hit part of the country right now and goodness knows what else will form in the coming months.

This is stress on top of stress.

We all know the power of graphics, chyrons, and headlines. Advertising this as COVIDCANE 2020 cheapens the threat and makes it sound like it's just another ratings opportunity instead of a serious examination of two disasters converging in a way we haven't experienced in living memory in the United States.

Do better.

[Images: @weatherchannel on Twitter (1 & 2)]
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July 3, 2020

This Weekend's Weather Is Perfect To Just Stay Home

7/03/2020 05:18:00 PM Leave a Reply

We're going to see see absolutely beautiful weather to stay home this long weekend. Whether it’s storms in the northern Plains or hot and humid conditions down by the Gulf, it all matters just about the same since we shouldn’t be out anywhere right now.


Everyone but the Pacific Northwest will see a dose of summertime heat this weekend. A big dome of high pressure covering the middle of the country will allow a muggy heat to build from the Rockies to the Atlantic.

An isolated storm or two could bring a welcome relief from the rain. Occasional pop-up thunderstorms are possible in that muggy airmass where updrafts get going fast enough to break through the cap. Some of the storms in the northern Plains and northern Gulf Coast could produce localized flooding.

Royal blue skies will greet the West Coast this weekend, where typical Pacific mildness will greet most beaches from Washington to California. Many southern California beaches and beach parking facilities across the state are closed, of course. Temperatures will get quite toasty in desert areas and California’s Central Valley, but it’ll be tranquil otherwise.
Source: The COVID Tracking Project
Austin could notch its first triple-digit reading of the year on Saturday. The greatest heat will build over Texas on July 4, where confirmed coronavirus cases are increasing exponentially and Houston-area intensive care units reach capacity as a result of the surge in infections. There’s no real reason for any of us to gather with friends or family or go on vacations or out to eat this weekend since slowing the spread of the virus is the only way we’re ever going to return to normal in the next couple of years. Temperatures will reach the low 100s across most of the state on Saturday. Try to stay cool!

Muggy is pretty much the baseline in Florida. You break out into a sweat as soon as you walk outside and it just doesn’t relent. The thick, putrid air is especially tough right now since Florida's lax gathering and travel restrictions—and even more casual relationship with wearing masks—has allowed coronavirus cases to soar and put serious strain on hospitals across the state. 

An isolated instance of flash flooding is possible on the northern Gulf Coast and northern Florida this weekend in any of the thunderstorms that pop up. Storms will have a deep reservoir of atmospheric moisture to tap into and some could produce rainfall rates heavy enough to overwhelm drainage systems.

Severe thunderstorms are possible across much of the Plains and portions of the northern Rockies and Upper Midwest this weekend. That shouldn't put a damper on any big cookouts, though, since large family gatherings and parties continue to be major spreader events that are seeding accelerated outbreaks in communities across the country. Severe storms could produce damaging wind gusts in excess of 60 MPH, hail the size of quarters or larger, and possibly an isolated tornado or two.

Keep safe!

[Satellite: NOAA]
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May 8, 2020

Trump's Hurricane Sharpie Map Was A Warning Flare For The Federal Coronavirus Response

5/08/2020 08:00:00 AM Leave a Reply

We hit the point of no return the moment Donald Trump took his Sharpie to a days-old hurricane forecast in the Oval Office.

It seems like we've passed a thousand of these inflection points over the last three years.

He issued a controversial pardon while Hurricane Harvey made landfall in Texas because people were already watching the news and his ratings would be higher.

His administration slow-walked aid to Puerto Rico in the wake of Hurricane Maria. The president himself lied about how much money the territory got from the federal government, then responded to criticism by saying Puerto Rico didn't sufficiently show its appreciation to him.

He stood amid the charred ruins of Paradise, California, and said the fire might have been prevented if only the state had raked the forests more often.

So it seemed like just another eyeroll when the president held up a National Hurricane Center forecast map so freshly altered by the ink of his pen that the black semicircle protruding from the expert forecast shimmered a bit under the lights of the cameras.


Three days earlier, the president had erroneously warned that Alabama (among other states) would be hit "much harder than anticipated" by scale-topping Hurricane Dorian. No forecast on September 1, 2019, placed the hurricane's projected path near Alabama. It seemed like a normal mistake he'd make and meteorologists quickly corrected the president's misinformation. The National Weather Service office in Birmingham even tweeted that the storm would steer clear of Alabama.

As it turns out, NWS Birmingham was unaware of the president's tweet at the time of their correction. They only reacted to the onslaught of phone calls and messages initiated by the president's false claim. The corrections incensed the president, who spent the next couple of days digging-in and doubling-down on his assertion that Alabama was at risk no matter how much the experts said otherwise.

The president's mistake consumed the White House, which suddenly found itself more concerned with Trump's image than the category five hurricane churning perilously close to Florida's coast. The issue seemed to come to a head on September 4 when Trump manually extended the cone of uncertainty on a days-old hurricane forecast to make it look like he was right all along, proudly holding up the altered map for cameras to see.

He presented outdated and falsified information to the public as a scale-topping hurricane loomed near the country's coast. That wasn't even the worst of it.

We'd soon find out that there was an intense behind-the-scenes campaign to force NOAA and the NWS to back up the president's faulty claims, including threats to fire NOAA leadership if they didn't issue a statement denouncing their own experts for contradicting the president's tweet. NOAA complied and issued an unsigned statement.

That fiasco—that wholesale demolition of expertise for the benefit of the president's personal image—foreshadowed the federal response to the coronavirus pandemic.
Image Source: New York Times
Today, the death toll from the coronavirus in the United States stands at 75,000 people and climbing, and it's likely that number is an undercount. That's a staggering number. It's more than double the average number of people who die of the flu every year. It's higher than the deadliest year on record for car crashes in the United States (56,278 in 1972). The coronavirus will likely register as one of the top causes of death in the United States in 2020, and it's only May.

And at every step of this pandemic—from the first confirmed cases on American soil to governors prematurely reopening their states—things were made worse by valuing political whims over expert assessments.

The first heads-up about the impending pandemic reached the upper echelons of the Trump administration in January. Warnings grew more dire through February as the virus spiraled out of control in other countries and it was clear the United States would follow a similar trajectory. The United States encountered persistent testing delays that compounded the crisis and let the virus spread undetected for weeks. 

No warning struck as hard as one that came during a briefing on February 25, 2020, when Dr. Nancy Messonnier, a vaccine expert with the Centers for Disease Control, warned that it was a matter of when—not if—a bad outbreak of coronavirus would start spreading in the United States. Dr. Messonnier punctuated her remarks by describing how she warned her own family that the virus' spread would lead to "significant disruption of our lives." 

An already-plummeting stock market fell even harder on news reports of Dr. Messonnier's warnings, hurting Trump's prized metric for gauging his success as president. The Trump administration said the doctor spoke out of turn, and the president threatened to fire her if she didn't walk back her warnings.

The following day, Trump insisted during a press conference that the 15 confirmed cases at that point would "be down close to zero" pretty soon.

One day after that, Trump said the virus would go away on its own. "It’s going to disappear. One day—it’s like a miracle—it will disappear."

Trump called criticism of his administration's coronavirus response "the new hoax" during a rally on February 28, 2020.

The country saw its first confirmed coronavirus death on February 29, 2020, though it's likely the first actual death occurred weeks earlier.

Case counts quickly multiplied as testing ability came online throughout the country, finally giving us a glimpse of the extent of the community spread that had occurred before most communities took mitigating actions.

On March 9, as states began to roll out their stay-at-home orders, Trump (now, falsely) tweeted that the flu was deadlier than the coronavirus:


As the number of cases exploded through the middle of March, most states instituted stay-at-home orders of varying strictness, pausing the national economy to the tune of millions of jobs and trillions of dollars. This sudden economic crash cut at the heart of Trump's reelection pitch.

Trump's daily coronavirus press conferences, which began as an effort to stabilize the economy, slowly turned into venting sessions and virtual campaign rallies as the days wore on.

He openly bragged about the ratings for his briefings. He tweeted on five different occasions that his coronavirus briefings got bigger ratings than The Bachelor (March 29, March 29 (again), April 8, April 9, and April 21). He only started reining in the televised events after he openly wondered if doctors should inject patients with disinfectant to cleanse their systems of the virus.

Flouting his own government's suggestions that states stay the course until there's a significant decrease in serious cases, the president started pressuring states to reopen for the benefit of the economy. "Reopen" protests broke out in some states. Pictures and footage from the rallies showed an unmistakable trend: the vast majority of protesters wore Trump hats, Trump shirts, waved Trump flags, or drove vehicles adorned with stickers and signs advertising the president's reelection campaign.


The president appeared to take notice that his own supporters dominated these protests. Trump began April 17 by tweeting "LIBERATE MINNESOTA," "LIBERATE MICHIGAN," and "LIBERATE VIRGINIA," firing the starter gun for supporters to congregate in each state's capital and demand that their governor allow life to return to normal even as the virus continues to spread. Men carrying rifles wandered the halls of Michigan's capitol building as elected officials attended a legislative session wearing bulletproof vests. A day later, Trump tweeted that Michigan's governor should relent to their demands.

Now, as the death toll surpasses each bracket Trump predicted we'd stay under for him to have done a good job, reports indicate that Trump and his surrogates are preparing to publicly question the veracity of the death toll and claim that it's overinflated so states and hospital systems can grab federal dollars and make the president look bad at the same time.

He downplayed the virus because he thought it would hurt him. He threatened to fire an expert because he thought her warnings imperiled him. He egged on the protests because the attendees supported him. He's on his way to questioning the death toll because it looks bad on him.

He altered a hurricane forecast and upended NOAA during a disaster to save face over a simple mistake he made in a tweet one morning.

A category five hurricane became him.

It seemed easy to brush it off at first because hey, it's just the weather, right?

The bad weather served as a warning of what came next.

[Top Image: Twitter/@WhiteHouse]
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March 23, 2020

Storm Shelters: It's OK To Skip Social Distancing For An Hour If It Means Surviving A Tornado

3/23/2020 04:01:00 PM Leave a Reply


Most Americans are parked at home right now as we try to slow the spread of a dangerous virus that's moving through communities here and around the world. But even as we adjust our lives to spare one another, the world continues around us just as it ever would. We're quickly moving into the heart of severe weather season and it won't be long before we have to deal with tornado outbreaks on top of everything else that's going on. It's important to remember that sheltering from a tornado is an urgent matter of life or death that (at least, temporarily) overrides our need to practice social distancing.

This may seem like a weird question to ponder for folks who live outside of the southern United States, but it's a pressing concern for lots of people who don't have safe shelter at home.

The concept of "community storm shelters" has grown in popularity in the south, especially after several devastating tornadoes and tornado outbreaks during the 2010s. A community storm shelter is a large reinforced room designed to hold lots of people—sometimes an entire neighborhood—who don't have a better alternative to ride out a storm.

Now that we're trying to slow the spread of COVID-19, huddling together with a few dozen of our neighbors doesn't sound like the best thing to do right now. The rapid approach of severe weather season is going to force people to choose between social distancing and staying safe from a tornado. Seeking shelter from a tornado is absolutely the best bet. In a dangerous situation like this, it's absolutely riskier to stay in an unsafe home and hope the tornado misses than it is to come in close contact with your neighbors.

The Alabama Department of Public Health released a joint statement with the National Weather Service offices in Huntsville, Birmingham, and Mobile, on Sunday addressing this concern. Their advice is simple: the urgent risk posed by a tornado temporarily outweighs the risk of the virus, and to seek shelter if one is available.


As the statement points out, it's critically important to know whether or not a shelter is open before severe weather strikes. If not, make alternate plans to stay somewhere safe before a warning is issued.

Tornado safety advice tells us to seek shelter in an interior room on the lowest level of a home or building. The goal is to put as much distance between you and the wind and flying debris as possible. The aftermath of stronger tornadoes often leaves just an interior bathroom or closet standing even as the rest of the house is swept away.

That's not always an option for some communities. Millions of people live in mobile homes that can barely withstand the wind gusts of a potent thunderstorm, let alone the violent winds of a tornado. Millions more live in homes without basements, modular homes, or apartment buildings, all structures in which you're often reduced to picking the least-worst option to ride out a tornado.

Folks who live in homes that can't withstand strong winds have to go somewhere else to stay safe ahead of a tornado. It's common practice for folks who live in mobile homes, for instance, to spend the day at the library or at a friend's or relative's house on a severe weather day. Unfortunately, there aren't many public spaces left open to seek shelter—libraries, schools, restaurants, and most other businesses are closed, which can limit one's options in a pinch.

Do what you need to do to stay safe. But during a tornado, it should go without saying that you've got to get to a safe place to ride out the storm.

Weather safety advice has come a long way in the last couple of decades, but there are still some pressing questions for which there's no easy answer. The most analogous scenario to this "distance or shelter?" question was a situation faced by thousands in and around Houston during Hurricane Harvey in 2017. The storm produced historic flooding in southeastern Texas, and, as we commonly see during a landfalling tropical system, many of those heavy thunderstorms wound up spawning tornadoes. This put lots of people in the horrible situation of choosing between staying low in the water to escape the tornado or climb high away from the water and hope the tornado missed.

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