WASHINGTON — Alabama has seen one of the worst years of extreme weather in its history, with 247 lives lost and 62 tornadoes leaving 1200 miles of destruction in their wake. And 2011 isn’t over.
This year hasn’t been kind to the rest of the country, either. Jack Hayes, the director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), said, “It’s our perception that the nation is increasingly vulnerable to extreme weather.”
The NOAA’s National Weather Service (NWS) is teaming up with emergency managers, government agencies and researchers to create a “weather-ready nation.”
NWS will be upgrading its radar technology for more precise weather forecasts with the ability to see storms forming earlier and predict rainfall that could lead to flash flooding. The initiative aims to get the word out faster to local communities about the risks they face, and educate the public about the threats of extreme weather.
The initiative is a response to the surge of weather-related disasters that has plagued the nation this year. It is already the fourth-deadliest tornado year, with more than 540 deaths in the U.S. 2011 has seen everything from extreme flash flooding in Nashville and along the Missouri River, to one of the worst wildfire seasons Texas has ever seen, to “what appears to be an ever-present heat wave that has persisted across the southern tier of America,” Hayes said.
The number of natural disasters has tripled in the last 20 years, with a record-setting 250 extreme weather events in 2010, according to Munich Reinsurance America, one of the top providers of property and casualty reinsurance in the U.S. They also found that average losses due to thunderstorms are up five-fold since 1980. Just this year, economic losses from extreme weather have totaled more than $35 billion.
Having a weather-ready nation means, “Americans knowing how to deal with that threat and knowing how to turn that knowledge and concern into action that will protect them from danger and minimize property loss,” Hayes said.
Eddie Hicks, director of the Morgan County Emergency Managers Association, said the weather-ready nation is an extension of measures Alabama is already taking.
“Our county is already part of the storm ready initiative, because we have the ability to get out the warning in multiple ways to the public. That’s part of being storm ready,” he said.
“This is another initiative to carry it broader so the nation is ready. If the individuals or community are ready, that’s one thing, but then you take it up to the state or national level, and you’re that much more prepared.”
NWS will use dual polarization radar technology to get a better look at incoming storms. Dual Pol, as it’s known to meteorologists, cuts out the lag time it takes to scan a weather system for a potential storm.
“Right now, it takes several minutes to do a complete cycle, going through each slice of the storm. This will cut out that time because it’ll take a picture and analyze it immediately,” said Hicks.
At a time when a potentially-deadly storm is forming, those few minutes could make a big difference, he said.
Hicks said as a part of this initiative, a NWS meteorologist could be sent to a disaster area to act as an expert and advisor. “It would be helpful to have a meteorologist here in the operation center to talk with the weather services office and between the two of them, they can identify what to watch,” he said.
The recent deaths caused by heavy winds collapsing a stage at the Indiana State Fair could have been avoided, Hicks said. That would have been a good time to have an expert there to watch the radar and make an informed decision about calling off the show, he said.
The weather-ready nation initiative will be funded by the current budget, said NOAA director Hayes.
“Achieving our goals, I think, realistically it’s going to take some time. In the current budget environment we face within the United States, it’s going to take some grit, too,” Hayes said. “But it’s the right thing to do. As long as people are dying and weather-sensitive businesses are hurting, the weather service and its partners will never be satisfied.”