Is FFC's coverage area too big?

[LithiaWx]

Is FFC's coverage area too big?

Let's start a discussion on this!

I think it is indeed too big. Their coverage area has to be one of the biggest for the amount of population we have in the area. I know there are bigger ones out west in very sparsely populated areas. But for the biggest city in the SE to be in the biggest coverage area I think is not good. I don't know if the NWS should add another location or they should allow the other stations around FFC to pick up some of the coverage. The big differences in climate is also noticeable throughout the area. Honestly areas in the south part of FFC's coverage area are much more suitable for the southern stations to pick up ect....

[Snowless in Carrollton]

I think they should drop a few counties that are far away, but add a couple of Alabama counties that are in the Atlanta TV market but not covered by FFC. Peachtree City is only 45 miles from AL, and yet they cover areas well over 100 miles away but not these 2 AL counties. To me, it seems like whatever office you are closest to is the office you should be covered by. Btw, I don't think atlanta is the biggest city in the southeast. I think Miami is but I could be wrong. As far as the climate differences, I think Atlanta's climate is just as different to areas in the mountains as it is to areas far south.

[Psalm 148:8]

Ideally...add another office...in today's economy...split it up.

[WilkesboroDude]

I think they should drop a few counties that are far away, but add a couple of Alabama counties that are in the Atlanta TV market but not covered by FFC. Peachtree City is only 45 miles from AL, and yet they cover areas well over 100 miles away but not these 2 AL counties. To me, it seems like whatever office you are closest to is the office you should be covered by. Btw, I don't think atlanta is the biggest city in the southeast. I think Miami is but I could be wrong. As far as the climate differences, I think Atlanta's climate is just as different to areas in the mountains as it is to areas far south.

I think the largest cities are in Texas followed by Jacksonville, Florida then Charlotte, North Carolina.

[LithiaWx]

I think the largest cities are in Texas followed by Jacksonville, Florida then Charlotte, North Carolina.

I don't consider Texas part of the southeast. Here is a link to the numbers Miami barely edges out Atlanta but atlanta could already be beating Miami at this point due to explosive growth.

http://en.wikipedia....atistical_Areas

Miami Metro - 5.5million

Atlanta Metro - 5.2 million

[ZackH]

I think the largest cities are in Texas followed by Jacksonville, Florida then Charlotte, North Carolina.

Charlotte and Jacksonville bigger than Atlanta? I think not.

[LithiaWx]

Charlotte and Jacksonville bigger than Atlanta? I think not.

Charlotte Metro - 1.7 million

Jacksonville Metro - 1.3 Million

[ZackH]

Charlotte Metro - 1.7 million

Jacksonville Metro - 1.3 Million

That's what I thought... not even close. On subject though, yes, I believe FFC covers much too great of an area with the absurd amount of population they also have to forecast for. I think the most logical solution would be to create a new WFO, however, with budget cuts, there is no telling when, if ever, this could happen. I suppose some of the WFO areas could be reorganized a bit as talked about, but I wouldn't hold my breath for it ever happening.

[FoothillsNC]

Using the Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) is more indicative of how big a city is rather than using just the incorporated city population of course. Miami and Atlanta are close, seperated only by a couple hundred thousand on the MSA.

If you do the geographical Southeast breakdown, using VA and KY and LA (some definitions don't) , then the ranking of MSA is:

1) Miami

2) Atlanta

3) Tampa

4) Orlando

5) Charlotte

6) Virginia Beach/Norfolk

7) Nashville

8) Jacksonville

9) Memphis

10) Louisville

11) Richmond

12) New Orleans

13) Raleigh-Durham

14) Birmingham

15) Baton Rouge

16) Columbia

17) Greensboro- WS

18) Knoxville

19) Charleston, SC

20) Greenville-Spartanburg

and to answer the question, I think FFC coverage area is too big and diverse.

[Snowless in Carrollton]

Charlotte and Jacksonville bigger than Atlanta? I think not.

The city of Charlotte and Jacksonville both have more people than the city of Atlanta I believe. If you're talking about metro area obviously Atlanta has more.

[jrips27]

Yes I do think FFC has to cover too big of an area. Ideally I would just split the current area in half. I would have the dividing line around the current Peachtree City. Right now there is just too much of a difference in some areas. Have one office take the northern half that includes Atlanta and most of the population. They can focus on the city and the mountains. Then have the another office take the southern half that has mostly agricultural value. This is how I would have it... Just a rough idea though.

[Itunis]

Given the current funding situation it's just not feasible to add another office. And really I don't think there is a pressing need to split up the forecast area. Yes the climate is diverse, but GSP and many other offices deal with similar climate variations within their CWAs. And offices like Denver deal with a larger variation. I don't see how population comes into play here. Are there very few people living at high elevations in the Rockies? One could say so (although the ski towns can be fairly large), but then again you don't see a lot of people above 2000ft in the N GA mountains.

If anything they should focus on perhaps increasing staffing to be able to adequately forecast for all areas. That would be a lot cheaper and just as effective if done right!

[Lookout]

Given the current funding situation it's just not feasible to add another office. And really I don't think there is a pressing need to split up the forecast area. Yes the climate is diverse, but GSP and many other offices deal with similar climate variations within their CWAs. And offices like Denver deal with a larger variation. I don't see how population comes into play here. Are there very few people living at high elevations in the Rockies? One could say so (although the ski towns can be fairly large), but then again you don't see a lot of people above 2000ft in the N GA mountains.

If anything they should focus on perhaps increasing staffing to be able to adequately forecast for all areas. That would be a lot cheaper and just as effective if done right!

Meh, their area is too big. Even if they have more staff, it really wont' change the way they focus, or don't focus, on their fringe counties. Reason I believe this is because in situations where only a small portion of their cwa is under active weather, (which should focus whoever is on staff at the time on that area), they still largely ignore it. Between that and knowing and following how they operate, I don't believe it would improve anything.

I have been arguing for YEARS their cwa is too big. I have been complaining about it ever since they moved the nws away from athens. Look at this map below, it is absolutely ABSURD alabama and sc have 3 nws. For crying out loud, ffc's cwa is nearly the size of the ENTIRE state of sc. And Look how tiny HSVs cwa is, how is there any justification for breaking up bhm/bna's old cwa and not ffc's? It's absolutely tiny, Especially compared to ffc..which is 4 to 5 times larger than HSV's. And yes there are other large cwas, like memphis, but they don't have mountains or topography issues nearly as much. Still ffc's is bigger. And as far as gsp goes, their cwa is clearly not as large. However they have management there that clearly makes it a focus to pay attention to their fringe counties just as much as their interior counties.

The forecasts suffer for it and I absolutely HATE the way they handle severe weather and warnings. Because there is ZERO question there is one standard for a severe t-storm warning for the metro area and another for areas out here. The other night a severe t-storm moved through here that produced 60 plus mph winds, caused numerous tree damage, and knocked out power for 8 to 10 hours and not a single warning..despite the fact radar showed the storm every bit as organized or even stronger than when it was moving through the metro area...yet amazingly those storms had warnings! I have seen over and over and over again storms that should have warnings where I am being ignored while storms near atlanta get warnings, some of them won't even look as strong as ones that don't get warned here. Then as soon as those storms move into elbert and hart counties, which lie in the gsp cwa, they get warnings..even if they are weakening!

It's an issue in the winter time too because due to cad or other factors there is some variability, potentially large, over their area. Yet more or less they put everyone in the same boat as atlanta outside the mountains. You never see this with gsp, who do a fantastic job of breaking down that variability in their cwa.

I can't figure out for the life of me why some areas have so many nws offices are that they are so small while ffc is gigantic. Look how many nws are located in florida for example. I mean really, does key west really need a nws? Could miami not easily handle it? Does there really need to be a nws in tampa and yet another one in melbourne? It's ridiculous.

We need another one somewhere in central Ga, macon for example and have ffc cover north ga only. Or have ffc take care of west central/nw ga ga and have another nws office open up in rome or gainesville and have them cover NE ga down to east central ga.

I know it won't happen anytime soon though which is a shame. It really is needed.

[isohume]

I have been arguing for YEARS their cwa is too big. I have been complaining about it ever since they moved the nws away from athens. Look at this map below, it is absolutely ABSURD alabama and sc have 3 nws. For crying out loud, ffc's cwa is nearly the size of the ENTIRE state of sc. And Look how tiny HSVs cwa is, how is there any justification for breaking up bhm/bna's old cwa and not ffc's? It's absolutely tiny, Especially compared to ffc..which is 4 to 5 times larger than HSV's. And yes there are other large cwas, like memphis, but they don't have mountains or topography issues nearly as much. Still ffc's is bigger. And as far as gsp goes, their cwa is clearly not as large. However they have management there that clearly makes it a focus to pay attention to their fringe counties just as much as their interior counties.

Yeah only 11 counties and 2 TAF sites for HSV. What a laid back office that has to be. It was a "political office" when modernization happened. Basically some senator didn't want Huntsville to "lose" it's NWS coverage, so they squeezed it in. The same fight happened in Charlotte, but they lost and there are still some folks irked by that. Back to point...yeah I think FFC's CWFA is too large as well. At least they have two Nexrads to cover it...but a N/S split to some degree probably should have happened with modernization.

One thing about the former WSFOs...State offices like FFC, CAE and RAH...is they are highly resistant to change, because they were in charge of subordinate WSOs for so long. They still believe the old system is in place at some level and the old authoritative office climates and attitudes have been passed down and are still maintained after all these years. Not always...but these attitudes rear their ugly head enough to get noticed once in a while.

[LithiaWx]

Yeah only 11 counties and 2 TAF sites for HSV. What a laid back office that has to be. It was a "political office" when modernization happened. Basically some senator didn't want Huntsville to "lose" it's NWS coverage, so they squeezed it in. The same fight happened in Charlotte, but they lost and there are still some folks irked by that. Back to point...yeah I think FFC's CWFA is too large as well. At least they have two Nexrads to cover it...but a N/S split to some degree probably should have happened with modernization.

One thing about the former WSFOs...State offices like FFC, CAE and RAH...is they are highly resistant to change, because they were in charge of subordinate WSOs for so long. They still believe the old system is in place at some level and the old authoritative office climates and attitudes have been passed down and are still maintained after all these years. Not always...but these attitudes rear their ugly head enough to get noticed once in a while.

Meh, their area is too big. Even if they have more staff, it really wont' change the way they focus, or don't focus, on their fringe counties. Reason I believe this is because in situations where only a small portion of their cwa is under active weather, (which should focus whoever is on staff at the time on that area), they still largely ignore it. Between that and knowing and following how they operate, I don't believe it would improve anything.

I have been arguing for YEARS their cwa is too big. I have been complaining about it ever since they moved the nws away from athens. Look at this map below, it is absolutely ABSURD alabama and sc have 3 nws. For crying out loud, ffc's cwa is nearly the size of the ENTIRE state of sc. And Look how tiny HSVs cwa is, how is there any justification for breaking up bhm/bna's old cwa and not ffc's? It's absolutely tiny, Especially compared to ffc..which is 4 to 5 times larger than HSV's. And yes there are other large cwas, like memphis, but they don't have mountains or topography issues nearly as much. Still ffc's is bigger. And as far as gsp goes, their cwa is clearly not as large. However they have management there that clearly makes it a focus to pay attention to their fringe counties just as much as their interior counties.

The forecasts suffer for it and I absolutely HATE the way they handle severe weather and warnings. Because there is ZERO question there is one standard for a severe t-storm warning for the metro area and another for areas out here. The other night a severe t-storm moved through here that produced 60 plus mph winds, caused numerous tree damage, and knocked out power for 8 to 10 hours and not a single warning..despite the fact radar showed the storm every bit as organized or even stronger than when it was moving through the metro area...yet amazingly those storms had warnings! I have seen over and over and over again storms that should have warnings where I am being ignored while storms near atlanta get warnings, some of them won't even look as strong as ones that don't get warned here. Then as soon as those storms move into elbert and hart counties, which lie in the gsp cwa, they get warnings..even if they are weakening!

It's an issue in the winter time too because due to cad or other factors there is some variability, potentially large, over their area. Yet more or less they put everyone in the same boat as atlanta outside the mountains. You never see this with gsp, who do a fantastic job of breaking down that variability in their cwa.

I can't figure out for the life of me why some areas have so many nws offices are that they are so small while ffc is gigantic. Look how many nws are located in florida for example. I mean really, does key west really need a nws? Could miami not easily handle it? Does there really need to be a nws in tampa and yet another one in melbourne? It's ridiculous.

We need another one somewhere in central Ga, macon for example and have ffc cover north ga only. Or have ffc take care of west central/nw ga ga and have another nws office open up in rome or gainesville and have them cover NE ga down to east central ga.

I know it won't happen anytime soon though which is a shame. It really is needed.

Thanks guys, this is exactly what I was saying. You guys laid it out much clearer and more eloquently though.

[turtlehurricane]

I think it should definitely be split north/south, with the line somewhere around Macon. The climate variation is large and hard to deal with in the current FFC CWA, going from mountains at 35° N, which is quite a cold environment, to sub-tropical coastal plains in the southern part of the state just north of the 30th parallel.

Ideally, the new CWA in the southern part of Georgia would absorb some distant Tallahassee and Jacksonville counties (which they have a hard time dealing with I'm sure). The new FFC would be able to focus on mountain weather and metro Atlanta much better.

[LithiaWx]

I posted on FFC's facebook page this comment :

Me:

There is a growing consensus by the pubic and weather enthusiasts that FFC's coverage area is too big. Are there any plans to have other offices take some of the coverage area's counties? Opening another office is another suggestion floating around. The climate is too diverse in FFC's coverage area. Does anyone at the NWS have a comment?

Their response :

There are no plans for such actions. While the area of responsibility for the FFC NWS is among the largest of NWS offices, our verfication scores and other performance measures are comparable to (and even exceeding) those of many other NWS offices.

http://www.facebook....achtreeCity.gov

[Snowless in Carrollton]

Well, so much for that idea.

[SmokeEater]

Epic fail.

[AbsolutZero]

Instead of hypothesizing and pontificating with very little data to base this on, why not just email or pm the people that know? I don't post here regularly (unless there's a good winter storm and I'm not at work) but I'm not hard to find. Honestly. steven dot nelson at noaa.gov, or pm me which will notify me via email. At least you could have obtained the actual area of each CWA. FFC doesn't even crack the top 10 based on area.

Also surprised some NWS mets on here didn't chime in. Maybe they're too young to understand how the division of offices occurred. Rewind to the early 1990s. The lines for WFOs were drawn with radar coverage in mind and protecting as many people as possible with a fixed number of 88Ds. Population was certainly not a primary factor. If that were the case, then there would be just a one or two offices covering all of the northern Rockies and Plains! There are 4 WFOs in Montana alone. There were some technological limitations back then, such as comms between WFOs and 88Ds, that did not allow more consolidation.

Others mentioned that politics came in to play in a few offices. Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on your point of view), this did occur. I can only think of 6 or so

WSOs where this happened.

As for the lack of forecast or warning skill, let's use real data and not conjecture. As I've said here before, I welcome constructive criticism. I do this with our key partners (EMs, media, etc..) regularly. We stick to facts. I am willing to share all my data, at least until I get in trouble. Our office has strengths and weaknesses, to be sure. That's part of my job: to gauge if the weaknesses negatively affect the mission.

Sure there's bashing of the NWS, more fun than sharing kudos I suppose. Did you know we're one of the top offices in the US for temperature verification? Our level of effort on Aviation forecasting is higher than any other office in the country and our aviation performance measures are equally high. Not bad for an office responsible for forecasting for the busiest airport in the world. Our support staff are the most dedicated I've ever met. They never miss a morning weather briefing. The forecasters complete about 1500-2000 hours of training. We do thousands of hours of outreach to schools and preparedness activities. We work our butts of to please all 96 of our county EMs. If we don't hear from them, we go visit them in person and ask "how we doin?". Its a total team effort. Our performance during the April storms was fantastic. The scores were great, but the behind the scenes service to critical customers was outstanding. Couldn't be more proud.

Guess my point is you all have one point of view. You're weather enthusiasts and snow weenies! That's me, always was and will be. You're looking for the most extreme weather, especially winter weather. A bad thing? No. But you've gotta admit it will skew your view of an NWS office and what is a "good" forecast. If you're a longtime Emergency Manager, do you have the same view? No. Neither do broadcast mets, private companies, FAA etc.. They all have different needs and views of forecast performance.

Anyway, I'll start probably another thread sometime, I guess its overdue since the subject keeps coming up. If you want to setup a live chat or whatever, I can do that. Let me know what you think.

Steve

[AbsolutZero]

The forecasts suffer for it and I absolutely HATE the way they handle severe weather and warnings. Because there is ZERO question there is one standard for a severe t-storm warning for the metro area and another for areas out here. The other night a severe t-storm moved through here that produced 60 plus mph winds, caused numerous tree damage, and knocked out power for 8 to 10 hours and not a single warning..despite the fact radar showed the storm every bit as organized or even stronger than when it was moving through the metro area...yet amazingly those storms had warnings! I have seen over and over and over again storms that should have warnings where I am being ignored while storms near atlanta get warnings, some of them won't even look as strong as ones that don't get warned here. Then as soon as those storms move into elbert and hart counties, which lie in the gsp cwa, they get warnings..even if they are weakening!

I have data for this on a county by county basis. The one trend that occurs anywhere in the US and does in Georgia is that population density affects severe weather reporting. If no one reports severe weather, then there will be less warnings. Will post the image here if you'd like. Another sad reality is the further you are from a radar, the liklihood of seeing a small signature of severe weather gets lower. Perhaps X-band radars could serve as gap-filling radars. We could use one in north GA like on a mountain in Dawson or Fannin county. Our forecasters do *not* have different thresholds for warnings based on where it is. However, if a radar doesn't show a signature and no one reports severe weather, than no warning will be issued.

[DaculaWeather]

Instead of hypothesizing and pontificating with very little data to base this on, why not just email or pm the people that know? I don't post here regularly (unless there's a good winter storm and I'm not at work) but I'm not hard to find. Honestly. steven dot nelson at noaa.gov, or pm me which will notify me via email. At least you could have obtained the actual area of each CWA. FFC doesn't even crack the top 10 based on area.

Also surprised some NWS mets on here didn't chime in. Maybe they're too young to understand how the division of offices occurred. Rewind to the early 1990s. The lines for WFOs were drawn with radar coverage in mind and protecting as many people as possible with a fixed number of 88Ds. Population was certainly not a primary factor. If that were the case, then there would be just a one or two offices covering all of the northern Rockies and Plains! There are 4 WFOs in Montana alone. There were some technological limitations back then, such as comms between WFOs and 88Ds, that did not allow more consolidation.

Others mentioned that politics came in to play in a few offices. Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on your point of view), this did occur. I can only think of 6 or so

WSOs where this happened.

As for the lack of forecast or warning skill, let's use real data and not conjecture. As I've said here before, I welcome constructive criticism. I do this with our key partners (EMs, media, etc..) regularly. We stick to facts. I am willing to share all my data, at least until I get in trouble. Our office has strengths and weaknesses, to be sure. That's part of my job: to gauge if the weaknesses negatively affect the mission.

Sure there's bashing of the NWS, more fun than sharing kudos I suppose. Did you know we're one of the top offices in the US for temperature verification? Our level of effort on Aviation forecasting is higher than any other office in the country and our aviation performance measures are equally high. Not bad for an office responsible for forecasting for the busiest airport in the world. Our support staff are the most dedicated I've ever met. They never miss a morning weather briefing. The forecasters complete about 1500-2000 hours of training. We do thousands of hours of outreach to schools and preparedness activities. We work our butts of to please all 96 of our county EMs. If we don't hear from them, we go visit them in person and ask "how we doin?". Its a total team effort. Our performance during the April storms was fantastic. The scores were great, but the behind the scenes service to critical customers was outstanding. Couldn't be more proud.

Guess my point is you all have one point of view. You're weather enthusiasts and snow weenies! That's me, always was and will be. You're looking for the most extreme weather, especially winter weather. A bad thing? No. But you've gotta admit it will skew your view of an NWS office and what is a "good" forecast. If you're a longtime Emergency Manager, do you have the same view? No. Neither do broadcast mets, private companies, FAA etc.. They all have different needs and views of forecast performance.

Anyway, I'll start probably another thread sometime, I guess its overdue since the subject keeps coming up. If you want to setup a live chat or whatever, I can do that. Let me know what you think.

Steve

Steve, thank you for taking your time to respond, I hope I speak for everyone when I say we all appreciate the dedication and service that you and your staff provide for everyone in Georgia. It must be extremely difficult to have to deal with such a diverse topography and the challenges that brings to forecasting. And congratulations for being one of the top NWS offices in the country. If I put myself in your shoes, I can see how it would be a personal desire to put out the best forecast possible, it's your name and reputation on the line and I would take it personally too.

I know you're read negative things about FFC here, I'm sure I'm just as guilty as anyone, but understand it's not as much criticism as it is the lack of understanding as to why certain decisions are made. Most of us have just enough knowledge to make us dangerous and we sometimes can't understand the logic behind the decisions, that's our own fault, not yours. I know a tremendous amount of work goes on behind the scenes that we have no clue about and that all of your decisions are based on sound facts and not based on the emotional roller coaster that we sometimes use as our logic.

It's always good to hear from you and I hopeknow that through your continued participation on the forum, we will get a much better understanding of how you operate. Your insight is ALWAYS appreciated. We have a lot of very good Met's up here and I hope that you will continue to be one of those that can give us educate us with additional insight on Georgia weather, your operations, and weather in general.

[LithiaWx]

Instead of hypothesizing and pontificating with very little data to base this on, why not just email or pm the people that know? I don't post here regularly (unless there's a good winter storm and I'm not at work) but I'm not hard to find. Honestly. steven dot nelson at noaa.gov, or pm me which will notify me via email. At least you could have obtained the actual area of each CWA. FFC doesn't even crack the top 10 based on area.

Also surprised some NWS mets on here didn't chime in. Maybe they're too young to understand how the division of offices occurred. Rewind to the early 1990s. The lines for WFOs were drawn with radar coverage in mind and protecting as many people as possible with a fixed number of 88Ds. Population was certainly not a primary factor. If that were the case, then there would be just a one or two offices covering all of the northern Rockies and Plains! There are 4 WFOs in Montana alone. There were some technological limitations back then, such as comms between WFOs and 88Ds, that did not allow more consolidation.

Others mentioned that politics came in to play in a few offices. Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on your point of view), this did occur. I can only think of 6 or so

WSOs where this happened.

As for the lack of forecast or warning skill, let's use real data and not conjecture. As I've said here before, I welcome constructive criticism. I do this with our key partners (EMs, media, etc..) regularly. We stick to facts. I am willing to share all my data, at least until I get in trouble. Our office has strengths and weaknesses, to be sure. That's part of my job: to gauge if the weaknesses negatively affect the mission.

Sure there's bashing of the NWS, more fun than sharing kudos I suppose. Did you know we're one of the top offices in the US for temperature verification? Our level of effort on Aviation forecasting is higher than any other office in the country and our aviation performance measures are equally high. Not bad for an office responsible for forecasting for the busiest airport in the world. Our support staff are the most dedicated I've ever met. They never miss a morning weather briefing. The forecasters complete about 1500-2000 hours of training. We do thousands of hours of outreach to schools and preparedness activities. We work our butts of to please all 96 of our county EMs. If we don't hear from them, we go visit them in person and ask "how we doin?". Its a total team effort. Our performance during the April storms was fantastic. The scores were great, but the behind the scenes service to critical customers was outstanding. Couldn't be more proud.

Guess my point is you all have one point of view. You're weather enthusiasts and snow weenies! That's me, always was and will be. You're looking for the most extreme weather, especially winter weather. A bad thing? No. But you've gotta admit it will skew your view of an NWS office and what is a "good" forecast. If you're a longtime Emergency Manager, do you have the same view? No. Neither do broadcast mets, private companies, FAA etc.. They all have different needs and views of forecast performance.

Anyway, I'll start probably another thread sometime, I guess its overdue since the subject keeps coming up. If you want to setup a live chat or whatever, I can do that. Let me know what you think.

Steve

The purpose of this topic was to "ask someone who knows". This topic was not brought up as criticism. It was brought up to mainly ask if the area is too big and are the forecasts suffering because of it. In the winter months FFC does seem to have a hard time with winter storms and CAD events. You guys have nailed a few storms but I think more often than not you guys miss big time on CAD events and have on occasion missed posting a Winter Storm Warning's until after the flakes started to fall. The waiting so long to post Winter Storm Warning 's and missing CAD temps are my two biggest criticisms of FFC. From what I have seen FFC's severe weather forecasting is very good for my area (Cobb County) and I have yet to have a single piece of criticism of it. Thank you for responding to this thread it is appreciated and nobody is here to give you any unjust criticism. Like Daculaweather said part of the problem may be that the public is not always clear on why certain decisions are made and the timing of those decisions.

[AbsolutZero]

The purpose of this topic was to "ask someone who knows". This topic was not brought up as criticism. It was brought up to mainly ask if the area is too big and are the forecasts suffering because of it. In the winter months FFC does seem to have a hard time with winter storms and CAD events. You guys have nailed a few storms but I think more often than not you guys miss big time on CAD events and have on occasion missed posting a Winter Storm Warning's until after the flakes started to fall. The waiting so long to post Winter Storm Warning 's and missing CAD temps are my two biggest criticisms of FFC. From what I have seen FFC's severe weather forecasting is very good for my area (Cobb County) and I have yet to have a single piece of criticism of it. Thank you for responding to this thread it is appreciated and nobody is here to give you any unjust criticism. Like Daculaweather said part of the problem may be that the public is not always clear on why certain decisions are made and the timing of those decisions.

Sure. I think I understand that the point of the thread was to poll, not assume the service is utterly lacking. Sorry if I implied the later was the point. I also agree that the short lead time for big winter events and overly brief AFDs are two specific shortcomings of our office. I did a study last summer with a UGA student on winter weather verification including lead time. Our initial finding was that *when* significant snow does occur, our forecasters nearly always underestimate the amounts and tend to wait a little too long to issue the warning. The AFDs are also lacking detail at times. Definitely valid points. All I can say is this is being addressed but "old habits" die hard. As many have noticed, our newer (but not necessarily younger) forecasters are up to the task with warnings and AFDs. The culture shift is occurring. However on the flip side, an interesting observation I've found is that those forecasters that tend to write short AFDs and are conservative also tend to have good temperature and PoP verification. Veteran level experience has it strengths and weaknesses.

When someone proposes splitting up an office, I guess I couldn't help but wonder that a degradation of service was being implied. My concern is one should use data and facts, not conjecture. It may be hard to do this properly without raw data, so I'm willing to furnish it. Let me know.

[AbsolutZero]

I have data for this on a county by county basis. The one trend that occurs anywhere in the US and does in Georgia is that population density affects severe weather reporting. If no one reports severe weather, then there will be less warnings. Will post the image here if you'd like. Another sad reality is the further you are from a radar, the liklihood of seeing a small signature of severe weather gets lower. Perhaps X-band radars could serve as gap-filling radars. We could use one in north GA like on a mountain in Dawson or Fannin county. Our forecasters do *not* have different thresholds for warnings based on where it is. However, if a radar doesn't show a signature and no one reports severe weather, than no warning will be issued.

Here's a link to a study on warning verification in FFC's area 1995-2002...

http://www.srh.noaa.gov/images/ffc/pdf/SEconf.pdf

These are county-based stats, not polygon-based. The main finding was that rural areas have less reports and correspondingly higher FAR. Note also that Lookout is correct, we issue more warnings for urban areas than rural areas. Here are a couple of the most relevant images from the study.

[DaculaWeather]

Sure. I think I understand that the point of the thread was to poll, not assume the service is utterly lacking. Sorry if I implied the later was the point. I also agree that the short lead time for big winter events and overly brief AFDs are two specific shortcomings of our office. I did a study last summer with a UGA student on winter weather verification including lead time. Our initial finding was that *when* significant snow does occur, our forecasters nearly always underestimate the amounts and tend to wait a little too long to issue the warning. The AFDs are also lacking detail at times. Definitely valid points. All I can say is this is being addressed but "old habits" die hard. As many have noticed, our newer (but not necessarily younger) forecasters are up to the task with warnings and AFDs. The culture shift is occurring. However on the flip side, an interesting observation I've found is that those forecasters that tend to write short AFDs and are conservative also tend to have good temperature and PoP verification. Veteran level experience has it strengths and weaknesses.

When someone proposes splitting up an office, I guess I couldn't help but wonder that a degradation of service was being implied. My concern is one should use data and facts, not conjecture. It may be hard to do this properly without raw data, so I'm willing to furnish it. Let me know.

It's great to hear the those points are being addressed Steve. As you know, it's only us geeky weather people that really care about the AFD's anyway, I suspect that the "normal" person NEVER sees those. As you know, we tend to read not just the FFC AFD but those from all over the SE. We are always searching for any little tidbit of information or a "read between the lines" hint at what might be happening. We see good AFD's and some that aren't so good, never did I think it was a reflection on the met's themselves. I always figured it was exactly as you stated.

How many met's do you have on staff?

[LithiaWx]

Sure. I think I understand that the point of the thread was to poll, not assume the service is utterly lacking. Sorry if I implied the later was the point. I also agree that the short lead time for big winter events and overly brief AFDs are two specific shortcomings of our office. I did a study last summer with a UGA student on winter weather verification including lead time. Our initial finding was that *when* significant snow does occur, our forecasters nearly always underestimate the amounts and tend to wait a little too long to issue the warning. The AFDs are also lacking detail at times. Definitely valid points. All I can say is this is being addressed but "old habits" die hard. As many have noticed, our newer (but not necessarily younger) forecasters are up to the task with warnings and AFDs. The culture shift is occurring. However on the flip side, an interesting observation I've found is that those forecasters that tend to write short AFDs and are conservative also tend to have good temperature and PoP verification. Veteran level experience has it strengths and weaknesses.

When someone proposes splitting up an office, I guess I couldn't help but wonder that a degradation of service was being implied. My concern is one should use data and facts, not conjecture. It may be hard to do this properly without raw data, so I'm willing to furnish it. Let me know.

Thanks again for responding to this topic. I would love to see winter temperature verification if it is easily accessible. It would be for personal consumption, so if it's too much trouble don't worry about it.

[DaculaWeather]

I see some of you agree that you believe there should be another office.

There was a very good discussion along the same lines here. It seems to me that most of the mets would prefer additional radar sites to fill in the holes that the existing sites leave.

I'm assuming everyone that voted for another site realize there isn't going to be another site, if for no other reason because of money. And an additional radar would be much cheaper than an entire office.

[AbsolutZero]

It's great to hear the those points are being addressed Steve. As you know, it's only us geeky weather people that really care about the AFD's anyway, I suspect that the "normal" person NEVER sees those. As you know, we tend to read not just the FFC AFD but those from all over the SE. We are always searching for any little tidbit of information or a "read between the lines" hint at what might be happening. We see good AFD's and some that aren't so good, never did I think it was a reflection on the met's themselves. I always figured it was exactly as you stated.

Actually the AFD is one of the most utilized text products the NWS issues. Media and EMs read them regularly, especially on big weather days. Our Aviation section gets read by FAA centers (regional and national). The Fire Weather section is a big deal in our Feb-March fire weather season. This wasn't the case in the past when it was meant for "internal use only" between offices and media. Remember all those crazy contractions that no one understood? This is part of the problem why veteran forecasters struggle with AFDs. Our current directives now instruct mets to use plain english and limit technical terms. Research on effective communication shows that people don't take precautionary actions unless they have confirmation and buy-in. They need to know why or what will happen if they don't take action.

How many met's do you have on staff?

We do have a little more staffing than a typical WFO due to the increased aviation needs (we're part of an initiative with LOT and OKX to better serve the FAA) plus the 2 radars and 96 counties. We have 12 forecasters as well as 2 program leaders and 3 managers, each of whom can fill in as lead forecasters.

[AbsolutZero]

Thanks again for responding to this topic. I would love to see winter temperature verification if it is easily accessible. It would be for personal consumption, so if it's too much trouble don't worry about it.

Winter precip or temperature verification? Here is verification of Nov, Dec, Jan, Feb max and min temp forecasts made 2007-2011. The left chart is FFC forecast improvement over MAV guidance, the right chart is all WFOs in AL, AR, FL, GA, MS, NC, SC, and TN. The x-axis is 12hr forecast periods (1=12hr fcst, 2=24hr fcst, etc...) and the y-axis is percent improvement over MAV. Not a huge increase but certainly above the regional average performance in periods 1-3.