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SPC modifying risk categories in 2013


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One of my first thoughts is that, with Marginal and Enhanced included now, they might be better off removing Slight Risk completely to avoid confusion. Just a quick thought based off a first look at things.

One of the problems is that the general public interprets these terms dramatically different than meteorologists or even weather hobbyists.

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A lot of media outlets show their outlooks these days.. particularly blogs.

Oh I know. Not that the public really needs to understand all the details, but that's where the media could do more to educate if they are going to use the graphics.

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One of my first thoughts is that, with Marginal and Enhanced included now, they might be better off removing Slight Risk completely to avoid confusion. Just a quick thought based off a first look at things.

One of the problems is that the general public interprets these terms dramatically different than meteorologists or even weather hobbyists.

The "slight" terminology is confusing as a lot of people take it to mean it's not that likely ... maybe so at any one spot but not quite what it means at least compared to slight for showers/convection.

At first glance the change should alleviate some problems as the slight terminology becomes more of an issue toward the top end of its current "ingredients".

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The "slight" terminology is confusing as a lot of people take it to mean it's not that likely ... maybe so at any one spot but not quite what it means at least compared to slight for showers/convection.

At first glance the change should alleviate some problems as the slight terminology becomes more of an issue toward the top end of its current "ingredients".

Yeah I agree. What the new categories do, in essence, is shrink the Slight Risk under almost every circumstance. There will only be a slight risk for wind/hail risk between 15 and 30 pct and only 5 to 10 pct tornado. Otherwise it will be "enhanced" or "marginal".

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I don't really like the wording of an "enhanced" risk category. While pretty much anyone could look at slight, moderate, and high and intuitively be able to rank them in order of severity, imo an "enhanced" risk doesn't naturally fall in any one place. I mean isn't a moderate risk just an enhanced slight risk and a high risk just an enhanced moderate risk? "Marginal" isn't so great either.

I think I'd rather just see number categories 1-5 at this point.

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I don't really like the wording of an "enhanced" risk category. While pretty much anyone could look at slight, moderate, and high and intuitively be able to rank them in order of severity, imo an "enhanced" risk doesn't naturally fall in any one place. I mean isn't a moderate risk just an enhanced slight risk and a high risk just an enhanced moderate risk? "Marginal" isn't so great either.

I think I'd rather just see number categories 1-5 at this point.

I sorta agree. I'm not opposed to change but I'm a little hung up on the terminology. Under the new system, an "enhanced" risk of severe weather is less of a risk than moderate or high. Will take some getting used to. People will need to watch their wording a little more carefully as "enhanced" actually means something.

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One of my first thoughts is that, with Marginal and Enhanced included now, they might be better off removing Slight Risk completely to avoid confusion. Just a quick thought based off a first look at things.

One of the problems is that the general public interprets these terms dramatically different than meteorologists or even weather hobbyists.

I would support removal of the slight risk, with the proposed slight risk being enveloped under marginal. If you think about it, many 5% tornado days are very marginal (borderline instability) severe day setups, and a large portion of the remaining days are primarily wind/hail days that would often already be covered by an enhanced risk. The remainder of new slight risk days are going to often be marginal wind/hail (wet or dry downburst sort of days) that often end up being quite marginal anyway.

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"Evaluate potential revision" doesn't exactly sound too solid

Does anyone actually know the likelihood that this will be implemented?

Curious why they're doing this in the first place. Was there an issue with the SLGT risk category being taken too lightly? Personally, I thought the SLGT, MDT, and HIGH risk categories worked pretty well. The "enhanced" risk term seems a bit ambigous to me.

Also, did they consider adding an "extreme" or "PD" (particularly dangerous) risk category for those PDS set-ups? (mainly for D1 tornado threat >= 60%)

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Curious why they're doing this in the first place. Was there an issue with the SLGT risk category being taken too lightly? Personally, I thought the SLGT, MDT, and HIGH risk categories worked pretty well. The "enhanced" risk term seems a bit ambigous to me.

Also, did they consider adding an "extreme" or "PD" (particularly dangerous) risk category for those PDS set-ups? (mainly for D1 tornado threat >= 60%)

There's only ever been one 60% tornado day (4/7/06) and a few 45% tornado days (4/27/11, 5/24/11, 4/14/12), I don't think that would be enough to warrant the addition of a new category above high. Sure if such setups were more common, that could pose a case to add a new risk category, but it doesn't appear necessary for now.

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Just off the top, maybe categorize the risk levels like this:

Marginal becomes "Isolated" risk

Slight becomes "Marginal"

Enhanced becomes "Slight"

Moderate and High stay as is.

I think enhanced is a bit strong of a word choice for 30%...makes it sound like there's a better chance of it happening than in reality (still a better than 50% chance it doesn't).

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Words are so confusing. I guess I think we should just do raw probabilities for severe weather. Everyone gets so bent out of shape with words which mean different things to different people, educated or not. However, educated people should understand the difference between 15% and 30% and 60%, etc. We already put probabilities in for POP, why not for severe weather?

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Words are so confusing. I guess I think we should just do raw probabilities for severe weather. Everyone gets so bent out of shape with words which mean different things to different people, educated or not. However, educated people should understand the difference between 15% and 30% and 60%, etc. We already put probabilities in for POP, why not for severe weather?

Because I'm not an average layman but when I hear I have a 10% chance of rain, I assume nothing's going to happen, but when I hear I have a 10% chance of a significant tornado within 25 miles of me, I assume some serious **** is about to go down. The average layman hears 10% (or 15% or 30%) and assumes nothing is going to happen, regardless of the context. That's why we use words... and why words like "Slight" are bad.

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Because I'm not an average layman but when I hear I have a 10% chance of rain, I assume nothing's going to happen, but when I hear I have a 10% chance of a significant tornado within 25 miles of me, I assume some serious **** is about to go down. The average layman hears 10% (or 15% or 30%) and assumes nothing is going to happen, regardless of the context. That's why we use words... and why words like "Slight" are bad.

Well, maybe then we should use language like what we use for showery precipitation: Isolated, Scattered, Numerous, Widespread

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Well, maybe then we should use language like what we use for showery precipitation: Isolated, Scattered, Numerous, Widespread

I could see this making more sense compared to what is proposed. Although the problem with this is the bust potential. Plus some convective outbreaks are scattered by nature but significant in strength. In turn a modest squall line might be widespread in scope but only have isolated/scattered instances of severe.

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No, because a squall line is widespread, but in general does not warrant probabilities associated with the prospect of isolated supercells.

Remember, we're talking about wording for SEVERE weather. If its a squall line, but only isolated cells will produce severe weather, then isolated would be the way to go. However, if you are expecting a widespread derecho, then you'd want to go with something higher. Anyway, this is my thinking.

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I personally have no beef with the new categories. Clearly numbers alone are insufficient because it's difficult to convey what the numbers mean in terms of sensible wx. The wording seems to do fine with communicating the relative severity + breadth of dangerous weather... slight is clearly more than marginal, enhanced is more than slight. Not sure about moderate vs. enhanced, but high is clearly more than moderate. Makes sense to me.

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I could see this making more sense compared to what is proposed. Although the problem with this is the bust potential. Plus some convective outbreaks are scattered by nature but significant in strength. In turn a modest squall line might be widespread in scope but only have isolated/scattered instances of severe.

See my comment just above this one about the squall line, but we have customers out here who demand "coverage" even when we really should go with a probability.

Of course, otherwise we could use the probability wording: Slight chance, chance, likely, definite.

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