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TMCNet: National Weather Service urges making tornado safety plans now

[February 10, 2012]

National Weather Service urges making tornado safety plans now

Feb 10, 2012 (The Oklahoman - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) -- For multiple reasons, now is the time to formulate a tornado safety plan, according to the National Weather Service.

First, there's no chance in the immediate forecast for tornadoes, so it gives time to prepare.

Second, tornadoes don't follow a schedule. While more tornadoes occur in May than in any other month, twisters have been recorded in the state in every month since official records began in 1950.

It was three years ago Friday that an EF4 hit the Lone Grove area, killing eight people. There were other tornadoes that same day, including an EF2 in portions of the Oklahoma City metro area.

Rick Smith, warning coordination meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Norman, said a plan should include multiple ways to stay safe, depending on the circumstances.

"You can't have too many ways to get weather information, especially warnings," Smith said. "You have to have backups in case for some reason you can't get the warning from your primary source.

"Everyone in Oklahoma should have a weather radio. It's a direct link to NWS warnings and can wake you up in the middle of the night and let you know bad weather is nearby. Television is a great source of local weather information. And today there are numerous ways to get warnings on your smartphone or mobile device." And depending on where you are and what you are doing, it may take a combination of those sources to monitor the weather throughout the day.

Forecasters constantly update outlooks and graphics on the National Weather Service website. The day might start out with a 20 percent chance of thunderstorms at 6 a.m. and end up being a busy severe weather day by 6 p.m.

"Check the weather often, especially during the spring when thunderstorms are in the forecast," Smith said. "Our goal today is to provide a constant stream of information in the days, hours and minutes leading up to severe weather.

"We produce numerous graphics for our Web page that paint the picture of what we're expecting," he said. "And now we're using social media like Facebook and Twitter to reach even more people." Then and now A tornado went through the Lone Grove area on the evening of Feb. 10, 2009.

Some of the tornadoes earlier in the day happened about the time students would be getting out of schools and some districts kept students past the end of the normal school day.

Edmond Public Schools Superintendent David Goin said his district did that.

"The plans implemented during that severe storm outbreak were effective," Goin said.

"Ongoing communications and responses coordinated with local emergency management authorities were vital." Goin said the Edmond district has since bought more handheld radios for use during emergency situations and when regular means of communications become unreliable.

Their own plan The National Weather Service Forecast Offices have backup plans. They are certainly not immune to severe weather, as shown a couple of times during a tornado outbreak in April.

Employees in Birmingham and Huntsville, Ala., took shelter as significant tornadoes approached, Smith said, "But the flow of information from the weather service was uninterrupted." Last year on May 24, with the threat of severe weather high for central Oklahoma, meteorologists in Norman were talking to those in Tulsa. If something happened to their office, Norman would be backed up by Tulsa, then Fort Worth, Texas, and then Austin/San Antonio. Those offices would assume responsibility for warnings and forecasts.

"We didn't have to implement our backup procedures that day," Smith said, "but if we had to, I think things would have gone very smoothly because of all the planning, preparation and practice we do long before the storms are on the radar.

"We had a plan and that's what we want residents to do." Even in the cold of February.

___ (c)2012 The Oklahoman Visit The Oklahoman at www.newsok.com Distributed by MCT Information Services

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