There is still no notice on, for example, the home pages of the WFO’s affected.

You mentioned there has been no public notice about this topic. Not sure if the other WCMs already pointed you in this direction, but a PNS was issued earlier this month:
http://www.nws.noaa.gov/om/notification/pns12exp_cr_tor_svr_svs-cca.htm.

There is also a link in that document pointing to the Product Description Document:
http://products.weather.gov/PDD/PDD_CR_IBW_011012.pdf

Hope this helps!

Dave

This is a really poor decision. I do agree with the tornado emergency, because it implies a disaster is occurring in a populated area. This might allow first responders, law enforcement, etc., a few extra minutes to respond or get ready, or for those who pay attention to take additional precautions. The biggest problem are radar generated tornado warnings vs. a funnel reaching the ground warnings.

I’ve spoken to many storm spotters, FEMA workers, rescuers (I’m also an EMT), and Emergency Managers who are seeing an increase in apathy towards severe weather. I think recent TV shows depicting “chasers” doing idiotic things around storms has not helped the issue. When I conducted lectures years ago, people wanted to know how to “survive a tornado.” Now days, younger kids and adults want to know how to drive into or “see” a tornado “like on TV.”

When I was in Joplin following the tornado, a man sorting through debris mentioned he stayed out as long as he could because he had seen people on “TV doing it,” and thought it would be “easier.”

Warren

If you want additional information provided in the tier structure, you have that too. But you can ignore it, and no harm will come.

I intended to put you that very little note so as to say thank you again on the remarkable solutions you have shared here. It has been certainly strangely generous of people like you to make publicly precisely what most of us could have sold for an ele…

http://www.spc.noaa.gov/products/outlook/archive/2010/day1otlk_20100510_1630.html

Thank you again for your outstanding leadership on these and other issues! You nailed it again. We are presently unable to get people to pursue, listen to, interpret, understand, and respond to weather watches and warnings. The new multi-level severe thunderstorm and tornado warning plan will only lead to more confusion, apathy, frustration, and more and more people not responding appropriately to severe weather warnings.

One good thing of late has been the substantial increase in the number of ways individuals can receive weather warnings via the many electronic notification services that are widely available. If we were to keep these “notifications” simple and straightforward, we would be gaining ground. I will stop here. You have it covered. I will talk to my local NWS folks who I see often and see what they think. I bet that they agree with you. If we could only keep the D.C. bureaucrats out of the picture.

Tom in Ft. Worth.

George

If I have to explain what it means or filter the information, it isn’t simple and will be difficult to interpret. I am a nerd, I was a nerd long before the word became popular in the common vernacular. Weather has always been a passion for me, it just wasn’t in the cards for me to be a meteorologist. However, working on an ambulance for almost 17 years taught me that simple information in high stress situations are absorbed and processed best. Also, What I understand as a nerd is not what most other people understand. I cannot use my experiences as a reference for what will work for “normal” people ( I know that the only way I see normal is with a telescope.). This is not about their level of intelligence, cognitive capability, or general awareness, but that I am hyper sensitive to information about severe weather, and have a greater understanding than most people.

The real issue is about what the very knowledgeable understand versus what the average person understands are significantly different. What makes sense to us would confuse most people. That is what I am afraid of, confusion. A plain description of the warning with appropriate priorities towards the warnings having the greatest dangers to human life will go far in the warnings realm. Warning about hail in a tornadic thunderstorm is like warning about rain falling. What should people do if a tornado warning is issued? Take cover! What difference does it make if large hail is falling? None you should still take cover. Give the facts in simple words and plain English appropriate for the region.

The elevating of the hail threat in the three new tornado warnings makes it MORE likely the less important threat (hail) will overwrite the more important threat (tornado) in the new messaging.

This isn’t a hypothetical concern: Two friends of mine were lured into the path of the Joplin tornado and had to write out because hail overwrote tornado on their cell phone!

By complicating the parsing of warning messages it makes it more likely that can happen in the future.