Seeking to simplify their messaging, the National Weather Service is looking to greatly reduce the different types of warnings they issue for dangerous weather events, according to two articles in The Washington Post. This comes in response to complaints that current warnings for the public are too complicated or difficult to understand. Much of these attempts to provide the warnings with a facelift relate to the specific risk categories, with the options for a thunderstorm including marginal, slight, enhanced, moderate, or high. While these categories are intended to offer distinct grades, their meanings are often unclear to the public. Says Sean Ernst, graduate student at the University of Oklahoma, of the names, “These things came from military and government uses, and have since proliferated to the general public. They were never designed necessarily with the general public in mind.”
Comparably, the NWS is also considering eliminating weather advisories, noting that they’re frequently confused with watches, and that watches and the more severe warnings were also often confused. Says chief of the forecast services division at NWS headquarters Eli Jacks of the findings from an NWS workshop from 2015, “There was a chorus that the term ‘advisory’ is misunderstood, and watches vs. warnings are misunderstood. If a watch and an advisory are conflated with one another, then neither one has much value….A watch means prepare. A warning means act.”
Source:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2020/06/10/storm-prediction-center-risk-categories/
