So is the PDS Red Flag a new national level declaration or is this just something the Medford NWS Office is doing?
Looks like its been in the works for awhile.
Seems sorta abstract and vacuous. No idea where the initiative for it originated. Was there really a need for an escalatory indicator? Are they looking at precautionary evacuations with no fire starts? Maybe Cal Fire will have something to say about it. I thought the same thing about using the term “areal”.
Plain language should be the rule. Try ‘bejewel, festoon and encrust’ on for size. Fancy words for what PIOs should avoid doing, eh?
Plain Language | U.S. Department of Labor.
Plain Writing Act of 2010
PUBLIC LAW 111–274—OCT. 13, 2010
Oh golly! I mean c’mon man! Totally agree with ghost7. Also, this feels like another example of common sense evaporating in real time. This doesn’t do anything to educate humans about risk or potential. How does this directly help our boots on the ground OR the tax paying citizenry be smarter and more prepared? Let’s be real - you seriously going to tell me that awareness is lacking when we are sitting in the lower right hand corner of the RFW matrix? I understand and appreciate the recognition of “normalization” & "Hindsight bias, et al that occur in humans when it comes to checklistst and pocket cards, etc. Adding a new color & 3 letters are going to fix all of that how?
I’m not trying to imply, ‘this is a threat, get rid of it’, but that you really don’t need things like this coming out of the blue with regard to public safety. Sometimes, it seems the public is being fed half-finished grad school work in place of reliability and stability. I think this might also be a consequence of hiring and pay issues I brought up in a different topic thread.
…and, truth be told, a few bad actors in govt willing to flip an ops table over and try to escape culpability in the confusion. Perhaps a better topic to take up with the Fire Marshals.
The National Weather Service already issues similar warnings for severe weather (tornado watches and PDS tornado watches, when ingredients are there for strong tornado outbreaks, etc.), and there is no requirement to evacuate, just suggestions that if you live in a mobile home or other non-durable structure you find temporary shelter. I assume messaging will be similar here with regard to ignition sources and having an evac plan.
This strikes me more as standardization than anything else. Curious whether issuance will be down to individual forecast offices or the Storm Prediction Center at a national level.
A few years ago, I thought the NWS was going to, or had, started giving atmospheric rivers categories 1-5 like tornados. I think in concept it is, as well as the new enhanced warnings, but the problem is when the conditions don’t materialize, and people begin to feel it’s all crying wolf.
NWS does NOT use the 1-5 scale for AR events. That is done by the CW3E group out of Scripps and UC San Diego. https://cw3e.ucsd.edu/arscale/
Correct. The PDS language started with the severe wx products and is now being applied to Red Flags, as you state “standardization”. The PDS decision is done at the local office level and not by SPC.
So for what its worth the main push for adding the PDS language came from the Fire Agencies as a request to the NWS to delineate between more “routine” vs truly rare or historic events. Mainly as part of AARs after the 2017 wine country fires, 2019 October fires in NorCal/SoCal (Getty, Kincade, etc). The GACC decision makers needed a more clear understanding of the magnitude of the weather events to justify resource allocation and help Emergency Mangers/Sheriffs with Evac Order decisions. Nothing came out of the blue. It was collaboration, learning, growth and change rather than leaving things as status quo.