WeatherBrains 332: Grease Covered Cardboard
WeatherBrains Episode 332 is now online (June 4, 2012). If you are crazy about weather, this is THE netcast audio program for you!
Our episode for June 4th features guest WeatherBrain Dr. Harold Brooks…. one of the leading severe weather researchers in the world. He works at the National Severe Storms Laboratory. He is also a recent alum fo the show, having appeared on show #312 on 1/16. He joins us tonight from his office in Norman, Oklahoma. Harold Brooks, welcome to WeatherBrains!
Our guest panelist this week is KOAM Chief Meteorologist Doug Heady from Joplin, MO, and WeatherBrains is proud to announce new panelist Nate Johnson of WRAL Raleigh.
This episode also marks the second video broadcast of the show via a Google Plus Hangout.
Other discussions in this weekly podcast include topics like:
- National extremes: 101 in Laredo, TX, and 25 at Stanley, ID
- Kevin takes a hiatus from WeatherBrains
- James vs. Facebook
- Severe Thunderstorms in Mississippi and Tennessee
- and more!
We announce our new e-mail officer this week!
From The Weather Center:
WeatherBrains 101: What is storm surge? Also Professor Peters discusses coastal features and tides.
TWIWH: Bill Murray looks back at the week of June 4th.
Listener Surveys: Okay, we continue to drive this topic into the ground, but we really do like to hear from you. Many thanks to everyone who has taken the time to fill out the Listener Survey. The survey takes just a minute or two to complete and provides us with an opportunity to learn where you are and hear your thoughts and comments on the show. Click here to take the survey.
Web Sites from Episode 332:
Don’t forget about Audible.com
Picks of the Week:
JB Elliott – Supercell Photo
Bill Murray – Venus transiting the Sun
Brian Peters – off this week!
James Spann – Earth Science Office
JP Spann – Gets the horn!
Nate Johnson – WDTB Storm of the Month Webinars
The WeatherBrains crew includes your host, James Spann, plus other notable geeks like JB Elliott, Bill Murray, Nate Johnson, and Brian Peters. They bring together a wealth of weather knowledge and experience for another fascinating netcast about weather.
As a broadcast freelancer and a private sector guy, I just wanted to add a few comments about the whole social media thing. I would echo a lot of what Kevin said in the show about the drawbacks of social media. As mentioned, Facebook posts give your ad revenue to Facebook, not to your station/company. More importantly in a severe weather situation,it presents dangers when people learn to rely on social media for warnings.
1. You can lose access to your account at any time, like happened to James over the weekend.
2. All Facebook posts do not show up in the newsfeed, especially if you have a large friends list. Even though I have mine set to “display all posts” from all of my friends, I can scroll through my newsfeed, then hit refresh and see more posts from hours ago that didn’t show up the first time. I can also look through my whole newsfeed, then go to a specific friend’s page and sometimes find a status update from them that did not show up in the newsfeed. Again, this problem gets worse when one has a large number of people on their friends list. It seems that too many status updates somehow overload the system and it starts skipping some and displaying them at random. Someone relying on this method for warning could easily miss your post.
3. Delayed reposts. In past severe weather events, I have noticed people still “sharing” and “retweeting” tornado warnings hours after the warning has expired. In fact, during a severe weather event in my area earlier this year, I saw several people “share” a post from a local tv station “Tornado warning for X county, take shelter now in the Y community” some 3 hours after the warning had expired. Obviously, they had just logged onto Facebook, saw the post in their newsfeed and thought it was still valid. Not only would this lead to false alarms, this could also lead to invalid information on current warnings. For example, Suppose county X goes under a warning for a supercell with the tornado threat limited to the far northern communities of the county. The post says “Tornado warning for X county. This will impact communties A and B in the far northern part of the county. This will not impact major city C in the south part of the county”…An hour later, a second supercell develops farther south and moves into the southern part of county X headed directly toward major city C. People are still retweeting/sharing the post from the first supercell an hour ago saying that major city C is in the clear. Some may even see your post from an hour ago and miss your most recent post and get the two confused. The whole delayed reception and delayed reposts can be quite confusing and dangerous.
4. It’s too easy for random people to create fake pages. There’s constantly people making fake pages for famous people. Someone wanting to play a dirty prank could easily wait until there’s a big severe weather outbreak expected for Alabama. They could create a fake page “James Spann”, upload James’ profile picture and start posting false information about the current severe weather. People type in “James Spann” in the Facebook search and they’ll get the real page and this fake page in the search results. Some may be tricked into “liking” the fake page. Some of their friends see they’ve liked a James Spann page and decide they’ll like it too. Before James finds out about it and reports the fake to Facebook for removal, you’ve got several hundred fans following this fake page during a severe weather outbreak thinking it’s the real deal. On tv, they know it’s you because they see your face and hear your voice. Unfortunately, on social media, all they see is keystrokes and everyone’s will look the same.
The fact is, we have too little control on social media. We never know if/when we will have access to our page to provide severe weather information. We never know if everyone will receive the info in a timely manner. We have no control over when and how they may repost the information to others. We have no quick way of booting those that take our identity on a fake page. Plain and simple, we have no control over what gets posted in our names and what people are going to do with posts made by us or others pretending to be us.
For these reasons, I’m a strong believer in using social media as just a promotional tool and simply providing links to a station website or blog that I can control. I would drill it into viewers minds that I do not provide real-time weather data on social media, but I do try to pass along links to my website/blog frequently during emergency situations as reminders that significant weather is nearby…and that if they see any real-time weather posted directly on social media that is not on the official website/blog, that it’s not really coming from me.
Sorry for the lengthy post, but hope this opens new ideas. Always enjoy the show!
[…] It really makes you stop to consider the relationship between accuracy and value in a forecast and how it is interpreted by its end users. Dr. Harold Brooks eloquently discussed this in episode 332 of WeatherBrains on June 4, 2012. Listen to the podcast. […]