Resources for severe weather and hurricane season

You really don’t need your local TV weathercaster, a fancy app, Mr. Ed, or even a witty and brilliant but reluctant and sometimes snarky scientist to keep you safe and informed about weather hazards. All you really need is an inexpensive radio and a web browser with one link bookmarked.

First, there is no substitute for a weather radio. You should have one in your home and office/work place. Period. They aren’t expensive, some are portable and have features like a flashlight and even hand crank so you can recharge them. Here is a link to a NYT review of several models. I’ve had good luck with the Midland radios, I have two of the WSR-120 small desktop units (which plug in, but have batteries and you can take them with you if you need to, I’ve taken ours on the road before), but for portable I typically use my H/T (a Kenwood TH-D74) that has a weather radio band.

What about sirens? I did a rant about sirens last year. They are designed to warn people outside, and even there you have to be very careful because conditions like wind and rain can limit where you hear them. Absolutely don’t rely on hearing them inside buildings. Another issue is that NWS isn’t responsible for sirens – that’s your local emergency management, so there is a delay. Generally it is short, but there have been times when they have been a couple of minutes late or even failed to go off. They also don’t have an “all clear” signal!

If you are responsible for outdoor activities like youth leagues or after school events, get one of the portable weather radios. Note that some counties (Chatham in Georgia is one) only sound sirens for tornadoes, so you need to have some other way of knowing when a severe thunderstorm is approaching. You might also want to consider one of the portable lightning detectors. These can give you warning when there is cloud-to-ground lightning approaching, often well before warnings are issued, and in cases where its a storm that does not reach warning limits but still poses a danger for those out in the open.

People are always asking about apps: I don’t use them or recommend them. I have several concerns. To start with, tornado warnings often have very little lead time, sometimes only minutes. The internet and cell phone networks often have latencies (delays) of several minutes, and there have been times where the apps and cell phone warnings I’ve tested went off after the warning had expired! The other thing is that apps almost always have privacy and security issues. For routine weather as well as details on hazards, simply bookmark your local National Weather Service office page. That’s where all the data comes from anyway, so skip the hype and go to the source.

By far the best web site and utility for weather monitoring is the National Weather Service. It is very clean, no-nonsense, and has been rock solid. Hopefully all of the turmoil over DOGE and government reform will not impact this incredibly valuable resource – many of the commercial weather companies have wanted to kill off this aspect of NWS for years. The thing is, virtually all of the data you see on a commercial app comes from the US Government. What these guys want to do is to continue having taxpayers fund the tremendous costs of maintaining the satellites and sensors (such as weather stations at airports) but take over (and charge for) distributing that information to you; in other words, socialize the risk, privatize the profit. Given the nature of government contracts, it would likely be in the form of sole source agreements that would cut out independent forecasters.

There are other complications, as we rely on data from other countries that have use and distribution restrictions – if we make our system commercial, it will disrupt or destroy those data sharing agreements or, like with many drugs, US citizens will pay more than is paid in other countries. And, once you commdify weather data the already bad situation with respect to hype and fear mongering will probably get even worse.

We have a great system – the Government provides the infrastructure and essential services, the private sector can take that and add value (or not) where appropriate. Hopefully the administration won’t screw it up.

But for now we have a great resource at https://www.weather.gov. This is the main landing page for the National Weather Service, which has an overview of the US with active warnings …

You can click on any location to get the details, or you can enter a location name or ZIP Code. For example, naturally we want to know what the weather is in Frogmore, so let’s enter that in the box in the upper left hand corner. As you would well expect if you enter “Frogmore, SC” you get a helpful drop down box …

… and selecting “Frogmore, SC, USA” gives us the details. Notice that if you entered this info in the green box and clicked “remember me”, it will set it up so whenever you go to weather.gov it will go directly to your selected page which, in this case, looks like this today:

In this case, the weather looks good over the next week or so, with just a chance of rain tomorrow, so no warnings. Now, supposed your boss caught you drawing a mustache on his picture in the corporate boardroom, and sent you to Pontiac Michigan on a business trip as penance. Entering “Pontiac, MI” will take you to the page for that location, which has warnings up today … notice the pink banner at the top of the page:

Clicking on that gives you the following text message:

Hazardous Weather Outlook
National Weather Service Detroit/Pontiac MI
424 AM EDT Wed Mar 19 2025

MIZ047>049-053>055-060>063-068>070-075-076-082-083-200900-
Midland-Bay-Huron-Saginaw-Tuscola-Sanilac-Shiawassee-Genesee-Lapeer-St. Clair-Livingston-Oakland-Macomb-Washtenaw-Wayne-Lenawee-Monroe-
424 AM EDT Wed Mar 19 2025

This hazardous weather outlook is for southeast Michigan.

.DAY ONE…Today and Tonight

A Marginal Risk (1/5) for severe weather is in place for most of southeast Michigan with winds up to 60 mph as the main threat as scattered thunderstorms track into the area from the south this evening. An isolated tornado cannot be ruled out. Storm motion will be southwest to northeast at 60 mph or higher.

.DAYS TWO THROUGH SEVEN…Thursday through Tuesday

No hazardous weather is expected at this time.

.SPOTTER INFORMATION STATEMENT…

Spotter activation may be needed this evening.

$$

Also, looking at the forecast, you see that Thursday rain/snow is likely. Will it be snowing when you get there? Scrolling down the page takes you to the “additional resources” box where you can click on the radar or satellite images, or one of the real gems of the site, the “hourly weather forecast. Clicking on that gives us a graph showing all kinds of neat stuff like temperatures, sky cover, rain/snow/sleet, and so forth … hovering my mouse (or touching the touchpad on the phone/ipad) over Thursday at 5pm gives me at the bottom the actual expected numbers –

Temperature 35, Wind Chill 25, windy with winds 15 gusting to 28, 30-50% chance of rain or snow. Yuck.

Another neat feature is found at the forecast office page. That is located at the top left of the forecast page where it says “Your local forecast office is …” , in this case, Detroit/Pontiac, MI. Clicking on will let you access other maps and forecasts and, if the forecasters feel it is needed during severe weather, a weather briefing. Otherwise there will usually be a “weather story.” Here is the one from Charleston for today …

As you can see, there is a lot of information here if you want to “drill down,” but the key information is presented up front. One last neat feature to explore. You’ll notice when we entered a location a map was shown with a little green box in it. Suppose we are in Frogmore, but want to see what it’s like out on the water. We can just click on the map off of Fripp Island and get the marine forecast …

Each one of these grid cells in the forecast is only two miles across, so for example in Savannah, you will get a different forecast for the Daffin Park area than the Southside or Pooler. It’s very specific.

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So that’s it: get an appropriate weather radio, bookmark your location on the NWS site, and you’re done.

For hurricanes, one thing you do sort of need local media for are closings and evacuations. Most of you have figured out by now that the decision to close this or that school, government office, or business has more to do with liability and other issues than the actual risk. So for that info you should figure out which of your local “news” stations is doing the least bad job of collecting that information. Just don’t get flustered by their hyping the hazards – go with the source (NWS).