The much hyped Valentines Day storm system that doesn’t exist yet is now forecast to mostly be a Sunday the 15th and Monday the 16th thing, and not so dramatic as the usual suspects were promoting. Yes, I’m shocked as well. Here’s the Storm Prediction Center (NOAA’s SPC, who are responsible for forecasting this sort of thing) three day outlooks and forecast maps:
SPC has revised their outlook classification guidance a little bit this year. Be really careful about this because the TV and internet weatherdoomcasters have a bad habit of misrepresenting the SPC categories (for a rant about that see this exchange). Often the media consolidate the SPC categories from six in to three (since most of them can’t seem to count that high 😛 ), and do it in a way that exaggerates the potential impacts.
It’s important to realize that the “thunderstorm” through levels 1 and 2 are events you experience many times a year. You really don’t need to worry or take any precautions beyond having your weather radio handy and knowing what you would do if there was a tornado warning. At 3 things start to get interesting and you need to pay attention. It is at 4 and 5 when it’s time to worry and consider changing plans like schools, etc. As always. common sense is essential. Any thunderstorm can in theory cause a bad downburst or even tornado. If you’re unlucky enough to be under it, that’s a bad day. But we can’t (and shouldn’t) shut down the country for every thunderstorm.
It is important to keep things in perspective. You are far more likely to be killed in a traffic accident in most places than by the weather (discussed here, scroll down), and if you live in Savannah you are over 300 times more likely to be murdered by one of your neighbors than a passing storm.
Coastal GA/SC Lowcountry (better known as the Frogmore Metroplex) isn’t quite within the SPC window yet, but all signs are this will be mostly a rain with a few scattered thunderstorm thing, not likely any severe weather but as usual with thunderstorms keep your weather radio handy just in case.
Hopefully we will get some rain out of this system. Much of the region is still in a drought:
Wednesday’s rain was pretty spotty, here in Parkside Savannah we only got 0.6″, it was very “streaky” with individual rain cells tracking east. So this system may be a good thing with just a few flashes and booms for triggering the canine-american community.
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