- Welcome everyone to Wednesday Nite @ the Lab.
My name is Dyllen Brewer, and I'm a student worker here
at the Biotech Center.
On behalf of the Biotechnology Center,
UW-Madison Division of Extension,
Wisconsin Public Television, Wisconsin Alumni Association,
and UW-Madison Science Alliance,
welcome to Wednesday Nite @ the Lab.
We do this every Wednesday, 50 times a year.
Tonight, it is my pleasure of welcoming Kurt Kotenberg.
All right, tonight Kurt will be sharing with us
about Wisconsin weather safety.
Before we get started,
we're gonna ask Kurt the five questions.
- If you dare.
No one threw anything at me, that's good.
Obviously the weather was hot and whatever today,
I was planning having to dodge, so.
All right. - All right.
Kurt, where were you born?
- Madison, Wisconsin.
So this is home. - All right.
And where did you attend high school?
- Madison Memorial High School.
- All right, and where did you go for undergrad?
- Went to undergrad and graduate at Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
- What did you study? - Don't throw anything;
that's good.
Yeah, I got my bachelor's in atmospheric sciences
and a master's degree as well in atmospheric sciences.
- All right, awesome.
And where did you go for any advanced degrees?
- So, yeah, so I stayed there at UW-Milwaukee,
and then in my Weather Service career
while I was working in Des Moines, Iowa,
I actually got my MBA from Iowa State.
So a couple universities, a couple degrees,
but yeah, just like learning, like sharing information, so.
- Awesome.
Everyone, please join me in welcoming Kurt Kotenberg.
- All right. [audience applauding]
Those were easy questions.
I was thinking, like, gravity waves
or something about sinusoidally
trans-sectionalizing jet patterns.
So we'll take those questions.
Where were you born; yes.
So first off, thank you all for watching
and joining us here.
I'm Kurt Kotenberg
with the National Weather Service in Green Bay.
And we're just gonna talk a little bit
about weather safety
and kind of start with what we do here
at the National Weather Service.
So a little bit of a history.
We'll start off with a history quiz.
Does anyone know who this person in this picture is?
And a hint, if you went to UW-Milwaukee...
I heard a Lapham back there.
Yes.
So at UW-Milwaukee,
there's actually a building named after him.
This is Increase Lapham,
and there's Lapham Hall at UW-Milwaukee,
and I believe he's actually buried somewhere
in the Milwaukee area right now.
He's kind of like the godfather
of the National Weather Service, if you will.
So it started way back in 1870.
He messaged President Ulysses S. Grant at the time
and he said, you know, he's like,
"You know, we're doing a lot of shipping and stuff
"here on the Great Lakes.
"You know, I think it'd be great
"if we could have, like, an observation network,
"like, across here and you know,
"Minnesota to get weather observations
"because if we had those informations,
"then we could share it with the ships
"and I could predict the weather.
"So can you do something about this
at the presidential level?"
And sure enough, 1870,
we just had our 150-year anniversary
of being a National Weather Service.
So the mission has gone from, "Hey,
"can you help take observations
so we can help ships on the Great Lakes?"
to where we are today.
And in the bottom right corner there,
that was actually an addition
made within the past, like, 2022,
the impact-based decision support services
to our mission statement.
So otherwise, our goal is
to just protect life and property.
It's one of the things I love about the Weather Service.
Like, you know, I don't care about getting clicks
or, you know, fancy anything.
Like, we just do the weather.
Protect lives, protect property.
The impact-based decision support services,
that's one big direction where we're going.
So, like, our swim lane
is helping with our first responders
and our government partners.
So, like, police, fire, emergency management.
We provide support for them,
so say, you know, like, heaven forbid
there would be, like, an airplane crash or something
and you have, like, all the first responders
swarming in to contain the scene and help with everything.
You know, what if there's storms coming in?
You know, they might not know or anything like that.
So our job is to help with things like that
and let them know the weather
so that they can do their operations
and do what they need to do
and have, like, their personal little forecasters there
to help them so that they stay safe as well
while they're trying to protect everyone.
So some tiny print here.
It's kind of like, it starts really big at the top,
you know, we do the warnings, like tornado warnings.
So people ask, like, "What television station are you on?"
"I'm Kurt, I work for the Weather Service."
"What TV station?
Are you on Channel 5?"
Like, nope, we're behind the scenes.
Like, you don't want me on TV every day,
I assure you of that.
So we do behind the scenes.
We issue, like, the severe thunderstorm warnings,
tornado warnings, excessive heat warnings for days
when it's 110-degree heat index, like today.
So we do that; those are the things that the public sees.
But also, like, getting down to the small print there,
like, we do so many other things like radars, satellites,
because all that weather information
has to come from somewhere.
It's like when you're looking,
the TV person shows, like, the television satellite,
like, that comes from, like, the Weather Service helped
and NOAA, like, launched that satellite into the air.
So we do all the things like the forecast models,
like, all that behind the scenes stuff.
We also help with river forecasts
and hurricane tracks, hurricane forecasts.
So we do a lot of things behind the scenes.
Overall, we issue about 1.5 million forecasts
and 50,000 warnings every year.
And what I've always told the people
is we cost about as much as a Big Mac for taxes,
but that's no longer true because the cost of a Big Mac
has actually gone up more so than our funding has.
So we cost, like, half a Big Mac now
to run the Weather Service.
So, you know, and it's interesting too,
there's actually a study done by one of my professors
at UW-Milwaukee that we actually provide
a net positive return on investment for taxpayers.
Aside from obviously the lifesaving portion of it,
but we also do aviation forecasts.
So, like, if you're flying from say Milwaukee to Denver
and there's thunderstorms in the forecast,
by the FAA regulations,
that plane would have to carry extra fuel
so it could circle the airport if it needed to.
And you know, as we know the airlines,
if it costs 'em to carry extra fuel,
are they gonna just be like, "Oh, that's fine,
we will eat that cost."
Or would they say,
"Well, let's boost ticket prices a little bit
because of these fuel costs."
Like, we're gonna go with that one.
They're gonna boost prices.
So the accuracy of our forecast
is also something that's very important.
So we have 122 offices across the country.
So a lot of them; we have office in Hawaii,
Puerto Rico, Guam even.
We have out in the Hawaii area,
they do, like, tsunami forecasts.
And then here in Wisconsin, we have five offices
that serve the state of Wisconsin.
So Green Bay, La Crosse, Milwaukee,
Minneapolis, and Duluth.
And we operate 24/7, 365.
So when Santa's flying around, we're helping him forecast.
New Year's Eve, we're ringing in the New Year's
with at least two forecasters at all of these offices.
Rotating shift work isn't the best,
but that's the way weather works.
Weather doesn't do a 9 to 5 Monday to Friday,
so someone's gotta be there.
So that's a little bit about the background for what we do.
And we also do things like this,
like public safety talks, education talks
because that's very important as well.
A very key component to the protection of life and property
is knowing what to do to keep yourself safe.
So we'll talk about kind of
the four seasons of weather here in Wisconsin.
You know, this isn't San Diego or San Francisco
where it's sunny and 70 every day.
You know, take today, it's gonna, you know,
110-degree heat index.
Then in 48 hours from now,
the temperature is gonna be, like, 65
and we're not even gonna hit 70 for a high
in some places in Wisconsin.
So just kind of the yo-yo weather.
So starting with convective weather season
in the spring and summer,
what I always tell people, and a hint,
this slide might appear again.
Like, this to me is, like, probably, like,
the most important slide, in my opinion.
So if people ask me, like, outright, like,
"What can I do to keep myself and my family safe?"
Like, this is exactly it right here.
So wake up in the morning.
So it's just, like, knowing what to expect for the day
and you know, not being caught off guard
or, you know, the whole, "It came without warning."
Like, you know, that dovetails into like,
"Oh, you guys are paid to be wrong half the time."
Like, that's just not true anymore.
Like, the computer models have gotten really, really good.
And so, like, the heat index for today, for example.
Like, we had this in the forecast,
we were eyeing this up like, six, seven days ago.
If you think back to the March 31 tornadoes
that were in southern Wisconsin and in Iowa.
I think eastern Iowa had, like, 29 tornadoes
or something on March 31 of 2023.
We had that, like, six days in advance.
Like, "Hey, it's gonna be stormy,
hey, it's gonna be stormy."
So you know, like, we've gotten good.
Like, the weather guessers, like, you know,
and not just us at the Weather Service,
but, like, the TV people and the industry as a whole,
like, the computer models have really come a long way
since even 10 years ago.
Like, the resolution in the scale
is just so much better than what it was 10 years ago.
Okay, so going back to this slide.
So when you wake up every morning
or you're eating breakfast,
just take 30 to 60 seconds each day
and check the weather forecast,
whether it's the Weather Service's website
or your favorite local TV meteorologist
or some other trusted source.
Just take a look at the weather
and, you know, if it's sunny and 72,
hey, that's great, but you know,
if it's like today, 110-degree heat index,
now you know that that's gonna happen.
And you can think of, like, "Okay, do I have any plans?
"I'm gonna be outside at a softball game
"that starts at 4 o'clock.
That's not good." [chuckles]
So then you can decide,
hopefully the game would be canceled perhaps,
but if it's not, you know, then you can say, "Okay,
"I at least need to drink extra water
and those types of things so I can start being prepared."
So the heat isn't even here,
the first raindrop hasn't fallen,
and already you kind of have a game plan
or an action plan to help keep yourself safe.
So this is really important
just to start early in the daytime.
Really quick background here on warnings.
So severe warnings.
So when we issue warnings, we're looking at three things.
First off, we take a look at the environment.
Again, we can tell, like, the science
and the models have evolved
to where we can say, like, "This environment's
"not really favorable for tornadoes,
but there could be hail."
So we'll watch for hail.
And then obviously what we're seeing on the radar.
And then from spotters in the field,
law enforcement, dispatch, public reports on social media,
those types of things.
Social media reports relay to local TV people,
who then relay those reports to us, like it's a chain,
but it works.
And so usually if we have, like, two of these three things
or all three of them, then we'll probably issue
or strongly consider issuing
a severe thunderstorm warning or a tornado warning.
And then from there, where does all that information go?
So I won't read this word for word,
but it goes to a lot of places.
So, like, wireless emergency alerts on your phone,
it goes on the TV stations, our NOAA weather radio.
Those are still going strong
and they'll go strong for a very long time.
So just goes to a lot of places.
So keying back to the preparedness portion of it.
So if you know there's gonna be severe weather
or tornadoes possible,
think of where you might be at that time,
and then think of how you'll receive warning information.
You know, if you're at a campground somewhere,
make sure you have some way, like some cell phone reception,
or there's some sirens nearby,
or a friend has the NOAA weather radio.
Like, just some way to get that weather information
so that you aren't caught off guard.
So again, like, the first raindrop hasn't even fallen,
and just doing these things,
like, we're so much more prepared
than we otherwise would be
and could be stuck in a bad place.
So one of my emergency managers told me this
when I was in Iowa, smart man.
So this is kind of when I first got started
in Weather Service, and so I tell people this too.
There's, like, the optimism bias is what he called it.
You know, he says, like, "It won't happen."
And then people say, "Well, if it happens,
it won't happen to me."
And they say, "Yeah, if it happens to me, you know,
it'll be fine, and you know, whatever."
Then "Oh, someone will save me."
But you know, it's not always the case.
So again, just make sure that you have ways
to receive information and ways to stay safe.
A little more numbers here.
I know these might be kind of tiny here for the audience.
So this is the number of severe thunderstorm warnings
and tornado warnings that we have issued
at the Weather Service since the year 2010.
And so if the question is, like,
"Have you noticed any trends in severe weather,
like issuing more warnings, less warnings?"
There really isn't too strong of a signal
for an increase or decrease.
The year 2023 is kind of right near the middle
of the graphic, and it's really interesting.
It depends on where you live in Wisconsin.
Milwaukee and Madison,
the 2023 year is, like, pretty active
because we all had that severe weather
in, like, March and April for a couple days.
But if you go up north to Green Bay to my home,
we have the second slowest severe weather season
on record right now.
So it's, northern Wisconsin's been really quiet.
Everything's been happening in southern
and southwestern Wisconsin for this year.
But 2023 is on pace.
It's kind of more or less an average year.
By week, so if you're watching this and you're wondering,
what kind of, this goes back to 1986,
how common or not as severe weather
when I'm watching this right now?
So towards the end of August, September,
we're really starting to kind of get on the off ramp.
There is still severe weather.
This is comparable to, like, early May.
So, like, there's still thunderstorms,
there still could be severe weather,
but definitely a downward trend.
But then this is data for all of Wisconsin,
and it's pretty similar wherever you go in Wisconsin.
There isn't much of a difference
between the northern part or the southern part.
And then the peak of severe weather season
is typically middle to end of July is when we see the most,
but a couple little blips there in the winter.
I know there was that big tornado outbreak in Kentucky,
like, December 11, and then December 15, 16,
there was those storms in, like, it was the year 2021.
There were storms in, like, Minnesota.
So I mean, can happen in the winter,
but just not very often.
Time of day, definitely a spike
with the peak of the daytime heating.
So again, this goes back to kind of, like, my safety message
of in the morning,
think about where you'll be when there's severe weather
and that 5, 6, 7, 8 o'clock hour
is the time where a lot of us are out and about
on the patio somewhere
or playing golf or softball or something.
So again, just that awareness
before the severe weather strikes.
And then there's a little blip.
It actually almost goes up a little bit
between, like, the midnight, 1:00 a.m, 2:00 a.m. hour,
a little bit. [chuckles]
But oftentimes what happens
during that, like, the midnight hour,
those storms usually don't produce
as much hail or tornadoes,
but oftentimes wind is what those ones will produce.
And a lot of the times, during that time in the morning,
those storms actually formed over Iowa during the afternoon,
and they've just raced across Iowa into Minnesota.
And so we're getting kind of the remnants of them,
like, they're weakening and getting weaker,
but they'll still produce wind occasionally there
between that midnight and 2:00 a.m. hour.
And then the lowest is yeah, around 8:00 a.m.,
9:00 a.m. or so.
Tornadoes is pretty similar
with that 5, 6, 7, 8 o'clock in the evening.
And again, you don't really have a lot of tornadoes.
If you look at severe thunderstorm warnings
and tornado warnings,
you don't have a lot of tornado warnings there
during those overnight hours.
It's usually during that afternoon time.
Before severe weather strikes,
a great place to go to is the Storm Prediction Center.
They have different categories.
They might be changing.
I think they'll be changing at some point
before the year 2030.
You know, we're kind of starting to dabble
in social sciences a little bit more
and realizing that the general public
doesn't speak weather nerd like we do.
So to like weather nerds, like, oh, yeah, enhanced,
marginal, that makes perfect sense.
But to the general public, you know, like,
if you ask, like, "What's worse, light or enhanced?"
You know, "I don't know, like, they both don't sound good."
So, you know, I think at some point
over the next five to ten years,
these might get a little more, kind of more understandable.
But yeah, so these are the current categories.
Up here in Wisconsin,
we don't typically see the moderate or the high risks.
Those are usually well down south in Oklahoma,
so good news there.
And then this is actually
from that March 30, 31 tornado event.
So this is what the storm prediction center had
for a forecast.
They parse out the tornado on the far left
and then damaging wind and hail on the right.
So I mean, again, we're not...
"Oh, weather guessers are wrong half the time,"
like, this is a pretty eye-opening forecast,
or at least it should be.
But we were on this, again, days in advance.
So when you see things like this,
definitely take it seriously.
Then our websites across the state of Wisconsin,
so you can just go to any one of those websites.
I picked Green Bay, homer; we'll show mine.
But what you do is you go to the website there
and you just click on your location.
So, like, say you live in Wausau in the middle of the state,
you just click Wausau
and it would take you to the seven-day forecast.
And yeah, it has the watches, warnings,
it has our weather story in the bottom left,
so that highlights the most important things of the day.
In this case, looks like some pretty heavy snow.
It shows you the radar.
So that's where you can get a lot of weather information.
So wrapping this little section up, again, make a habit,
take 30 to 60 seconds every morning
to look at the weather forecast.
So pop quiz for the audience,
thunderstorm watch or thunderstorm warning?
Do we know the difference?
Okay, so watch means be prepared.
Warning means take action.
So a watch we typically try to issue
like three to six hours in advance.
You know, if we're seeing those storms
at 4 or 5, 6 o'clock,
we'll shoot a watch at, like, maybe 1 o'clock
or 2 o'clock.
So that's, like, an extra, like, tap on the shoulder,
like, "Hey, just so you know,
there might be storms coming later."
And then the warning means it's about to happen.
So same for tornadoes, that means we've either seen it,
we know it's happening,
or what we're seeing with those ingredients
on that triangle at the front,
like, the environment and the radar
is showing that this could be happening very soon.
And we try to give for thunderstorm warnings,
our target is, like, 20 minutes or so.
That doesn't always happen 100% of the time,
but that's what we try to shoot for.
But you know, again,
sometimes there's only just a couple of minutes.
So when the warning's issued, you know, bam,
that means it's time to take shelter.
And then along with severe thunderstorms,
like, it could produce tornadoes, produce hail,
lightning, wind, and flooding.
So a whole gamut of severe conditions.
And if you're wondering what makes a thunderstorm severe,
it's 58-mile per hour winds or greater
and/or one-inch hail.
So that was a change the Weather Service made
also in the year 2010.
Prior to the year 2010,
it used to be 3/4 of an inch-sized hail
or, like, the size of a penny,
but basically a lot of, like, engineering
and people that are far smarter than I am,
were looking at the data and doing research
and was kind of, like, that 3/4 of an inch,
that penny-sized hail,
like, doesn't really produce as much harm to people
or buildings or things like that.
But when you hit one inch,
like, that hail starts to be noticeable,
like, causing injuries or damage to property.
So they upped the threshold a little bit.
So we issue fewer severe thunderstorm warnings,
which also helps too 'cause, like, we don't wanna
cry wolf or anything like that.
So we want it to mean, like, when we issue a warning,
you know, that means business.
That's what we, yeah, you should take it seriously.
And again, lightning, flooding are threats as well.
So in the year 2022,
so everyone or a lot of people have a cell phone nowadays.
So something that we started
is we now will trigger a WEA alert
for what's called a destructive warning.
So we issue a severe thunderstorm warning,
and we now categorize those warnings.
This goes in the printout and, like, the TV people get it,
it's, like, really easy for them to read
so they can just rip it
and go, like, on the air with what's happening.
If we issue a warning now for what we consider destructives,
like, 80-mile per hour winds or baseball-sized hail,
that will automatically trigger your cell phone.
So that's something new that we have done.
If you're wondering what it might look like.
So fortunately we haven't really had to do
too many of these yet, at least at our office,
but it might look something like this.
These are the severe thunderstorm warnings,
those yellow boxes.
And you might say, "Well, that's weird.
"Like, if I live in Green Bay, there's two warnings?
Like, huh, like, okay, that doesn't make sense."
But the reason for that is, like,
so say we have a line of storms or say there's line of storms
that goes from, like, Madison to Janesville or something,
but there's one area in that line of storms;
in this case, it's that area, like, due west to Green Bay
that has 80-mile per hour winds.
And we say, "The whole line
"doesn't have 80-mile per hour winds.
"So we don't want to issue a giant warning
"with 80-mile per hour winds
"and, like, send everybody's cell phones off
and ringing and buzzing."
We just wanna get that pocket of 80-mile per hour winds.
So in this case, we issued a separate thunderstorm warning
just for that area of 80-mile per hour winds.
So again, it might look weird
to see two severe thunderstorm warnings at one time,
but the purpose is just to capture
that 80-mile per hour area, and then that would start
triggering people's cell phones
and let those people know in this case
that are in Suamico, Howard, Green Bay area know,
"Hey, like, this area
"is going to be very bad things happening.
So take shelter."
Statewide, if you're wondering how often
we might issue one of those destructive warnings.
So in the Green Bay area, we average
about one per year at the statewide level here.
So this is a frequency chart of what categories
or what thresholds are in each warning we issued.
And so the numbers in the middle are percentage.
So in this case, the number in red
under 60-mile an hour winds and one-inch hail,
that says 30.47.
So that means 30% of our warnings
have 60-mile per hour winds and one-inch hail in them.
So that's the most common that we issue.
Then way to the right going up and down
is, like, the wind speeds.
So, like, wind speeds of 100 miles an hour,
very, very rarely, which is obviously good.
But the areas in red,
I put boxes around where that destructive category would be.
If you add up the numbers, it goes to about nine per year
in the state of Wisconsin, so not too many.
And a lot of them, you know,
the Green Bay area usually has, like, one per year.
So it's definitely more like a southern
and southwestern Wisconsin thing.
Again, severe weather hazards, lightning's a big one.
Very, very underrated.
If you're outside,
the lightning basically looks for the tallest object.
So if you're in a field or somewhere on a golf course
and, you know, golf course is a big, sprawling fairway
and not a lot of trees in the fairway,
but if you're standing there,
especially if you're standing there holding a nine iron,
like, guess what, you might the best target nearby.
So, you know, "If you hear when thunder roars,
go indoors," is our phrase.
And then if the question is well,
when is it safe to come back out after lightning?
Kind of the rule that we have is to wait 30 minutes
after the last lightning strike
or last thunder and then return outside.
Yeah, unfortunately lots of lightning strikes during sports.
If you're on the lake, again,
the first thing right off the top
is knowing the forecast before you head out.
So that can be done when you first wake up in the morning,
you're already aware of the forecast.
So then you can check it throughout the daytime too
if you wanna stay up to date.
Then making sure you have a way
to receive that weather information.
If you can get a cell phone out there,
have a weather app with a radar on it,
those types of things so you can stay aware.
If you're camping, again, make sure you have a way
to receive warning information.
Being in your tent isn't necessarily the safest place.
So you know, think of, like, a sheltered area
or if you're not too far from a gas station or something,
if worse comes to worse, know where that is ahead of time
so that when a thunderstorm or if a tornado were to come,
you wouldn't be panicking and try to figure out
while that's going on.
Speaking of tornado warnings,
the state of Wisconsin averages about 24 per year.
Texas is the winner at 136 here.
Winner, of course, depending on perspective.
So yeah, not as much up here in Wisconsin.
Michigan also, especially the UP
starts to get fewer and fewer in our area.
So we're talking tornado safety.
This was my backyard; this was a couple years ago.
I had a one-year-old at the time
and I finally got him down for a nap, yay!
And so I was tired too, [chuckles]
and so I was taking a nap on the couch.
And all of a sudden, I heard the winds,
like, in the backyard just start going.
[strong wind blowing]
And I looked and, like, and so I was, like,
kind of waking up, becoming less groggy.
And I looked out the window,
and that's why I took this video.
I'm like, "What the heck?"
And then, like, my instinct was to record it,
and then, like, you can see, like, debris and things.
And then, like, after, like, five seconds here,
my brain kicked on, like, "Oh, yeah, don't be outside.
Like, this looks like a tornado."
And then sure enough, the picture on the right,
I ran out to my front yard then,
and that's what started in our backyard.
And then that was the tornado.
And this actually ended up,
I think it was an EF1 or EF2 tornado
that got stronger as it went further to the east.
And so I did a damage survey on this
and I literally put the starting point, like, in my backyard.
So how many people can say that? [all laughing]
But the moral of the story here is not my backyard,
but what should we do
to stay safe from tornadoes while at home?
And the hint, it's not go and take video of it.
[all laughing]
So our biggest thing is we say
to stay away from windows and don't go outside.
So, like, with a tornado,
so, like, the 100-mile an hour winds,
like, if there was a fan in this room
of, like, 100-mile an hour winds coming at me right now,
like, I might blow backwards a little bit,
especially after a couple brats, maybe I'll be more sturdy.
But if I don't have those brats in me,
I'll go backwards a little bit,
but generally, I'll be fine, more or less.
The problem would be
if we had those 100-mile an hour winds
and, say, we put a big glass window,
then we put a whole bunch of objects
in between that fan and me.
So now we have those objects flying around
at 100 miles an hour,
and that's where most of the injuries
and fatalities occur with tornadoes
and these strong wind events.
If the glass shatters, now you have shards of glass
flying around the room, you know, however fast it is.
And so that's the big reason why we say
to stay away from the windows.
It's not, like, the direct wind speed,
but it's what those winds pick up
and toss around and throw around,
and if there's tree branches or two by fours.
So we say stay away from the windows,
try to go to the lowest room possible.
If you have a basement, and if you don't have a basement,
the most interior room with no windows,
which is usually, like, a bathroom,
is the safest place that we recommend.
Then of course too, in the whole preparedness thing,
if it's a big tornado day, you know,
it never hurts to have, like, an emergency kit
or a supply kit ready to go.
Worst case, you just carried a couple things downstairs
for no reason and you can bring 'em back up.
But should, heaven forbid, it be needed,
you might be glad that you have some of those things down there.
For sheltering guidelines, so a lot of words on this slide,
but basically you don't wanna be in a mobile home
or a vehicle or under an overpass.
That's one of the more unfortunate myths
that started spreading.
I think it was in, like,
I wanna say, like, the mid-1990s or something.
I think right when the internet was being invented.
There was that video of, like, a tornado
and it was, like, in Oklahoma City
and someone went under an overpass and, like, filmed it.
It was like, "Oh, cool,"
and the tornado went over them and they were fine.
But that's actually, like,
one of the worst places you could be.
First off, if you're on an interstate,
you know, say you're on Highway 151,
the speed limit's 70, and you're a parked car somewhere
and people are flying at 70 whatever miles an hour,
you don't want to have that intersection happen
between yourself not moving
and someone moving 70 miles an hour at you.
But the other reason is actually a scientific one.
If you think of, like, a garden hose and, you know,
you unscrew the nozzle and just water comes out the hose.
And, you know, if you wanna,
as a kid if you wanna spray water
in the face of your little brother or sister, ha ha ha,
you'd put your thumb under the hose
and that'd make the water shoot out, like, faster
and further and stronger.
And that's exactly what an overpass is doing.
Basically the wind speeds have, like, less of a area,
less spatial area
to go to blow from point A to point B across.
So when you compact it,
it'll actually strengthen the winds, like,
right in that location by the interstate or overpass,
I'm sorry.
So we say, like, never go under an overpass
for several reasons.
Otherwise, like gymnasiums, open rooms
are not a good place to go.
So try to get to, like, the interior.
So that's why, like, school safety,
like, getting kids in the hallways is important
versus putting them in, like, the school gymnasium
or the school cafeteria with the big open ceilings.
That's not a good option if you can have enough time
to get them somewhere more interior.
So if you're on the road, again,
I mentioned to not go under overpasses.
And really, if you're in a car,
like, your options, just being totally honest,
like, it's just not a good place to be at all.
You know, kind of your best resort is to,
if you can find, like, a gas station or a sturdy building
or somewhere to pull off and get inside, that's option A.
But if you can't, like, it is just not good.
Trying to find a ditch in a low-lying area
is kind of the best recommendation
than getting low and, like, covering your head
so that if things are flying around,
like, so that I'm not a six-foot standing target,
if I'm crouched down low,
like, at least only one foot of me
is gonna get hit by things.
But you're just like,
it's just not a good situation at all.
So it's kind of, like,
the worst of the worst options available.
Obviously, like, driving around
and going the other way is preferred as well
if it's possible.
Depends on the road network.
Tornado safety at night.
I always put this on my spotter training videos.
So one of the scarier experiences I had in my life,
parents in the audience should cover their ears,
is when I was night chasing.
So at nighttime,
especially if you're in the middle of nowhere,
you have no lights, and the only way you can see
if there's a tornado is by looking for lightning flashes.
So this video will repeat here, there, quick lightning flash,
and then the lightning stopped, and then it's blank again.
So, like, in between these lightning flashes,
you have to determine, like, first find the tornado,
like, wait for it, there.
Oh, nope, nope, there it is, there it goes.
So in that amount of time, you have to find the tornado
and then kind of, like, try to hold that picture in your mind
and then wait for the next flash
and see, like, is this tornado getting bigger?
Because if it's bigger, then guess what?
It's coming at me.
So kind of try to track how it changes
in between lightning flashes.
So yeah, I did that one time and one time only.
Okay, parents can take your earmuffs off now.
We'll never, ever, ever do that again.
That was, no, thank you.
So yeah, if you're at nighttime and there's tornadoes,
just don't mess around with that.
Storm damage.
Storm damage ties into wind safety.
So kind of a, I don't wanna,
hmmm, what's the word I'm looking for?
Like understatement.
So, like, comparing it to baseball,
like, if tornadoes are the home run,
the things that capture the headlines
and the big tornado, tornado,
just straight-line wind or strong wind damage
is also a thing because guess what?
In a tornado, winds could be going 100 miles an hour,
and straight-line wind,
winds could be going 100 miles an hour.
Like, isn't that the same wind speed?
Yes, it is.
So therefore, like, straight-line winds
can do the same amount of damage as a small tornado.
So this was also my house.
This was the June 19, 2019 or 2020 derecho in Iowa.
So yeah, things seem to follow me.
But you couldn't tell, like, was this a tornado?
It looks very much like a tornado damage.
So the moral of the story here
is if it's a severe thunderstorm warning
and we have, like, that 80-mile an hour tag
or that 70-mile an hour tag in it, don't just say, like,
"Oh, well, it's a severe thunderstorm warning.
It's not a tornado, so you know, that's fine, whatever."
Like, no, very, very much not true.
Like, 80-mile an hour winds can still do this damage,
which looks very much like a tornado damage.
So you know, make sure you take that seriously as well.
And then straight-line winds
can also knock trees over to power lines
and those types of things.
So make sure to avoid power lines
if you see a downed power line.
Switching gears a little bit to flooding.
Here's a graphic.
So six inches of fast-moving water
can knock over a typical adult.
Twelve inches of water, a small car,
and 18 to 24 inches, your SUVs and your trucks.
And I don't know how many videos
I've seen of people, like, "I've got a Ford F150,
vroom vroom, here I go."
And sure enough, like, there they go,
down the river in the flooded street.
So it doesn't matter, like, how big your vehicle is.
At some point, like, the water is going to win;
I guarantee it.
So we say, you know, "Turn around, don't drown,"
and if you can't tell how deep the water is, don't risk it.
Like, try turning around; if it adds two minutes
to your time to have to take a different road,
like, I'd probably prefer that option
than the financial whatever of my car
being submerged in water. [chuckles]
So...
And then also too,
most flash flood fatalities occur during nighttime
by a considerable margin.
And that's just because people can't see how deep the water is.
And so they guess and hope for the best,
and bad things can happen.
Like, if you're in a smaller car and the water is deep enough,
like, your car can get flipped over pretty easily,
and it all happens so fast; it happens in, like, seconds.
I've seen video of it happening.
You know, the car's just turning to the right
and then literally, like, three seconds later
is upside down and underwater.
So, like, it just happens so fast.
So we say again, like,
if you don't know how deep the water is, don't risk it.
And yeah, it doesn't take much
to knock you off your feet on a sidewalk either.
Heat inside the vehicle.
So doing experiments here, so the outside temperature
in the upper right of this graphic is 80 degrees,
and if your car is sitting in direct sunlight after an hour,
the inside of your car can be 123 degrees.
Someone put, like, a thermometer on their dashboard.
So if the outside temperature is like today,
is, like, 100 degrees, like, it can get to 123 degrees
inside your vehicle pretty dang quickly.
So, you know, moral of the story here
is our phrase for flooding,
we have "Turn around, don't drown."
For thunder and lightning, we have
"When thunder roars, head indoors."
And our phrase for heat is "Look before you lock."
And it's an incredible travesty
that every year, there's fatalities.
It's terribly tragic, like, people leaving their pets
or their small children in the backseat
and going shopping or doing whatever,
then they come back and yeah, not good things have happened.
So "look before you lock" is our big phrase there.
Heat safety when you're outside.
And yeah, that's the thing, like, most heat-related deaths
are generally preventable most of the time.
Not all the time, but a lot of the time.
You know, like, checking your backseat,
like, making sure you didn't leave anyone in the backseat
who shouldn't be in your backseat.
Like, that's preventable.
Two, making sure you limit activities.
Wear light clothing.
There is a really good graphic
from the Weather Service in Kansas City.
They had shirts of different colors,
and they lined them all up next to each other.
There's, like, a white shirt, a blue shirt, and a black shirt.
And they took, like, a thermometer gun
and, like, left the shirts outside for, like, half an hour,
and then they pointed the thermometer gun at the shirts
and, like, took the temperatures,
and it was amazing.
It made a huge difference.
And I'd never, like, seen actual, like, I know, like,
well, I'm told to wear light colors,
but I've never seen it before.
Like, that was actually the data.
So, like, that's pretty wild to see.
But the light-colored shirts
were, like, 15, 20, 30 degrees almost cooler
than the dark-colored shirts.
So I thought that was pretty fascinating.
So wearing light-colored clothing too
if you're gonna be in the sun is very helpful.
Purposeful transition
from all the heat right into fall and winter.
[all chuckling]
So question for the audience.
Snow squall warning, we ever heard of that before?
So this is something that the Weather Service
started doing in the year 20...
I think we experimented in 2019, but we went full green light
for the whole Weather Service in the year 2022.
So snow squall warnings are being issued across the country,
so every Weather Service office is doing it.
And these are, like, short-fused warnings.
So if you think of, like, a severe thunderstorm warning,
you know how it's usually like a box somewhere,
like a box that's over, like, Dane, Sauk counties
moving eastward and the box just continues.
Snow squall warnings are very similar to that.
So short-fused, a short amount of time,
like, think 30 to 60 minutes.
And here's an example of what a snow squall was in Iowa.
So again, this is during the winter.
And on the radar, like, you know,
well, it doesn't look too whatever, fine.
But the moral of the story with this
is, like, if you're in eastern Iowa,
like, the sun was actually out beforehand.
Then, like, as this snow squall went through,
it went from zero to, like, very bad, like, in minutes.
And here's the observation.
So again, a lot of numbers here.
So at the bottom is, like, 10:00 a.m.
and at the top is 1:52.
So the time kind of goes from earlier in the bottom
to later in the top.
And then the column on the right is the visibility
and then there's wind speeds.
So visibility at 11:59 was five miles,
visibility at 12:25 was six miles,
visibility at 12:28 was a mile and a quarter,
visibility at 12:33 was a quarter of a mile,
which was probably actually less than that,
but a quarter of a mile is the lowest that the sensor had.
So if you do the math, in a span of eight minutes,
the visibility went from six miles in fine,
you know, hey, the sun might even been out
to, like, less than a quarter of a mile heavy snow,
37-mile an hour winds,
I can't even see in front of my face.
So that's what a snow squall warning is
and, like, this is what it looks like on radar.
And here's a picture of unfortunately
what this snow squall did
as it went right along Interstate 80 there.
I think there were one or two fatalities.
That's the big challenge of things
when it goes from zero to bad really quickly.
You know, think driving.
Like, the biggest thing for accidents
that we're finding during winter weather
is different travel speeds that people go.
So you have someone going, we think back to our memories,
we've probably all seen it,
like, someone going 50 miles an hour through snow
and then all of a sudden, a semi goes 70 miles an hour,
and then some young yahoo's going 90 miles an hour,
and someone else is going 40 miles an hour.
So when you have all of that, like, on the interstate,
that leads to unfortunate things like this.
So if you see snow squall warning,
this is basically what we're forecasting
is, like, that very going from fine to very bad
in a short amount of time.
And then to round it out on the backside of this;
I forgot to do that.
At the very top, you can see there about like 1:14 and 1:52,
visibility's back up to five or six miles.
So it's not a prolonged thing.
It was just a very, very short burst of very heavy snow
and then it got better.
And so if you're wondering, like, what the difference is
between that and a blizzard warning
or that and a winter storm warning,
it's mainly the duration of it is a big thing.
It's like a winter storm warning or a blizzard warning,
those last over three hours, oftentimes like six hours or so.
So six hours, winter storm warning, blizzard warning
versus, like, a short-lived 30 to 60-minute snow squall.
Like, the impacts could both be the same,
like, it could have whiteout conditions.
It's just kind of the way in which those impacts happen
is what is the big difference.
And yeah, and there's no minimum snowfall accumulation
for a snow squall.
Like, you don't need to have four inches of snow or whatever.
You could just have, like, a half an inch of snow.
But if the snow is enough to cause whiteout conditions,
then that qualifies as a snow squall warning.
And oftentimes too, something to back pocket
is oftentimes with a snow squall warning, right behind it,
there's a big temperature drop.
And so, like, it could actually kind of be
like a flash freeze type situation,
where, like, during the snow squall warning,
it could be, like, I don't think I have temperatures on here.
Yeah, I do have temperatures on here; good for me.
So that's what these numbers in the 20s are.
So, like, at 11:59, it's 29 degrees,
at 12:25, it's 27.
Then notice it's all the way,
so from 27 degrees at 12:25 to 22 degrees.
So the temperature fell five degrees
during that short amount of time.
And when you start getting into the 20s and teens,
that's when, like, freezing on the roadways
can happen much easier.
So that's something else to keep in mind too.
So, like, the snow is gone, visibility is six miles,
but now it's, like, 10 degrees colder
than it was just an hour ago.
And so that could lead to slippery conditions
on the roads too.
That's something else that we're, like,
learning is a science.
Like, snow squalls have probably always have happened.
Like, this isn't something that just started,
the first time it's ever happened was in the year 2022.
This is just how we first,
like, kind of got our head wrapped around it
and, like, the impacts of a snow squall warning.
And we actually have some science to the forecasting
and, like, ways to communicate the impact and the hazards.
So we're, like, wrapping our head around,
like, defining what this weather event is.
The weather event's happened for the past whatever decades.
But now we know how to communicate to people,
and hopefully this will keep people safe
and help us carry out our mission
of protecting life and property.
So if you're unfortunately in a snow squall,
things we say, slow down, but don't slam on the brakes.
'Cause again,
that's where you have the person going 80 miles an hour
behind you who doesn't slow down.
Turn on your lights, low beam hazards,
and try to exit safely and just kind of just wait it out.
And that's the quote, unquote good thing
about the snow squall warnings is, again,
they're short-fused.
So it's not like you'll have to wait it out
for a couple of hours.
It should just be for 30 to whatever, 30 to 45 minutes,
60 minutes sometimes.
So contrasting that with a blizzard.
So blizzard, blowing snow, 35-plus-mile an hour winds,
and there's no snowfall requirement either
for a blizzard.
Like, you don't have to have three inches of snow,
four inches of snow.
It's just the impacts,
that less than a quarter mile visibility for three hours.
So if you hear blizzard warning, don't necessarily think, "Gosh,
there's gonna be a foot of snow now."
There can be,
but there isn't always a foot of snow.
In fact, sometimes there, like, isn't even shovelable snow
in a blizzard warning 'cause it's blowing around.
So it's not the amount of snow;
it's the impacts that the snow causes,
and that's why we're to blizzard warnings
and to snow squall warnings,
it's the impacts that those things cause
that we're really keying on.
And then winter storm warnings as well.
Usually those have, like,
usually six inches of snow or more.
We're looking at those as the Weather Service as well.
We're in the process of modernizing those
because as we know,
like, six inches of snow in Wisconsin
is different than six inches of snow in Texas.
Like, that would, my gosh, shut the state down.
But here, you know, six inches, what do you call that?
I call it Tuesday, you know.
So we're working on kind of modernizing that.
So, like, when we see a winter storm warning,
it's usually, like, an abnormally high amount of snow
that, like, we don't typically see
that would cause bad impacts.
Ice storms, ice storms are a thing as well.
The biggest things that those do is those go onto tree branches
and the tree branches sag and go onto power lines.
So there could be a lot of power outages.
Usually the power lines themselves
can handle ice in most cases.
If there's any power utility people here,
feel free to correct me,
but I've been told that the power lines
can typically handle it.
It's the tree branches that fall onto them
is what causes the big problems.
So, you know, don't park your car under trees
and yeah, just make sure that you're prepared
in case there would be no power.
Any devices that need power,
you have spare batteries or a generator if you need it,
that type of thing.
A little bit of science and windchill.
So, like, how does the windchill work?
Why on some days when it's windy out,
does it feel colder than others?
This is the basic science behind it
is our body is 98.6 degrees.
When it's windy, the wind kind of takes that heat
and, like, radiates it away from us.
So our body starts to feel colder
'cause at 98.6 degrees
is we're kind of starting to lose that a little bit.
So the big thing we say with cold weather
is to make sure you dress in layers
so it's easy to scale down or scale up,
and try to cover exposed skin, that type of thing.
I know this sounds silly
when we're talking about 110-degree heat indexes,
but this is how windchill works.
So when the days are really windy,
that's what happens with the wind in our temperatures.
So wrapping it up here, again, I wanna end with this slide
because I think this is the most important thing to do.
And the best part also, which I didn't mention,
is you don't need a weather degree to do this.
We don't need to take the math and science.
I think this patch of gray hair
is from the math and the science portion of it.
You don't need to worry about that.
You just find your favorite local TV meteorologist.
And we actually work, we work really well with them
because we each understand, like, our swim lane.
Like, we know we're not TV personalities,
so we just try to get them weather information,
and we understand that they are television personalities.
So you guys go on air and be flashy,
and we'll just stay at our little desks
with our pocket protectors, and we'll do all that.
So the community itself works together very well.
So, you know, I definitely would endorse, you know,
checking their forecast, again, checking our forecast,
some trusted source.
But just take 60 seconds every morning to do that.
Think of where you might be when there's severe weather.
Make sure you have a way to receive the information,
and make sure that you have a shelter to go to
if you need to, and stay safe.
[audience applauding]