A Weather Ready Nation, the next Steps

WRN

Back in December I wrote about a large national project called a "Weather Ready Nation".
This is a project where several organizations have joined forces to inform public to being prepared for weather emergencies due to storms.  Before this project the information we received was really only to alert of weather events and emergencies, however educating the public was difficult because there were too many fragmented national organizations that were trying to communicate public safety  awareness.  Internet technology had to be utilized effectively and messages from the scattered organizations were not being made mainstream into public media enough.   Newspapers, Television networks and other media sources unfortunately depend on what readers and watchers want to see and they are controlled by its paid advertising campaigns.  Public safety messages rarely are noticed because we have to admit some of the messages have been a bit boring or thought to be unnecessary because some areas of the country only see a strong storm every 50 years.   Being a storm spotter I listen to co-workers and friends and they state the same thing.  Meteorologists like to scare the public to think that a storm is coming and then it does not happen.  2011 was a busy year for weather events, records were broken in snowfall, temperature extremes and drought.  These changes to our landscape has cost our county billions of dollars.

NOAA, The National Weather Service and several other national organizations started this project to help the public to be prepared and to do so they will need to use the internet and smartphone technology which has become very popular and a logical choice to communicate quickly and to many people at a time.  Other communication tools are considered because if there is a power failure, some methods of communication would not be reliable.  The video at the bottom mentions the need to improve forecasts, alerts and the need to improve the way we are educated by using new media.

The Next Steps

  Communication was only one part of the advances made by this project, here is a list of new or upgraded tools to keep our nation informed and to be prepared.

• Suomi NPP Satellite - A relatively new advanced satellite to measure weather readings and study our climate - more here : NPP overview

• NOAA's Dual Pole Weather Radar upgrades - Here is my write up; Fort Dix upgrade - what is dual Pole video

• Updating communication via Cell Phones, Google Maps and Social Media -  My first report about WRN

• Testing the system via Pilot Project in different cities -Six locations one of them in Silver Spring MD,   to bring life saving information to make a life saving decision. from the source

Being prepared does not mean that you have to rely on others to make a decision, you can find the way to learn how to be prepared.  "Be a Force of Nature" is the slogan from NOAA's National Weather service.   This blog has made the commitment to being prepared and to pass this message along as well. You can find information here but even better go to the source; www.ready.gov

Here is a video from The National Weather Service about WRN and the National Dialog event they had last December. 

Original source- WRN Advancing toward a Weather-Ready Nation