Early Warning and Late Warning Systems for Hurricanes

I have been lucky in my career to be influenced and inspired by many scientists whose careers have been excellent but they also have a quick, open and clear mind to real-life situations.  During the month of July, I went to visit the National Center for Atmospheric Research for a number of workshops and I happen to run into an Dr. Mickey Glantz (http://ccb.colorado.edu/glantz/) at Starbucks.  Now Mickey is a Philly Homeboy whose work in societal impacts from climate, drought, floods, and many other areas has inspired me to think human and science concurrently.

We were talking about Early warning systems in Africa especially as it relates to drought.  These systems often take trends and atmospheric patterns into account and provide governments, non-governmental organizations and other stakeholders a chance to adapt and protect from a particular hazard and it becomes life threatening.  But Mickey also mentioned the concept of a late warning system that I have been thinking about since our discussion

But as you move from drought to smaller scale hazards such as hurricanes, flash floods, tornadoes, severe thunderstorms and the like, you realize that it is impossible to have an early warning system that is more than a few days in advance -- with more warning time for hurricanes and less for severe thunderstorms, tornadoes and the like.  The latter severe events are smaller and scale and likely to impact smaller regions unless there are particular atmospheric flow patterns that favor severe weather.  Even so, the Storm Prediction Center provide probabilistic guidance for where severe weather is possible, the National Hurricane Center provides updates to where a land-falling hurricane is likely to occur.

These represent early warning, but the story is not complete.  Action must be taken to ensure safety once an identified threat has occurred. For hurricanes, it is mandatory or voluntary evacuation.  For severe weather or flash flooding it would be a tornado warning, a severe thunderstorm warning a flash flood warning.  One has 48-72 hours for a well predicted hurricane and 30 minute or less for the tornado, severe thunderstorm or flash flood warning.

But here lies an important difference.  For a mandatory evacuation with a hurricane, if you have not cleared out, you are on your own.  You just have to ride out the storm.    You have missed the Early Warning.  But why not consider a late warning system.  For those people who made poor decisions, or did not have the resources to evacuate in time.  Why not help them up until it is too dangerous to help (3-6 hours).  You might say why?  Because we have the capacity to do so.  Consider that you have literally minutes before a tornado can impact your area and people have to adapt and take shelter quickly.    The same is true in flash flooding where I am certain, emergency teams often manage to pull people from flooded cars and homes.

A late warning system would be a rapid reaction system where if conditions changed relative to the forecast (example a storm landfall was different then originally thought, or the system intensified more than expected before landfall), actions could be taken to save life.  The teams that made up those involved in late warning system would be those specifically trained (boats, Humvees (even with poor gas mileage), and Sat phones, with EMS qualified team members for medical treatment) to get to those who are trapped before it is too late.   Assuming that the 911 system was intact, people could call the late warning center for help.  Even if the team could not rescue them, at least their locations would be known.  With the current cell phone GPS technology this should not be a problem so that after the storm, rescue teams could find those who could not evacuate.


But all of this assumes that you care about saving everyone, no matter what age, race, gender, economic status.   It assumes that you make no judgement on why a person is in need of help in the late warning system, but only that you have to save them.   Like it or not, the population at risk of natural hazards is increasing and as Hurricane Rita and Katrina taught us, everyone cannot get out even under ideal conditions. 


As soon to be Hurricane Issac (an eye is forming in the shortwave IR)  bears down on NOLA, I hope that the leaders will do everything in their power to keep the people safe.  For those who survived Katrina ... Keep the faith but be ready to move if your heart tell you to.

2345 UTC (845) Shortwave image showing the formation of a possible eye near 27N, 86.4W

Lets all hope that the Levee system holds, and that the city does not flood and let us not forget Katrina victims from 7 years ago.   Their lives were not in vain but to educate the rest of us.