TWC to Start Naming Winter Storms
By Scott Cimini on October 2, 2012, 3:26pm
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Starting this winter, The Weather Channel will be naming winter storms like they do with tropical systems during hurricane season. They just posted a list of the names they will be using this year. Do you like this idea? Do you think it will help keep people aware of severe winter weather that may affect them? The weather channel seems to think so. They say that naming these storms will do the following:
- Raise Awareness
- Make it easier to track its progress (especially in social media)
- Make a storm easier to remember and refer back to in the future
I agree that tracking a storm using the social medium of twitter will be easier to track but it also makes sense for the company who just revamped their whole website with a focus on social media.
I think that this move is very dubious. I realize that TWC is the forefront of the weather world and their website and channel are top notch, but why not wait until you have other major weather agencies on board first? They are free to do whatever they want but I think they are taking a huge risk messing with the integrity of weather reporting. If TWC could get the National Weather Service on board with this idea and only use it for *rarely powerful* storms, then maybe it can work well.
Tom Niziol at the weather channel says that they will take a very conservative approach when naming storms and only do it when there is a “moderate to strong confidence level “of a storm hitting a populated area. While that sounds great, there are still no criteria in place (that I know of) to name a storm and many factors can influence a decision to name it. The National Hurricane Center has a set of criteria that keeps all the storm reports uniform in nature. I realize winter storms are much different but I still think strict criteria should be created and analyzed before proceeding. This could open the flood gates (no pun intended) for them to name a storm during a slow season or in a situation when ratings are low or need a boost at the expense of the general public.
I am a huge fan of the weather channel and love the work that they do to inform the public everyday on the ever changing weather landscape, I just would like to see them use caution with their self admitted “ambitious” project.
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