The National Hurricane Center will begin issuing watches and warnings an additional 12 hours in advance.
Previously, tropical storm and hurricane watches were issued 36 in advance of tropical storm or hurricane conditions. Beginning May 15, the start of the East Pacific hurricane season, those watch advisories will be posted 48 hours in advance of storm or hurricane conditions.
Also, tropical storm and hurricane warnings will now be issued no earlier than 36 hours prior to storm or hurricane conditions. Previously, the requirement was for 24 hours notice.
This will be of benefit particularly for government agencies who, by most laws, cannot act as necessary until watches or warnings are issued. I don’t think it will affect civilians as much because of simple human nature; they won’t react until they feel absolutely necessary. Allowing additional time for advisories to be issued won’t make much of a difference.
This could also hurt traditional forecast lead times as well. The NHC always mentions lead times in storm preliminary reports as a way of measuring the success of a forecast by when conditions were felt in relation to when advisories were posted. The longer the forecast period, the greater the inaccuracy. And it’s easy to see occasions where a storm system may make landfall outside of the inital danger regions.
For instance, consider Hurricane Humberto, 2007. The system quickly ramped up to a category one hurricane within 16 hours before making landfall. Though tropical storm warnings were issued immediately on the first advisory, a hurricane warning wasn’t issued until two hours prior to landfall. By that account alone, the warning system failed completely.
This is by no means attacking the new policy or the NHC or anything like that. But, it must be realized that people in the path of storms know they are in the path (ever try to watch any news station when a hurricane is 1,000 miles away and not see even a mention of it???). They know a storm is out there.
Instead, focus should be made on such issues as mandatory evacuations or lawful imprisonment (such as took place in Texas last year) for failure to evacuate. Hard lines will need to be taken to save lives. Not prolonged watches and warnings.
Take what you can get, I suppose.
