You save your hype for weeks like this

The perpetual competition for oxygen hurts everyone during weeks like this

I published a post yesterday afternoon over at The Eyewall, originally conceived to be a hurricane site. I believe it has value year-round in today’s world, but determining what cadence to keep up during the offseason is tough. Whatever the case, that was two days in a row. Today made three. I posted Sunday about the upcoming flood risk, as well as a recap of flooding in the Rio Grande Valley. Yesterday’s post was meant to be kind of an intentionally foreboding one. I am deeply concerned about flooding this week and weekend in areas that get hit often by it but perhaps not typically as bad as this may be.

This is a bad, bad, bad looking rainfall forecast. (Pivotal Weather)

Today, I echoed the National Weather Service wording of “catastrophic” to describe the upcoming flood potential between Arkansas and Indiana. And it brings up a point I want to expand on: I am intentionally subdued most of the year with respect to weather specifically so I can save my ammunition for weeks like this.

In today’s post, I noted how the National Weather Service use of the term “catastrophic” is not something they just pull out of a hat randomly. When the NWS uses a word like “catastrophic,” it’s because what they see in the data has instilled enough confidence in the forecast to discuss as a team how strong to message the event. Someone wants to describe it as catastrophic, so they discuss amongst themselves whether that is reasonable. They may even have to work that up the food chain to get approval (I honestly do not know). Regardless of the specifics, it’s not a decision that one person makes and follow through on at random. It’s deliberate, measured, nuanced, discussed in full, and then approved.

When others in the field or I complain about “overhype,” we’re not doing it to be whiny; we’re doing it because this week is the reason you should not overhype every minor to moderate event. If all weather events are extreme, then no weather events are extreme. If every tornado is a monster, then no tornado is a monster. One of the comments we get a lot with our work at Space City Weather is that when we change our language to aggressively message ahead of a weather event, that’s when people know it’s actually serious. I try to employ the same concept with The Eyewall. We focus on hurricanes first, but I want to dabble more into extreme weather elsewhere for these exact reasons. Last weekend’s severe weather event? Certainly bad. But not warranting a ton of oxygen on our part. This upcoming flood event. It looks bad. Very bad. It requires the “next level” of messaging.

The majority of meteorologists out of school are not trained as communicators. This includes me. I am a decent communicator overall, but I was never formally trained at how to do it. What I know, I’ve learned over the years through experience, trial and error, successes, and busts. But if I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a million times. Word choice matters. Language matters. Using a word like catastrophic is not something you resort to because you see a model showing 10 inches of rain forecast 8 days out. You make a choice to use that word. You deliberately come to a conclusion to use that word. You don’t want people to say, “Oh, here they go again. They always say that.” You want them to say “Wow, s/he is using some pretty intense words there. This must be worse than usual.” And then you just hope they hear you and take action.

These are the weeks that drive my passion for good weather and science communication. You can apply this in almost any other scientific field in other scenarios too. It’s easy to say “it’s not our fault if people don’t listen.” That’s true beyond a point. But you can probably prevent more people from crossing that line to ignorance if you manage the less exciting stuff with an eye on facts and information rather than striving for engagement.