The Weather Notebook: Cellular Weather Warnings

Cellular Weather Warnings
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Dave Thurlow, Host

Manhattan, Kansas May 31, 1949 - NOAA Photo Collection
When there is a threat of a tornado, many people just don't happen to be watching TV or listening to the radio where they could get wind of a tornado warning. They're sometimes in their car, listening to a CD or just driving along thinking. Hi, I'm Dave Thurlow. A problem with this is that emergency weather alerts often don't get to people who are in harm's way,those driving down the road:

"We have in the U.S. a very critical shortcoming in being able to get the highly sophisticated identification work done by the NWS in identifying storm paths and tornadoes to the people that need it in a short time frame situation."

That's Douglas Weiser "The commerce department has just approved a 4 and a half billion dollars for the NWS to update its Doppler radar and its computer system which is tremendous. But if you cannot get that information to the people that need it in the time frame allowed, it's virtually useless."

Douglas Weiser is the director of the cellular emergency alert association, and he's proposing a partial solution. Over the past 4 years, Weiser has been attempting to get emergency weather notification transmitted over cellular phones.

"What that would mean in situations such as tornadoes is that those persons located in a warning box that had been issued by the NWS would receive that announcement over their handsets immediately and be advised of what the emergency is and given the TV or radio station to tune to if there was need for follow up or detail instructions."

This technology is available and is being used around the world to notify people of things like traffic congestion, but it has met some resistance here in the US, which we'll hear about tomorrow. The Weather Notebook is supported by Subaru and by the National Science Foundation.