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Interview With Dan McCarthy

Aired May 05, 2003 - 13:55   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: We'll bring in an expert. Dan McCarthy with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Storm Prediction Center. And I'm going to ask you right on the air because I forgot to bring this over to the other location -- Brad, would you go get that weather radio on top of the big board screen there. I want to talk to him about weather radios in just a moment.
But Dan, you just heard Jacqui talk about how you differentiate between multiple funnel clouds. First of all, does that matter much? Do you spend a lot of time trying to figure out if 84 sightings equate to 84 funnels or does that not matter that much?

DAN MCCARTHY, NOAA STORM PREDICTION CENTER: Well, those 84 reports that we have received are from local storm reports, either from the National Weather Forecast Office, which received them from spotters, or phone calls to law enforcement agencies by the general public.

We really won't know what the exact number of tornadoes have occurred until we get a storm survey team out there, and we are right now in the process of sending storm surveys out to assess the damage as well as the track of the tornadoes. And they'll match that up with Doppler radar images that we have saved on file for the last day or so.

O'BRIEN: These pictures are just amazing. How good are we collectively at predicting these sort of events, Dan? You know, we know a lot about -- I mean, hurricane prediction is quite a science. It seems, my sense of it is, that it's harder to predict tornadoes. You can predict the conditions, but very difficult because of their nature to predict locations.

MCCARTHY: Well, to predict these kind of conditions for the trained meteorologists is very, very obvious. For this particular case, we had a very unstable air mass out of ahead of a developing storm system over the Central Plains and a very potent dry line. In other words, that delineates between very moist air and very warm, dry air. And when you get those kind of conditions and you get a jetstream that is moving right into that area, that is exactly what we're looking for in environmental conditions that can produce a family or a tornado outbreak like we had yesterday.

JACQUI JERAS, CNN METEOROLOGIST: And Dan, I have to say, hats off to the SPC for the prediction of this one two, three days ahead of time. We did expect that this was going to be a very strong outbreak, you issued a high risk area earlier in the day. O'BRIEN: All right, I'll tell you, real quickly, because we are running out of time. I want to get this one point across, if we could, Dan. I've got one of these same (ph) radios here. I'm going to play it here for just a second.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Southwest winds 15 to 20 miles an hour.

O'BRIEN: Basic weather radio. You probably heard that before. The key here is if you put one of these in, it can drive you nuts, because it will give you weather reports for, you know, (UNINTELLIGIBLE) county.

JERAS: Right, every county within your area, right.

O'BRIEN: But these new radios, Dan, are improved, aren't they? Tell me what they do for you, and why people should have them, particularly in tornado-prone areas?

MCCARTHY: Well, their key, especially in tornado-prone areas, like, for example, in Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas and Missouri, they're very, very important for un-prone areas, places that don't experience tornadoes relatively every year, places like the Ohio Valley, Tennessee Valley or even parts of the Southeast.

These radios you can program your county, your particular county by using the fifs (ph) code or the same code for those particular weather radios. You can also program for the type of watch or warning that you want to receive.

Now, granted we do test those once a week and things like that, but that is very important to make sure that system works.

What's also important is not only do you have to or have the opportunity to program the county that you're in, but also to program the counties to your west, because that will give you advanced warnings. Odds are, when the warning is issued for the county to your west, your county will be next. And that is very important. It's also very important that you are awaken at midnight or two in the morning.

If you remember, a couple of years ago, back on February 14, Camilla (ph), Georgia. We could have saved a lot of lives with those weather radios.

The other aspect is, they are not only powered electronically, but they have a battery backup. So if you lose power, those radios will still go off.

O'BRIEN: You know, for a small amount of money, to have that peace of mind, and this is just one of the brands that are out there. There are plenty of people that make these things. We invite you to check out that kind of thing. It's just one more piece of protection. It's like getting a smoke detector for your house.

JERAS: Right, and it's really worth the extra money to get the ones that you can program for your county, because like you said, over and over, you keep hearing those warnings go off, and it's almost like crying wolf.

O'BRIEN: All right. Thank you very much, Dan McCarthy, with NOAA.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com







Aired May 5, 2003 - 13:55   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: We'll bring in an expert. Dan McCarthy with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Storm Prediction Center. And I'm going to ask you right on the air because I forgot to bring this over to the other location -- Brad, would you go get that weather radio on top of the big board screen there. I want to talk to him about weather radios in just a moment.
But Dan, you just heard Jacqui talk about how you differentiate between multiple funnel clouds. First of all, does that matter much? Do you spend a lot of time trying to figure out if 84 sightings equate to 84 funnels or does that not matter that much?

DAN MCCARTHY, NOAA STORM PREDICTION CENTER: Well, those 84 reports that we have received are from local storm reports, either from the National Weather Forecast Office, which received them from spotters, or phone calls to law enforcement agencies by the general public.

We really won't know what the exact number of tornadoes have occurred until we get a storm survey team out there, and we are right now in the process of sending storm surveys out to assess the damage as well as the track of the tornadoes. And they'll match that up with Doppler radar images that we have saved on file for the last day or so.

O'BRIEN: These pictures are just amazing. How good are we collectively at predicting these sort of events, Dan? You know, we know a lot about -- I mean, hurricane prediction is quite a science. It seems, my sense of it is, that it's harder to predict tornadoes. You can predict the conditions, but very difficult because of their nature to predict locations.

MCCARTHY: Well, to predict these kind of conditions for the trained meteorologists is very, very obvious. For this particular case, we had a very unstable air mass out of ahead of a developing storm system over the Central Plains and a very potent dry line. In other words, that delineates between very moist air and very warm, dry air. And when you get those kind of conditions and you get a jetstream that is moving right into that area, that is exactly what we're looking for in environmental conditions that can produce a family or a tornado outbreak like we had yesterday.

JACQUI JERAS, CNN METEOROLOGIST: And Dan, I have to say, hats off to the SPC for the prediction of this one two, three days ahead of time. We did expect that this was going to be a very strong outbreak, you issued a high risk area earlier in the day. O'BRIEN: All right, I'll tell you, real quickly, because we are running out of time. I want to get this one point across, if we could, Dan. I've got one of these same (ph) radios here. I'm going to play it here for just a second.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Southwest winds 15 to 20 miles an hour.

O'BRIEN: Basic weather radio. You probably heard that before. The key here is if you put one of these in, it can drive you nuts, because it will give you weather reports for, you know, (UNINTELLIGIBLE) county.

JERAS: Right, every county within your area, right.

O'BRIEN: But these new radios, Dan, are improved, aren't they? Tell me what they do for you, and why people should have them, particularly in tornado-prone areas?

MCCARTHY: Well, their key, especially in tornado-prone areas, like, for example, in Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas and Missouri, they're very, very important for un-prone areas, places that don't experience tornadoes relatively every year, places like the Ohio Valley, Tennessee Valley or even parts of the Southeast.

These radios you can program your county, your particular county by using the fifs (ph) code or the same code for those particular weather radios. You can also program for the type of watch or warning that you want to receive.

Now, granted we do test those once a week and things like that, but that is very important to make sure that system works.

What's also important is not only do you have to or have the opportunity to program the county that you're in, but also to program the counties to your west, because that will give you advanced warnings. Odds are, when the warning is issued for the county to your west, your county will be next. And that is very important. It's also very important that you are awaken at midnight or two in the morning.

If you remember, a couple of years ago, back on February 14, Camilla (ph), Georgia. We could have saved a lot of lives with those weather radios.

The other aspect is, they are not only powered electronically, but they have a battery backup. So if you lose power, those radios will still go off.

O'BRIEN: You know, for a small amount of money, to have that peace of mind, and this is just one of the brands that are out there. There are plenty of people that make these things. We invite you to check out that kind of thing. It's just one more piece of protection. It's like getting a smoke detector for your house.

JERAS: Right, and it's really worth the extra money to get the ones that you can program for your county, because like you said, over and over, you keep hearing those warnings go off, and it's almost like crying wolf.

O'BRIEN: All right. Thank you very much, Dan McCarthy, with NOAA.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com