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June 29, 2005
New Weather Service Radars Saving Lives
I had wondered how many lives a year that they thought the new system was saving. You always hear complaints from the dim witted during these kinds of upgrades that the improvements will never justify the costs. Of course these are the same people that usually aren't helped by it anyway, because they aren't aware of the world around them on regular basis, but for the rest of us these systems have been a godsend. I usually don't depend on local weather men these days, mostly because they are incompetent in my area, so I've gotten used to reading Doppler radar images for myself and making decisions about weather emergencies based on the data they provide. It's an amazing piece of technology to say the least. Oh yeah the numbers are reported to be 79 people a year saved from death and 1,050 injuries prevented per year prevented. I would like to double check their methodology to make sure they took into account population growth in the areas that they are covering compared the population before the technology was available. Normally that kind of stuff is always considered up front, but given that the research was done in red states and the luddite movement those with that political persuasion show, the numbers could be significantly higher, but are purposely suppressed to support a political agenda. Oh the warning time increase is great as well. One improvement I'd like to see is a move away from the county wide warning system and movement towards a zip code specific warning system. I don't mind a 10 or 20 mile wide warning area, but sometimes you've got a hundred mile county and the other side is in no danger at all, but they are getting warnings like they are actually in the storm's path.
Read more here.
Posted by ManDrake at June 29, 2005 9:44 PM
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