Swing and a Miss. When Disaster DOESN'T Strike

 Throughout the early part of the week of Monday 04/11/2022, the threat of severe weather was predicted for my area.. We started getting notifications though our CERT communication channels and through all of our early-warning weather apps that on Wednesday the 13th we were under a slight then enhanced chance of major weather including high winds, flood-capable rains, and a good chance of tornados. With an air of excitement and disaster-lust I went into full preparedness mode, charging batteries and even moving some critical electronics to our basement. Packs were checked and my CERT team notified of my schedule in case of deployment needs. 

Wednesday the 13th arrived with the timing of the severe weather being around the 1700 hour...and then at 0900 I received a text saying something to the effect that the severe weather chance had been down graded. The front powering the storms was 1.Farther south than anticipated and 2.Moving much faster than expected. A good friend of mine used to call this type of situation "Apocalypse Not". The weather petered out to nothing more than a few rain showers and we observed only a single lightening flash with no discernable thunder at that.

Suffice it to say it can be very frustrating and discouraging when you prepare for an event and it doesn't pan out. Time, money, and effort are put into the preparedness and it feels like all such things are wasted when there is not so much as a good thunderstorm. The feeling is contradictory in nature; on one hand we're waiting for, expecting, maybe even (disturbingly) looking forward to a severe, disruptive event, while on the other hand no one really wishes destruction of property or, more-so-still, loss of life. Based on those factors we should be happy and relieved if an anticipated disaster fails to manifest, but the emotional response is disappointment that at times can lead to some dangerous ways of thinking.

Most commonly when emergency management and weather services notify the public of impending events that do not occur, it erodes trust in those services in the whole Boy Who Cried Wolf mentality. The next time severe weather threatens, those same people won't take watches or even warnings as seriously as they should. That's a tough row to hoe, and steps typically need to be taken to mend that trust. In the case of the 13th, the local emergency management services actually put out an apology and an explanation of what happened to the predictive models. Communication like that helps to restore a bit of trust.

Steps should also be taken to level-set and add a dose of reality. Like I said, sometimes it just pays to remind people that a severe weather event always has the potential to take lives, damage property, and disrupt routines for days, weeks, even months. People should be grateful if weather tones down to be softer than expected. As the saying in finance goes, "past performance is not an indicator of future results."