‘EVERY SECOND COUNTS’
Meteorologists laud tech for notifications
As a tornado ripped through Woodstock, Conn., and another barreled through Webster and Dudley on Saturday morning, Glenn Field headed there to get an up-close look at the damage left behind.
Trees were split and had fallen on homes. The giant metal awning over a gas station had been twisted. Window screens in a building blew outward. Bark was ripped right off trees. One person suffered minor injuries.
“You hate to see the damage but feel good that we got the warning out,” said Field, the warning coordination meteorologist for the National Weather Service in Norton.
Everybody he and his team talked to, Field said, had heard the warning.
The local National Weather Service had warned people of the twisters by sending out wireless emergency alerts to cellphones. Woodstock residents got a one-minute warning and Webster and Dudley got a 13-minute warning.
A mother in Woodstock told Field she heard the alert on her cellphone and was able to calmly coax her young daughter into the basement with toys before the tornado struck. There was no damage to her house but a big oak tree was torn in half around the corner.
“Every second counts,” Field told me yesterday. “People have to have time to decide what to do. People need time to make decisions.”
In March, the National Weather Service moved from Taunton to a new building in Norton. The 12,000-square-foot building has a big “situational awareness display” of screens that allows weather watchers to monitor Doppler radar, TV news stations and webcam video of areas throughout southern New England.
There are big windows so they can see the weather outside, unlike the old spot that had small windows, Field said. The building sits near the giant Doppler radar tower and the staff includes 10 forecasters, monitoring weather around-the-clock.
Joe DelliCarpini, the science and operations officer, was keeping a close eye on the computerized Doppler radar Saturday morning. New technology allows meteorologists to get images of developing tornadoes every minute instead of every four minutes.
“Having the one-minute imagery was crucial,” DelliCarpini said. “We were able to see the circulation getting tighter and getting stronger and at that point we said, ‘OK, we’ve got to go with a tornado warning.’ ”
Sending out tornado, flash flooding and severe storm warnings is the most important thing they do, DelliCarpini said.
“You’re thinking people as you’re looking at the radar,” Field added.
In 2013, a tornado tore the roof off the Sports World bubble dome in East Windsor, Conn. It was a year after the launch of wireless emergency alerts on cellphones. Field issued the tornado warning.
“It was a small tornado and with those you don’t get much lead time, if at all,” Field said. “We had two minutes before the tornado hit that sports complex.”
There were 29 children and five supervisors inside, Field recalled.
“Everybody’s cellphones went off,” Field said. “They got the kids to a reinforced shelter with one minute to spare. That could have been a disaster. Wireless emergency alerts saved their lives.”