Choosing BAM Weather

Helping Organizations Get Left of Bang for Severe Weather

I'm thrilled to announce that I have joined BAM Weather as the company’s Director of Preparedness.

If you haven't heard of BAM Weather before, it is a weather technology and consulting company that helps organizations make better weather-related decisions. Besides their work with professional sports teams and leagues, local and state governments, concert venues, schools, and many other types of organizations, it is their proactive approach and commitment to helping clients stay ahead of severe weather risks that attracted me to join the team.

This move is more than just a change in jobs. BAM Weather offers a unique opportunity for me to merge my professional experiences writing Left of Bang and serving as an emergency management practitioner and consultant with my personal passion for helping organizations prepare for disasters.

Consider this.

The risks of severe weather are increasing, but the detection of dangerous conditions is nuanced.

Unfortunately, the impacts of weather-related disasters are increasing to historic levels and result in the tragic loss of life and increasingly costly damage. Learn more about billion-dollar disasters here.

But not every storm or weather-related piece of news demands attention. Depending on where you live, there is a certain amount of "bad weather" that comes with living there. Whether that is snow in the winter, thunderstorms in the late spring, hurricanes and heat in the summer and early fall, or wildfires when vegetation gets dry, there are weather-related expectations inherent to each region across the country.¹

This makes the job of meteorologists and public safety professionals pretty hard. This group is constantly trying to balance the benefits of proactive alerts and warnings about potentially bad weather against the risks of developing a reputation as a Chicken Little if severe weather predictions don’t come to fruition.  This dynamic creates a natural delay in decision-making as professionals often seek greater clarity and confidence in weather forecasts before taking action.

Compounding this reality is the challenge of storms intensifying more quickly than they have in the past (link). When delays in decision-making are combined with rapidly intensifying storms, the result is a scenario where organizations and communities have a shorter clock to first recognize that dangerous weather conditions are on the way and then take protective action. Unfortunately, should these trends continue, the number of people whose lives are impacted and irrevocably changed by severe weather events will continue to rise.

Getting ahead of severe weather requires a blend of technology AND people.

These challenges underscore the need for organizations to develop enhanced situational awareness and rapid response mechanisms to protect lives and assets when severe weather threatens their community. Effective preparation, however, goes beyond merely having situational awareness. It requires readiness to act swiftly and decisively when conditions warrant it.

Severe weather poses a unique challenge in this respect because storms change. They intensify and weaken. They speed up and slow down. They can change direction unexpectedly. As a storm approaches and the likelihood of it impacting a community change, organizations need the ability to continue to monitor the storm and to begin initiating their response plans when the situation demands it. More often than not, these two things need to happen at the same time.

BAM Weather has developed the ability to help its clients bridge this gap in two ways.

First, the Clarity Weather platform can provide automated alerts to users when weather conditions meet predefined conditions. So, even if a person isn’t actively monitoring a specific storm or potential event, the app can let a user know there is something to look at.

Second, the Clarity platform allows users to communicate directly with professional meteorologists via the app. As a storm approaches, clients can receive timely updates, ask clarifying questions, and understand the critical information needed to take protective actions while initiating their response plans.

Together, this offers a significant improvement to an organization’s situational awareness. BAM’s integration of technological and professional support acts as a "force multiplier" for organizations in emergency situations. It is a set of tools and support services that make getting left of bang a reality.

A Personal Note and Course Announcement

In my new role, I am excited to work with clients to develop and refine their severe weather response plans and training programs, conduct pre-incident exercises, and assess their performance after severe weather events occur. Our goal is to ensure that every organization is not only prepared but also resilient in the face of severe weather challenges.

If you are using weather services for your organization, either public or private options, I would love to hear about your experiences preparing for and responding to severe weather risks. If you are open to a conversation, please send me an email at patrick.vanhorne@bamwx.com so we can connect.

As I start my new role, I am also excited to announce that we will launch a free email-based course on operational meteorology in the coming weeks through this newsletter. This course will focus on the left-of-bang indicators of looming severe weather risks and is designed to help organizations recognize and respond to these threats more effectively, so stay tuned.

Together, we can advance our readiness and ensure that, when severe weather threatens, we are staying left of bang.

Thanks, as always, for reading.

1. This situation closely resembles the origins of the Combat Hunter program written about in Left of Bang, in which Marines and Soldiers learned to discern hostile intentions in a complex cultural context.