The Challenge of Severe Weather Readiness
How to Get Left of Bang from Severe Weather Threats
When severe weather strikes, time is of the essence. Seemingly, every day, organizational leaders and public safety professionals across the country are making critical decisions to protect the people in their communities, their businesses, their school districts, and so many other types of organizations during weather events.
Yet, making these decisions isn't always easy or straightforward as each event is unique.
Will the storm pass directly overhead or be a near miss? Will the storm weaken or strengthen as it approaches? Will the rain or snow merely slow down the evening commute, or will it create dangerous conditions? Should you close your facilities early? Should you shelter in place? Should you continue with business as usual?
When should you start communicating with your organizational leaders, employees, and external stakeholders? When should you start pre-positioning your response resources or modifying your operations?
The consequences of getting these decisions wrong—either by acting unnecessarily or not acting quickly enough—are serious. There are financial impacts when operations are shut down unnecessarily. There are disruptions to the lives of the people in your community. There is a loss of trust from customers, employees, and partners.
The risk of severe weather and the demands on organizations to handle these events competently is not going anywhere. In fact, many severe weather events are beginning to intensify more quickly than in the past, meaning that the time available for decision-makers to recognize oncoming threats and take proactive measures is getting compressed.
The Weather-Focused Series of Articles
The good news is that there are opportunities for organizations to more consistently and more confidently get ahead of these risks. In the coming weeks, I’ll be publishing articles and resources designed to improve how you prepare to activate your organization's severe weather response plans.
To do this, I have teamed up with meteorologists from BAM Weather to help you identify the factors and indicators that should alert you to dangerous conditions and a potential need to take action.
These articles are meant to fill the gap between attending an "introduction to weather" seminar and becoming a professional meteorologist. They won’t delve deeply into why certain weather patterns exist. Instead, they acknowledge that bad weather occurs and helps you determine just how negative and impactful the event is going to be. Once these impacts are understood, you can take action more confidently and decisively.
At the end of the day, these articles are about decision-making.
I remember a conversation I had with a public safety leader years ago who recently had a large wildfire in his community. With a newly formed burn scar, it wouldn't take much rain to cause mudslides and debris flows, and there would be people and property immediately at risk when rain forecasts exceeded different thresholds.
This fire chief needed every available minute to protect his community should they need to evacuate, but he also needed the ability to understand the forecasts and warnings he was receiving. He needed the ability to “ground truth” the forecasts he was receiving with direct observation.
Without that understanding, he would be limited in his ability to communicate risks to residents and develop appropriate response plans. What he needed, and what ultimately helped him, was an understanding of the pre-event indicators that could enable him to make public safety decisions confidently.
These articles are the first step in understanding and using meteorology to get ahead of the storm. They focus on the immediate problems posed by severe weather and consider the capabilities organizations need to prepare today if they are going to respond well to disasters tomorrow.
Who the articles are for, and where to learn more
These articles was designed for organizational leaders and public safety professionals who care about their readiness for severe weather events. This includes anyone who is responsible for preparing their organization for disasters, who receives weather alerts, and who thinks about the risks their organization faces both today and in the future.
This group includes emergency managers, police and fire chiefs, risk managers, school district superintendents and principals, business professionals responsible for the continuity of their critical operations, nonprofit executive directors, security directors, facilities managers, and many more.
To see other articles this series, click here (bottom of the page).