To begin with, I will introduce myself. Many of you already know who I am, however some do not. My name is Josh Adams. I have been into weather since age five or six, when I would watch the Weather Channel for hours a day. This was not exactly normal, but I loved seeing all of the different maps and of course I loved watching them forecast winter storms or severe weather when my area (Allentown, PA at the time), was going to be hit. That continued for several years until I was 11. This is when I first got on a computer, jumping right into learning about meteorology. I along with several other people four or five years older than me would talk about weather as a group nearly everyday. There was also a weather enthusiast in his 40s about, who knew quite a lot about meteorology. That eventually came to an end in 2013 after “a few things were found out,” to put it lightly. Either way, I learned lots about meteorology.

        In the fall of 2013, I joined a well known forecasting group in SCPA, “S&S Storm Chasing.” At that point they were still extremely small, and I helped them with many forecasts and made the majority of their graphics. I was with them for nearly two years, into 2015. Furthermore, once again throughout those two years I continued to study meteorology. In Fall 2015, I decided to move back to my small page “Northeast Weather Action,” and try to see where that could go. Of course during the way, I changed its named to “Pennsylvania Weather Action.” Now, I’m a junior in high school and am looking forward to hopefully study at Penn State in a few years, where of course my goal is to graduate with a degree in meteorology.

        Now let’s get into what happened with the forecasts leading up to yesterday’s severe storms. This is not an article where we explain the entire meteorological thought process, because the overwhelming majority of you guys, our followers, would not understand a single word. To sum it all up, originally models were indicating a relatively rare setup. This is why we were sounding the alarms early regarding the possibility of a significant severe thunderstorm event. The first map/key I admit was slightly too overboard. The key was not well enough thought out and was put together a while ago. It was also confused with the SPC. Even though in the Storm Prediction Center’s discussion they were stating the possibility of a significant severe weather event with supercell thunderstorms from four to five days out, which was practically what we were stating here. Why did we use a different key and our own maps instead of the SPC? I, myself, didn’t feel that the Storm Prediction Center’s key should be used nation-wide. Here’s what I did with the new key. Since we in Pennsylvania very, very rarely (once in a decade) see a threat higher than moderate from the SPC, I made the severe thunderstorm percentage from the SPC’s moderate category, the severe thunderstorm percentage of my key’s highest category. Also, think about this. If Pennsylvania was labeled under a moderate risk by the SPC, what would you think? Similarly in the winter when you hear that the area will see a moderate snowfall event, you think nothing big, nothing that you seriously need to prepare for. But in this case when the Storm Prediction Center issues a moderate risk, they are indicating that strong tornadoes, widespread damaging winds, and destructive hail larger than golf balls area are likely across the area. Does that sound like a moderate threat for us, not accustomed to even seeing weak tornadoes here in PA? Not at all. All of this is why I made the key customized for Pennsylvania. But in the end, people will always have problems with it, never understanding my reasoning. So for this reason I’m not going to use my key/maps anymore and I will just be posting the Storm Prediction Center. However, I’ll undoubtedly be sure to quote different sections of their discussions. If you read this from beginning to end, I appreciate it very much!

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