Google Gemini summary of today’s severe weather risk

 The Storm Prediction Center always has meaty technical discussions of severe weather risk, and today’s “high risk” is no different. If you want the meteorological details, they are here: https://www.spc.noaa.gov/products/outlook/archive/2025/day1otlk_20250402_1200.html

I tasked Google Gemini to create a plain language summary of their discussion. Here it is:

“Okay, buckle up. This forecast is serious, and it's calling for a potentially dangerous day of severe weather. Here's the breakdown:

The Big, Scary Picture:

• Tornado Outbreak: We're expecting a significant tornado outbreak, especially in the Mid-South and lower Mississippi Valley. This means multiple tornadoes, and some of them could be very strong (EF3 or higher).
• Widespread Danger: A large area, from North Texas all the way northeast to the southern Great Lakes, is at risk for tornadoes, damaging winds, and large hail.
• High Risk Area: The most dangerous area, where the strongest tornadoes are most likely, is the lower Mississippi Valley and Mid-South.

What's Causing This?

• A very strong upper-level storm system (a "trough" with a powerful "jet streak") is moving across the Midwest.
• This is creating a lot of wind shear (changes in wind speed and direction), which is crucial for tornado formation.
• A strong "low-level jet" is pumping warm, moist air northward, providing fuel for the storms..
• A cold front is moving southeast, and then stalling, and becoming a warm front, adding to the atmospheric complexity, and thus the risk.

The Details:

• Ongoing Storms: Storms are already happening this morning, and they're bringing the risk of large hail, damaging winds, and some tornadoes.
• Afternoon Danger: The biggest threat will come in the afternoon and evening.
  • Supercell thunderstorms (the most dangerous type) are expected to develop.
  • These storms will have the potential to produce multiple strong tornadoes, including some very powerful ones.
  • Large hail and damaging winds are also likely.
• Specific Areas:
  • Lower Mississippi Valley and Mid-South (Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee, Kentucky, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana): This is the area with the highest tornado risk.
  • Southern Plains (Texas, Oklahoma): Large to very large hail is the primary threat here, especially later tonight.
  • Southern Great Lakes: There's a risk of severe storms here too, but the tornado threat is a bit less certain.
• Technical Jargon Simplified:
  • EF3+ Tornado: A very strong tornado with significant damage.
  • Trough/Jet Streak: A powerful upper-level storm system.
  • Low-Level Jet: A strong wind current near the ground that brings in warm, moist air.
  • Supercells: Rotating thunderstorms that can produce tornadoes, large hail, and damaging winds.
  • Wind Shear: Changes in wind speed and direction, which can cause storms to rotate.
  • Instability: A condition where warm, moist air rises, creating thunderstorms.
  • SRH (Storm Relative Helicity): A measure of the potential for rotating storms.
  • MUCAPE (Mixed-Layer CAPE): A measure of the amount of energy available for thunderstorms.
  • "Lapse rates" are how quickly the temperature decreases with height.
  • "Convection" means thunderstorms.
  • "Hodographs" are a way to visualize wind shear.
  • "Capping" is a layer of stable air preventing storms from forming.
  • "Devolution" means changing form, in this case storms changing form.
  • "Nebulous" means unclear or vague.
  • "Ejecting upper trough" means the upper level low is moving away.
  • "Updraft" is the rising air in a thunderstorm.
  • "Bowing clusters" are lines of storms that bow outward, indicating strong winds.
• Key Takeaway: This is a dangerous situation. If you live in the affected areas, take these warnings seriously. Be prepared to take shelter, and stay tuned to local weather reports.

In short, this forecast is warning of a high likelyhood of very dangerous tornadoes.”

So old and neglected...

There is so, so, so much old content below here. If you're lurking through it, trying to find something good to gossip about or "gotcha" me on, think about how your ideas or views might have evolved in 10+ years. I'll bet you've kept some of your views since then, sure, but I'll also bet that have abandoned several. Or tried new things since then that either did or didn't work.

Just keep that in mind as you're browsing someone's thoughts from ("literally") over a decade ago.

movin' and shakin'

The blog is moving.

Given Google's new censorship rules for Blogger, I'll no longer be hosting here.  I have no intention of posting adult images ;-) ; it's just the principle of the thing.  I'll leave this page up for the foreseeable future, and crosslink both blogs, but here's all you really need: http://codykirkpatrick.com/blog/.  The RSS feed is built-in; just add that link to your favorite reader.  See you there!

Multiple choice instructions

Yeah, this is probably not the best set of instructions I've ever seen...

http://cheezburger.com/8449095680/everything-about-this-is-wrong

Why I don't give extra credit

Since the title explains itself, I can dive right into the reasons.  There's not always a need for a long, drawn-out introduction!

1. I'm a meteorologist, and we don't do that.

Put very simply, we don't get a chance to "make up" for a bad forecast.  We can only learn from our mistakes, move on, and do better the next time.  It's illogical to think that a forecaster's mistakes -- no matter if they are major or minor -- can somehow be washed off his record by doing bonus work.

An example of minor mistakes: the forecaster who continually has a warm bias to his temperatures.  Once you realize what you've done wrong, fix it!  Explaining to people why you made the mistake is important, yes -- but does not absolve the mistake.  (See #2 below for more on this.)

A major mistake: missed forecasts can have fatal results.  In a recent 5-year period, 17 tornado fatalities occurred without a tornado warning being issued (Brotzge and Erickson 2009).  There is no apology great enough to overcome this one.  I know this all sounds painfully harsh and trite to those who aren't as familiar with the forecast process.  But put simply, in our field these are the lessons we face every day.  I'm a firm believer that students should experience science as science is practiced, and a no-extra-credit policy is a clear application of that principle.

2. My ideas of sound pedagogy don't support that model.

Four reasons instructors may offer extra credit are given in this Faculty Focus blog post from 2011.  None of them convince me.

• "It reduces student anxiety and builds confidence."

This is the only one that holds some water to me.  But this is exactly what practice assignments and homeworks should be designed to do, right?  Build confidence so that students can perform well on major assessments?  Aren't we already supposed to be designing our courses to that students are well-prepared for exams?  I don't understand how something like attending an evening seminar about a peripheral topic (a classic extra credit idea) builds confidence.

• "If learning is the goal and students haven't learned important content, extra credit offers a second chance to master the material."
• "Not all students 'get it' the first time."

Teachers of college writing know that revision is a key to students improving their writing skills.  In the hard sciences we might use the word practice, especially in meteorology where forecast opportunities are fleeting and revisions to previous work aren't possible.  I don't remember but I'm pretty sure my first few forecasts as an undergraduate were awful, and that they improved with repeated practice (to the somewhat less-awful state they're in now!).  Our assignments and courses should be arranged to give students multiple opportunities to master difficult content before a major assessment takes place.  When we don't provide this structure, we are less effective teachers.

• "Students are motivated to do it, so why not capitalize on this motivation by creating a robust learning opportunity."

It's a bit cynical but to me the implication here is that students aren't motivated for ordinary classwork.  I certainly hope that's not the case!  Every learning opportunity should be robust and motivational.  If it's not, it doesn't belong in our classroom.  Why should we relegate our most creative assignments for extra credit opportunities that may get done by only a handful of students?

One thing to point out is that I differentiate between large, formal "extra credit" assignments and the rare "bonus" questions that occur on a quiz or an exam: Michael Leddy offers a nice example and his take here.  Most often, I use those to help me scale exam or course grades to better align with student expectations (I'll rant about the insistence of a 90-80-70 letter-grade cutoff some other time).  But my students can attest that I do this about once per course and is part of an assessment that already exists.  My bonus questions are always opt-out (right there on the page for you to try), not opt-in (available only if you ask or by doing something else external to class).  I'll avoid saying much about the ethical issues of opt-in extra credit, too, beyond saying that they terrify me.  Is the extra work only available to students who ask?  Are they allowed to tell their peers?  What if someone can't attend that special guest speaker's talk because of their job or family?

So there you have it.  Let's make our coursework compelling the first time 'round, and let's create assignments that are not busy work but help students learn what we truly want them to do.  That way, they get it right when the grades are on the line.

Sirens, Tornado Warnings, and Messaging

TL;DR version: Sirens go off if any part of the county is put under a warning, even if the risk is nowhere near your part of the county. YOU may not even be at risk. 

Last night in Bloomington was a textbook case of how complicated the "weather warning business" really is. Here's a rundown of the most important issues.

Warnings. Since 2007, the National Weather Service has issued tornado warnings not by county but by risk area--it's called a "polygon" because, well, it looks like one:

The area in that pink box is the area the experts at NWS in Indianapolis placed under a tornado warning, for the storm that's also in the box (this is a pretty standard weather radar image that you'd see on tv, with red indicating heavy rain and hail and the small green triangle also an indicator of hail). This image is of the first tornado warning from last night. Notice how this box does not include any part of downtown Bloomington, or the heart of the IU campus (red dot), or even my house (yellow plus).  This polygon is the box I use to make my own safety decisions.  Any weather app that's worth its salt will plot these polygons. Look at that image again. For the entire time the warning was in effect, NWS predicted that the storm would remain in that box (and it did). There is no reason to panic or to take shelter if you're not in the path of the storm--which is what the box shows for this warning.

As the NWS office in Birmingham, Alabama says:  "It is our goal that only those inside the polygon should take action."

Sirens.  Many siren systems in the US are still sounded by county. That means that no matter how small the sliver of your county, if any part of the county is placed under a tornado warning, the sirens will go off everywhere. This is true in Monroe County--it happened twice last night. So the takeaway messages are:

1. Sirens do NOT always imply that your location is in danger. They imply that some PART of your county is in danger. The storm may stay 10, 20, or even 30 miles away from you.
2. Sirens are sounded by a county employee (at least here). No one on the IU campus, to my knowledge, has any control over the sirens. None.

By the way, the sirens went off twice in Bloomington last night. The second time was for a storm that was forecast to clip the northeastern part of Monroe County.  Here's the radar and tornado warning polygon for the second one:

Again, no risk for Bloomington.  Zero, zilch, nada.

Confusion. Last night got a little squirrely because IU sent messages telling everyone to seek shelter for the first warning, but for the second warning, some messages told people that campus was not being impacted. For once, the polygon seemed to matter! This should happen in every event. This should become the standard and not the exception. (For the record, it's the first time in my 3 years of living here that I've seen this happen.)

Here's what we absolutely cannot do. Send this email:

And then send this tweet:

This is a messaging and safety nightmare. Why would I "take cover" for something that "does not impact" me? Which one of these messages should people listen to, if either one? Just as mixed messages from faculty to students lead to protests and grade changes, mixed weather information leads to fatalities. This storm was of absolutely no risk to Bloomington, but the message implied it was. Until it wasn't.

My personal view is that we all have to make our own safety decisions. I realize that if you live in a residence hall, or work at a big-box store, you may be required to follow someone else's instructions. Based on the above, I'm honestly not sure what those instructions would have been. With that in mind, I've always believed and said that you and you alone are responsible for your safety. Make the decisions you need to make and do what you have to do, whatever that may be. That goes both for both seeking shelter and coming out from shelter so you can get on with your life.

Why meteorologists shouldn't "teach to the middle"

Once every decade, we take the temperatures of the last 30 years, average them together, and refer to this as the "normal" temperatures for a location.  For example, when you see on the nightly weather report that the "normal high for today is 84 degrees," that's simply the average of all the highs for that day from 1981 to 2010.

The number 84 is an average.  Very few, if any, days in the record will actually have had a high temperature of exactly 84!

The same goes for our students.  In any given class, the number of "average" students, perfectly in the middle of the distribution, will be quite small.[Footnote 1]  My argument is this: if we teach to the middle, we alienate and bore our upper tier of students (who are our future colleagues) and at the same time work over the heads of weaker ones who may need the most help.  We likely reach those few students who are truly in the middle of the distribution, but overall to me this is a lose-win-lose situation.  Losing two battles every day is not how I want to spend my career.  Furthermore, the standard we "set by teaching to the middle is a standard of mediocrity."  It's okay to be average, kids.  Everyone gets a ribbon.

What, then, is the answer?  Is there one?  How can we possibly differentiate learning when faced with 100 students, or even 40 or 50?  Facilitating a classroom that promotes learning already requires lots of work, and most academics I know don't believe they have any additional time to devote to it.  Here are some rough ideas, certainly a non-exhaustive list but maybe a starting point at least.

1. Variety in course assignments.  Some of our students will be math stars, while others are incredible artists who struggle mightily with college algebra.  Offering different types of work -- calculations, concept mapping, figure interpretation, opinion essays, etc. -- allows all students to take part.  I like to believe everyone is good at something.

2. Variety in in-class activities.  I pray that the days of lecturing for an hour a day three days a week are dying (an albeit gruesomely slow death, but still dying).  And reading text on slides as they appear on the screen doesn't teach to anyone, let alone the middle.  In-class activities and discussions can be like #1 above and also varied in level: a mixture of easy concepts, medium concepts, and the occasional mind-bender sets up a class that everyone can get something out of.  Structured group and team-based activities, discussions, or even quizzes (yes, group quizzes!) help also.

3. Structure in assignments and activities.  "You need structure. And discipline!"  In a room of professionals, we could get away with the activity 'hey let's pull up today's 500-mb map and just talk about it for awhile.'  However, this will likely fall flat in a room of mixed majors or gen-ed students.  At least when I've tried it, it has.  Even off-the-cuff activities need structure and scaffolding (take small steps: first let's find the ridges and troughs, and the vorticity, and the temperature advection, and then ask where are the likely surface features, etc.).


The bottom line here is that we have to find ways to involve everyone (or, realistically, as many people as possible) in the room in the learning process.  If "teach to the ____" is just code for "at what level do I pitch my lectures?" the problem goes much deeper.  To me, the room is more about what learning will be taking place, rather than what teaching will be taking place.

We'd be hard-pressed to find a string of perfectly "average" weather days, instead finding runs of hot and cold which both have their own fun and own beauty.  And each of our classes is made up of much more than a blob of "average" students who are the only ones to deserve our attention.  A classroom includes a spectrum of abilities, and everyone learn something when courses are thoughtfully organized for more than just what we believe the "average" student is capable of doing.


Footnote 1:  Some readers will want to start talking about normal distributions at this point.  I ask, are the students that are at +1σ and -1σ at the same skill level?  What's really the "average" group, then?  +0.5σ to -0.5σ?  That's now less than 50% of your class.  The bounds get smaller and smaller...