Wednesday, June 25, 2008

County Flood Warning?

Did I miss a class in understanding government jargon?

On the McHenry County website (co.mchenry.il.us) this morning is the following Flood Announcement.

"Updated June 24, 8:40am POTENTIALLY HEAVY RAINFALL IS POSSIBLE WEDNESDAY NIGHT THROUGH THURSDAY MORNING THUNDERSTORMS WITH THE POTENTIAL FOR TRAINING (sic) ACROSS THE SAME LOCATIONS OVER AND OVER EXISTS.. ALL LIVING IN FLOOD PRONE LOCATIONS ACROSS NORTHERN PORTIONS OF THE OUTLOOK AREA ARE URGED TO MONITOR LATER FORECASTS FOR UPDATES ON ANY POSSIBLE WATCHES AND WARNINGS."

The gist of it is pretty clear, but just exactly what does "training" mean?

And "over and over"? Who writes this stuff? Are we paying someone thousands of dollars each year who didn't even graduate from high school?

Hello? Any hydrologists or weathermen out there who can explain this?

Did someone just copy-and-paste portions of a National Weather Service bulletin and not bother to read it before publishing it on the County website? Come on, folks. We can do better than that! It's not like there was a rush to post it, since the warning is for a time period 12 hours from now.

© 2008 GUS PHILPOTT

1 comment:

Dave Labuz said...

Hi Gus -

I think it's correct. I believe what is meant is a line of storms comes through like a freight train on the tracks.

A boundary gets stalled out, the subsequent storms can be rather compact, and they continue to run up along this stalled boundary line for hours on end, with little rain or storms happening either to the north or south at all.

DBTR