Forecasts, Floods & the Challege of Communicating Risk

Emergency managers in the Gulf Coast and East Coast states got some good news last week when the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Climate Prediction Center said the 2015 Atlantic hurricane season will “likely be below-normal.”

While the prediction of a 70 percent chance of 3 to 6 hurricanes grabbed all the headlines, it’s NOAA’s forecast of a 70 percent chance of an “above average” Eastern Pacific hurricane season that piqued my interest. Statistically speaking, that translates into a 70 percent chance of 15 to 22 named storms, and 7 to 12 hurricanes, including 5 to 8 major hurricanes. The Eastern Pacific is circumscribed by NOAA as the region of the Pacific east of 140ºW north of the equator (see the National Hurricane Center website for updated storm outlooks).

Satellite photo of Hurricane Norbert (source: NASA)

When you think of hurricanes, you don’t think of Arizona. Wildfires yes, but not hurricanes. And yet tropical storms and hurricanes from the Eastern Pacific have had serious impacts on the state. Last September, remnants of Hurricane Norbert unleashed record rainfall and flash flooding across Arizona, including the Phoenix Metro Area. Not a week later, Hurricane Odile brought more rain and flooding.

Flooding is the most common natural disaster in the United States. In Arizona, wildland fire danger (e.g., fire restrictions) and flood risk are two measurements that people need to stay informed about.

On my way to the gym Saturday morning I heard a story on NPR about the recent floods affecting Texas. The reporter asked a man whose mobile home was damaged by the floods why he didn’t have flood insurance. “I never thought it would be this bad,” the man answered. “I was here in ’98 with that flood and that was the worst I’d ever seen. And they said it was a 500-year flood.” The interview made me think—on a Saturday no less—about how we contextualize flood impacts and the possible impact it has on people’s perception of flood risk.

The labels used to describe rain and flood events can be misleading. For example, a “100-year flood” isn’t a classification of flood that occurs once every 100 years; rather, it means there is a 1 percent chance that a flood of that magnitude will happen in a given year. The worry is that phrases like 100-year flood can give people a false sense of security, and negatively inform their perception of the threat and decision to buy flood insurance.

The man in the NPR interview thought he’d experienced an once-in-a-lifetime flood in 1998. He heard it explained as a 500-year flood and maybe took that to mean there wouldn’t be another flood like it for another 500 years, so why buy flood insurance.

I won’t pretend to have the answer; in fact, I’m not sure that labels like “100-year flood” are a substantive problem to communicating flood risk and/or persuading people to get flood insurance. But the fact that hydrologists aren’t enamored with terms like “100-year flood” because it “is a misinterpretation of terminology that leads to a misconception of what a 100-year flood really is” should count for something.

An easy solution is to explain flood impacts in terms of the annual risk (e.g., a 100-year flood would be called a .01% flood). Another option is to stop historicizing flood impacts and risk all together.

In the meantime, there are steps you can take to prepare for flooding, including:

·         Know the difference between a watch and a warning;

·         Research your home’s flood risk;

·         Talk to an insurance agency about insurance for your at-risk home or business;

·         Prepare for the possibility of an emergency that could cause an evacuation; and

·         Make FloodSmart® improvements around your home or business (e.g., elevate the furnace, water heaters and electrical panel).

What I Did on Summer Break

I last blogged in mid-July. A few days later, I was deployed with the state incident management team for two weeks to a flood, and I didn’t get a full night’s sleep until early August.

Naturally, I was just trying to save the state from more calamity. I figured you could thank me later.

My tactic appeared flawed, though. Since I returned to the office in August, a strong storm battered Yuma that caused flooding; the Hobble Fire continued to lazily burn into October as if it’s still on summer break; my best fantasy quarterback and wide receiver were suspended for the first four games of the National Football league season (you’re on your own to search for them) and just last week hail the size of large hail amazed Phoenix commuters and made my day just a pinch longer than it needed to be.

If you’re playing at home, you will also remember that was the same storm system that caused a tornado outbreak in the northern Arizona community of Bellemont. That’s right; the National Weather Service is calling it a “tornado outbreak.” I thought the term "outbreak" seemed a little Hollywood but it turns out it is the correct word.

It also turns out it was a record. As if having a tornado touch down in Arizona isn’t record-breaking enough, eight of those suckers were confirmed by the NWS.

Go to the linked page above for a weather-centric explanation of how the tornadoes developed. I’m not going to lie; every weather map with color looks like a conflagration of flaming hailstone to me.

When I was a reporter in Flagstaff lo these many years ago, we had a photographer who was from New York, a real city kid at that. He was out in the field looking for enterprise art to fill the newshole. (I crack myself up over how much of the journo lingo I still remember. Basically, the photog was taking pictures that would be used to take up space.)

So the photog was dispatched to a local park that had a duck pond with the intention of getting Norman Rockwell shots of kids doing sweet and innocent things. Since it was Flagstaff in the spring, there was wind. There’s typically wind 340 our 365 days in Flag. (I exaggerate, but not much.)

Along comes this dust devil, which I’m guessing was like every other dust devil I saw growing up in Flagstaff: about 6 feet high and lasting all of 10 seconds. As kids, we chased them and never caught them because they dissipated so quickly.

The photog who grew up on the gritty streets of New York did not have the benefit of my misspent youth in Flagstaff chasing vertically oriented rotating columns of air. He did, however, have the heart of a lion, for he dropped his doubtlessly expensive Nikon with what I’m sure was at least a 300mm telephoto Nikkor lens, and threw himself upon two or three kids playing sweetly and innocently at pond’s edge in order to save them from the tornado.

I’m not sure if the kids or their parents disabused him of his need to throw children out of the way of dust devils, but at least the rest of the newsroom and the publisher got a huge kick out of the story. I sure know I did.

Needless to say, I’m not suggesting people should be anything less than painfully aware of their surroundings in different weather situations, and children should most definitely not chase dust devils, especially if newspaper staffers are nowhere in the vicinity.

Now that I've blogged and mentioned at least in passing several signs of the apocalypse, I should be good for another three-month absence, but honestly, I don't want that because that would probably mean we are responding in some fashion to more disasters. And the only disaster I'm mentally prepared for is running out of candy on Halloween.

Drip ... Drip ... Downpour

Fact. The light from a star is years old by the time it reaches us on Earth. The Sun excluded.

More on how this applies to preparedness later.

On a less ambiguous note, you probably heard how The Monsoon was causing flooding in Flagstaff. The communities of Timberline and Doney Park and others saw the “worst” of it on July 20 when flooding and debris flows damaged homes and roads and closed Hwy 89.

I went north to help film and photograph the damage, the recovery and mitigation efforts.

Click … a home encircled by battlements of stacked sandbags.

Click … volunteer firefighters filling and stacking sandbags on pallets.

Click … a plastic chair stuck in three feet of mud.

That last photo got me in trouble. In the time it took to snap the picture, a gentle drizzle turned to rain. And at that moment, I thought about the stars and light.

The same rule that applies to stars also goes for flash flooding.

It's raining where you stand? Who cares. It’s about where that rain was before and how long ago.

Sooner or later it dawned on me to get outta there, and I hurried to get out ahead of flow coming down the mountainside. I lost the race.

Can’t go that way.

That direction’s no good either.

I think maybe I stayed too long.

I sat sandwiched between two flows of rushing water for the better part of an hour and thought I know better. And I did.

I was fine in the end, but the take home lesson is to know better too. Know how disasters like floods start. Know the signs and the basic “science” why something happens the way it does.

Equal parts common sense, instinct and being informed can keep you out of an emergency predicament. It’ll keep you safe, and would have kept me dry.

I’ll Have Flood Preparedness, Á la Mode

March 14 is celebrated by TI-82 calculators, compass makers, Archimedes’ devotees alike as “Pi Day.” That’s Pi (π) as in 3.14159265, as in the reason for high-school night terrors and cold sweats.

The significance, never mind the existence, of Pi Day would be lost on a past English major like I were it not for the curious custom of eating actual pie, a tradition that catapulted Pi Day to among my favorite quasi “holidays” right after End of the Middle Ages Day on May 29.

Comparatively, Flood Safety Awareness Week (March 15 to 21) is decidedly less delicious. It’s unfortunate, but Flood Safety Awareness Week shares no titular likeness with anything in the dessert case. Rather, Flood Safety Awareness Week centers on the risks of and truths about flooding.

What Flood Safety Awareness Week does serve is actionable information on flood preparedness and identifying neighborhood flood hazards, the value of flood insurance, and tips for safe and responsible driving.

This year, the National Flood Insurance Program, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) collaborated on an interactive website, www.floodsmart.gov/noaa, with information about the financial costs of flooding, how to get a policy and how to best recover after a flood.

Per usual, the all-hazard readiness messages of “Prepare a Plan,” “Make a Kit” and “Be Informed” are also applicable when talking flood preparedness.

As it relates to floods, part of emergency planning is having the insurance to cover losses caused by flooding. Because most homeowners’ insurance policies don’t cover flood damage, FEMA recommends looking into flood insurance for your home and belongings.

There’s plenty more information available on what it means to be ready for flooding. You can start with visits to the Arizona Emergency Information Network (AzEIN) at www.azein.gov and FloodSmart at www.floodsmart.gov/noaa.

Preparedness information doesn’t dazzle the taste buds like a slice of coconut cream pie, but, when applied, it can make a big difference in the event of a flood.

So, let’s give Flood Safety Awareness Week its due, and hope against hope that someone, somewhere, sometime thinks of a baked good accompaniment.