Weather warning experiment doesn't work

Give the City of Gastonia credit ... they tried to do something a little different with weather warnings.

Unfortunately, it didn't work. And the failure is another reminder of the dislike (and even anger) that some people have about the way the National Weather Service issues its watches and warnings.

Gastonia launched an automated phone service June 1, in which the issuance of a weather warning would trigger an automated phone call to about 27,000 phones in the city. It worked much the same as the Connect-Ed system used by the Charlotte-Mecklenburg and other school systems. When there's news, a computer-generated phone call is placed to homes, and when people answer the phone, they hear a taped message.

Gastonia officials were using NOAA's All Hazards Radio, which many people have in their homes. When a watch or warning is issued, the radio activates with a tone, and then a message -- delivered by a computerized voice -- reads the warning's details.

Apparently, the service wasn't a big hit in Gastonia. City officials pulled the plug on the calls before the end of June, after getting a couple dozen complaints from residents. Some residents said the warning came after the storm had passed. Others complained that the computerized voice was too difficult to understand.

Doug Outlaw, of the National Weather Service office in Greer, S.C., said his office has nine transmitters across the western Carolinas and northeast Georgia.

The Charlotte area is served by a transmitter at Spencer Mountain in Gaston County, which covers Alexander, Cabarrus, Caldwell, Catawba, Cleveland, Gaston, Iredell, Lincoln, Mecklenburg, Rowan and Union counties.

CMS requires all schools to have working weather radios, and school system officials conduct random checks to insure that the radios are operating.

Gastonia took the idea one step farther, but it didn't work.

It's much like the furor that is raised when TV stations interrupt their programming for weather alerts. Brad Panovich, Eric Thomas, Steve Udelson and their television meteorological counterparts draw scathing criticism in some quarters when they break into a program for live tornado coverage.

Yet many of the people who survived the killer tornadoes this spring in Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee, Mississippi and Missouri say they are alive because of the warnings. Survivors said they were able to find shelter because they knew the storms were coming.

Not everyone has a NOAA All Hazards Radio in their house, and Gastonia was trying to cover that gap.

The idea was admirable, but it apparently needs some tinkering. Here's hoping the concept isn't dropped.