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Thursday, March 02, 2023

Not Really Especially Helpful

Quite often, I get notifications via Amazon's Alexa app -- to my phone and to my household Echo Dot speakers -- that "the National Weather Service has issued a ..."

The most frequent one is a friendly morning "the National Weather Service has issued a dense fog advisory for Archer [the Florida town nearest me], in effect from [time] to [time]." We get lots of fog here of a morning.

I also get such advisories for thunderstorm and tornado watches/warnings, high winds, etc.

This morning, I got one I've not gotten before:

"The National Weather Service has issued a Special Weather Statement for Archer."

That's it. That's all.

Per Wikipedia, "there are no set criteria for special weather statements ... [they] may be issued by the NWS for hazards that have not yet reached warning or advisory status or that do not have a specific code of their own, such as widespread funnel clouds. They are also occasionally used to clear counties from severe weather watches. Occasionally, special weather statements appear as heat advisories. ... Special Weather Statements may also be issued for possible fire weather conditions, such as an enhanced risk."

So "the National Weather Service has issued a Special Weather Statement for Archer" could mean, well, pretty much anything.

I wonder if someone at NWS forgot to input full data into whatever gizmo spreads the word, or if something is amiss in the Alexa system.

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