To all my fellow meteorology students:

I am very familiar with sitting on the sidelines, GR2A/RadarScope tabs open, watching severe wx events.

I am very familiar with looking at a warning decision and thinking ‘hmm I don’t know if that’s what I would’ve done here.’

(1/7)

I am also familiar, being (too) active on this website, with the desire to share my thoughts on various storms.

There’s a great feeling of making a forecast and seeing it verify, *esp* if you’re a few minutes ahead of NWS. That feeling is amplified when it’s recognized on here.

I also get the feeling of not being able to add anything of significant importance to the field as a kid without a degree.

The allure of warning your followers about a storm that NWS hasn’t warned, hence demonstrating your value as a forecaster even sans diploma, is strong.

All that said, I got the chance to walk a half mile in shoes that vaguely resemble those of a warning forecaster a couple summers ago when GYX let me take the Warning Event Simulator for a spin https://twitter.com/jacksillin/status/1159944246012588032?s=21.

It was massively humbling.

I didn’t even have the pressure of actual lives on the line. Only my pride.

That experience gave me 1000x more appreciation for how hard the warning desk must be.

If you ever get the chance to run a WES case, take it. You’ll learn a lot and perhaps come to a similar conclusion

Finally, I’ll end by saying that I hesitated to tweet this since I usually try to stay far away from the wxtwitter controversy du jour, but I decided to hit send because without others hitting send on similar threads when I was in MS/HS, I’d be in a very very different place.

So hopefully someone reading this will think twice about what they post on here during a severe event.

Know that you really can improve future warning performance! But tweeting (especially snarky/frustrated tweeting) is more likely to prevent you from having that positive impact