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The Flaw in the Forecast: Hurricane Communication with Jamie Rhome · Atmosphere with Emily Gracey

• Emily Gracey: The 2026 hurricane season is here. Forecasts have never been better. We can track a storm thousands of miles out, model its path with remarkable precision. The question is shifting from where is it going to what is going to happen when it gets there? What happens to the neighborhoods and its path? The hospitals, the roads, the power grid, not just during the storm, but in the days after. When the cameras leave and the real survival begins. People don't realize how dangerous heat can be. And in an era where misinformation spreads faster than any forecast, knowing who to trust matters as much as the science itself. Don't tell me about a 500 millibar map. Tell people what they need to know to survive that weather phenomenon. Today Jamie Rome, the Deputy Director of the National Hurricane Center, is giving us the insider view. This is a conversation that goes way beyond new products and AI-powered models. This is about the right message, the people living on the front lines of hurricane impact zones, and the forecast signals that even alarm him as a seasoned hurricane scientist. It'll stop me on the floor. Like it'll stop what I'm doing. I'm Meteorologist Emily Gracie and this is Atmosphere, a podcast where science becomes conversation. Each week I sit down with the experts behind the forecasts, the research, and the headlines to explore not just the science, but the human stories behind it. Through natural curiosity, we're making science more understandable, more relatable, and hopefully bringing a little more comfort in how we experience the world around us. Jamie Rome, so great to have you on as one of my very first guests. We've done this many times before, but the first on this podcast. Welcome to Atmosphere. Hey, thank you for for having me. This is such a great ⁓ and unique venue to to talk about some of the nuances of hurricane forecast and risk forecasting and risk communication that we might your shorter forums don't let you get into. Yeah, for sure. You know, those TV interviews that are two minutes long are definitely tough. ⁓ so There's a lot I want to get into today, but I want to kind of start with the broad 2026 season and some of the stuff that's new. ⁓ I think some of the things that might be most noticeable to the public, which some of the stuff I'm excited about, is like the mobile website is changing. Can you tell us what we're gonna see different there? Yeah, the new mobile site, which is gonna run alongside the existing legacy hurricanes.gov, will allow ⁓ the presentation to rescale. To fit your screen. ⁓ and that's what the old one didn't do. It wasn't built for a a mobile first world. ⁓ and so whether you're using a phone or a tablet or what have you, you know, that it can scale to ⁓ fit the screen better, ⁓ which will make it much easier to consume the information on there. Now, that did require ⁓ some cosmetic design aspects. ⁓ so it will also have a a different look and feel. So it's not just the scaling. I mean, that's one big lift, but also it's a it's a more modern presentation style that seeks to sort of, you know, what you call bottom line up front in in your world, sort of put the most important stuff right at the beginning. It's actually a new website in a in a sense, but because it's mobile, it's just going to run alongside the existing one so that we can sort of gather feedback and see how people like it. ⁓ another thing that stood out to me was the changeover in these like blobs areas to watch. and previously there were like these colored X's, but there's some changing in the coloring too. Can you tell me the reasoning behind that, even though I could take some guesses? Let's say there's a lot of interest or hype or misinformation about a system in the, you know, in our area, the Atlantic or in And we want to say we see it and there's no chances of development, right? So we needed that because the old system sort of forced us to assign it yellow, which you know people assume you're rightfully so because of the definition that that meant a chance of development. So with the ability that to draw an area or identify an area and give it a new color, gray, where you're effectively saying we see it, no chance of development, it's a very effective way to combat misinformation and in height, which is increasingly a problem in the world today. The other use case is there are sometimes systems or disturbances or weather phenomenon that have no chance of becoming a tropical cyclone, but a high chance of producing a lot of impactful weather, namely heavy rainfall and flooding. And we won't have the ability to clearly say this disturbance, this wave, this frontal system is not going to develop into a tripod cyclone, but look, it's going to produce all this really bad weather, ⁓ dangerous weather over a given area. So those are the two cases that we're really looking at. And and it gives us the the additional color, gray versus yellow, gives us the ability to more explicitly and clearly say no chance of development. Has forecasting gotten so good that it's ever like detrimental to the me communication process. Like people are in power. They've got now this mobile site. They see these areas of development. Is it ever detrimental in the way that like they're looking at this and it there's like too much information too early on and then they're fatigued by the time this is actually going to impact them. I would say this is the greatest ⁓ challenge and problem ⁓ you and I face in in in the same space. I mean we're operating in the same space. ⁓ The you know, the tools we have and the predictability is is astronomy is just so good and and getting better every day with AI. ⁓ the the biggest impediment right now is the saturation of junk, bad information, information too early, hype, emotion. by the time people get around to hearing. what they actually need to hear, they're exhausted and checked out and tuned out. I I mean we we should not be talking about ⁓ hurricanes in a model 14 days from now. I mean, that is just ridiculous. And no matter how many times I say it and no matter how blunt I say it, people still do it. And people who know better still do it. ⁓ there is no predictability in any model that far out in time. much less showing a major hurricane hitting a specific point on a map is is just insane. All you're doing is exhausting people and distracting them from the real information and the real predictability. It's a hard balance though, because you know, like people do have access to models and they're gonna find this information one way or another. So it's it's a tricky little like gatekeeping balance of meteorologists. Like, do I share this information? And something that, you know, we've talked about at recent conferences is this idea of probability and sharing that information. So even that far out, is there value in sharing that probability factor? So that that is the answer. So if pe I mean, it's a free country, people can share whatever they want. If if the public wants that information, they're entitled to have it. It's I mean, that's the the benefit of living in a free society. But what nobody is explaining to people is context. So if you want to show a model ⁓ hitting Tampa in seventeen days, then you need to add on there, there's a zero percent chance of this actually happening. But I mean you you you you're you're not telling people the entirety. Like if we do this in in in business, consumer, right? I advertise something for ten dollars, you sign up. And then I charge you 100. You people are outraged, right? But if I start a model 16 days from now, and I don't tell you that there's no chance of what's happening whatsoever, why are people not upset at that provider or that service? ⁓ so y you know, if people want and need that information, place it in context and tell people the full story. ⁓ just putting clickbait out there ⁓ that shows a high-resolution model output of something going into New Orleans 15 days from now, it is not at all useful. A couple of years ago, when we did a podcast together, you said that meteorologists were among the most trusted and respected professionals. Do you think that has degraded in the past two years or do you kind of stand by that idea? I think we're conceding that. that trust by allowing ⁓ this level of of information to go out there without proper context and without proper framing. ⁓ and that's c what's causing the and you can convince yourself of this as time marches on people are gravitating towards non-trusted entities which are putting out that information and then the public thinks that that's the information that they should be getting. And the trusted people are withholding information. So it's creating like this big old do loop, if you remember programming that we we're we're stuck in. ⁓ and so the only way to break that cycle is people have to communicate the why. Tell people why you're not sharing that information. Just y you know, go on air or or on your social media and saying, look, there's a lot of discussion about a given model producing. A storm, you know, 15 days from now, the reason I'm not sharing that with you is there's a zero percent chance of this occurring. So therefore, I'm not gonna bother you with it, right? If you we just have to tell people why that information is not useful and and why we're not sharing it. And and then, I mean, the Hurricane Center is is really frank about this. ⁓ you know, you hear us talk about all the time that predictability only goes so far, and here's the extent of our errors. We do you know, reports every year that highlight where we're good and where we're not good. There's a limit of predictability. And that's why we don't put out forecasts past so many days, you know, or do an outlook, you know, longer than seven days. ⁓ because we're trying to, you know, provide the framing and the context in that discussion. Something else we've talked about in the past is evacuations. ⁓ and I this was like a story idea I had, and I don't know that it'll pan out this year, but Like the evolution of evacuations. Can you tell me about what evacuations were like, say like 30 years ago compared to not only what they are now, but what the goal is for them to be? Yeah. So back, you know, especially when I was you know, getting started, our understanding of storm surge risk and how far inland storm surge could go was was somewhat limited, right? We know we didn't have all the tools we have now. And so evacuation protocols, ⁓ were largely based off wind. You know, wind understanding the Safer Simpson scale, these types of things. Well, that that tended to result in sort of large, large evacuations and and lots of uncertainty, or people didn't know if they should or shouldn't evacuate. So, you know, we l you laughingly, but it was true, like when I first moved down here, it felt like the entire state of Florida evacuated during a major threat. And that's untenable. I mean, it's just this is not workable. That's too many people on the roads. There's not enough hotels. There's not enough places for them to go. People were having to drive, you know, to Tennessee to find a a hotel. Miserable, running out of gas, gridlock traffic. And so that contaminated their view of evacuation. It was a miserable experience. They didn't ever want to do it again. Right. Fast forward today, we have very High resolution, high fidelity awareness of where the surge is and is not going to go. And, you know, working with emergency managers, they can draw preset evacuation zones ahead of a stomp a storm. And now the evacuation is very precise. It's it's it's very structured along the immediate coastline. We're no longer asking Floridians to leave the state. We're asking them to drive across the causeway. Now this is opening up the opportunity because the evacuation is so compressed, some communities are going the extra step of providing transportation assistance to people who might not have the means to even go that far. So it it's enabling a a reimagining of the evacuation process. And I know that you tend to measure like the success of, you know, forecasting a storm in did people die? So, and I know storm surge deaths have gone down. So that's becoming less of a concern. But there's this idea of power outages and that not only causing issues in during immediately afterwards, but also like months afterwards, right? So how is that being addressed? So as we're bringing down mortality, you alluded to it, direct cause, direct cause mortality. That's like, you know, when the wind and the surge and the rain, when the storm passes, y you you know. That we're bringing that down, which happening is ⁓ you know, from a relative sense, bringing that down makes the indirect deaths pop, or there's an increase in the indirect death. So indirect deaths are like the the deaths that occur after the storm. That you know, storm is gone, is clear, sunny, hot, right? Afterwards. So we're seeing those deaths climb, these indirect deaths, and that's coming in the form of. heat stroke or lack of access to health care or mental ⁓ stress or you know some cases you know suicide and other types, you know, the the the environment that is left behind by the hurricane contributes to these these indirect ⁓ we some some people have called them excess mortality. It's mortality that that wouldn't have occurred if the hurricane had not gone through the community. But It wasn't directly tied to the hurricane ⁓ itself. ⁓ so trying to raise awareness ⁓ on this is one of our bigger goals. ⁓ you know, it's people don't realize how dangerous heat can be. Like, especially Floridians or you're like, Yeah, yeah, whatever, it's hot all the time in Florida. And I'm like, Well, normally you have air conditioning, right? Normally you can go inside and take a break or, you know, recover. But imagine seven days without any AC, while you're trying desperately to clean up your yard or to move debris or you know, do heavy work and your body never gets a break. ⁓ that's where people getting themselves in trouble in in sort of overdoing it, if you will, ⁓ in these incredibly hot environments that are occurring after a storm. Now you mentioned power loss because power loss is a factor. If you had power, you'd go inside, cool off, have a cool beverage, you know, bring your temperature down and take care of yourself. But without power, you you have no ability to cool down. That then leads to another factor. ⁓ the desperate attempt to generate power, generator safety is becoming a a big, big, big problem. You know, people, you know, because you can just run to a big box store and and buy them. People don't realize just how dangerous they can be if not operated properly. I can imagine like being hot at night is a problem too and not being able to sleep because you can't cool down at night, your body never really recovers, right? Right. Medically, this is exactly what happens. It's not the the the now, and if you go out and like you run a marathon in a hundred degree heat, you're gonna have a heat related reaction, you know, heat related. But for most people, they're not doing that in a hurricane. And so the the one day of heat isn't what gets them. It's the two and three days of heat where at night your body temperature can't come down. So you're right. It's the inability of bringing the inability to bring your body temperature down largely at night. ⁓ and then you go out and do something else the next day. So it's like a it's like a compounding interest type phenomenon. It's not the single day or the single occurrence that gets you. It's just the accumulation. over several days. So we just gotta t t you know, teach people to when you don't have power and AC, you really, really have to drop your activity down significantly. You you know, so if you're if you're gonna clean up or do things in the yard, you gotta do it, you know, pace yourself is not harsh enough word. ⁓ you know, you really have to sort of do little pieces at a time and then cool off somehow and and stay hydrated. ⁓ If you have a heat related problem, ⁓ access to health care might not be great, or there could be a long line at at the hospital or ER. So you really just want to avoid putting yourself, you know, compromising your health in in that situation. It has to be hard to track this as a metric, especially when it comes to like years later. How is that a tough thing to kind of connect like this was this hurricane five years ago? This death was caused by that. Yeah, and I mean it's not what any of us signed up to do. Right. And but you know, I I have this old saying that if you can't trap track it, you can't improve it. You you've gotta know what the cause of mortality is to understand what changes can be made or not made. So we really had to get into that mortality space and and it was intentional. Not that it was what any of us necessarily wanted to do, but until you understand root cause of mortality, ⁓ you can't fix it. It's interesting, like you say we didn't sign up for this and definitely we didn't. And so much of like our training and our education is science based. Is there like a missing piece there that should be addressed in college education when it comes to meteorology, when it comes to like this humanity side of things? Yeah. I was actually just having this conversation with our ⁓ our WCM here about how the the colleges are not evolving quick enough in their curriculum. You know, they're still sort of you know, I'm probably gonna get people emailing me upset. It's still sort of doggedly sticking to the the the the historical standards and the world is changing quickly. Not even just this discussion, but as AI sort of increasingly automates certain aspects of meteorology that have historically been done, you know, by a person. The the role of the person is more and more a communicator. And yet you don't see the curriculums pivoting in this direction. And and and this is a polarizing topic in the meteor meteorological world. I'm sure you've heard it on your side too is ⁓ meteorologists feel like they signed up to predict the weather, right? That's what I signed up for. I predict the weather. What society needs right now is people who can communicate the weather in a way that empowers an individual to protect themselves. Don't tell me about a 500 millibar map. Tell people what they need to know to survive that weather phenomenon or tell them that they need not be concerned in this case, despite all of the hype, right? empower teach and empower people to protect themselves. So less map discussion, more actionable information is is where the community is headed. And you're absolutely right. I don't think the the colleges are evolving quick enough. Sounds like a mission for AMS. But it made me think too like this is why you and I always have good conversation is it's not it's it touches upon not just s good science communication, but actually caring. And I think That's an essential detail as well is actually caring and thinking about these people and having a little bit of emotion around it so that you can communicate clearly on these topics. But this makes me think too, also about ⁓ so like the with the SBC outlook changes this year and they've added these SIGs. I was talking to them about that, and ⁓ they were very clear about this is entirely science-based and nothing about this forecast looks at who lives here or what. the community is or what they're made up of. It doesn't look at the people at all. It's just science based. But the vibe I get from you at the Hurricane Center is that it's not just science based that when you are forecasting, you are looking at communities. And that's something that goes into your thought process when putting out discussions and putting out watches and warnings. Is that is that true? ⁓ absolutely. And it's a conscious effort. So if you take any communication class, like day one communication 101 is know your audience. Okay, know your audience, know who you're talking to. And guess what? The audience is different depending on what part of the country you're in, you know, what their socioeconomic ⁓ standpoint is, their age, you know, all these things change the the the audience. You can't to get beyond, here's a map, look how beautiful it is, to understanding where the person is. Who's listening to you? Are they are they worried? Are they worried to the point of being paralyzed? Are they vulnerable? Are they incapable of ⁓ you know, maybe the elderly, maybe ⁓ there's mobility issues, you know, there's all these things that are happening in their reality, right? That's their world, their reality. And and we we just sort of communicate broad brush as if everybody is is ⁓ you know, as has the numeracy of of of us, you know, with a math background and the geography of us, as you know, we made maps all our lives and then in college, you we've got to be sympathetic to where the person is on the other end. And you know, we we have a phrase here of we will meet you where you are, meaning wherever you are, we're gonna meet you there and communicate with you at sort of that basis, that that sort of foundation. So yeah, this this is a the huge aspect of where where we're trying to go. You hear this referred to as different things depending on you know whether you're at a conference or you know some people refer to this as consequence modeling or or these sorts of things. And and basically you're you're trying you're going beyond just ⁓ the winds are going to blow 100 miles per hour. You're you're you're in trying to determine what The winds in that particular area are going to do. What's it going to cause? What is going to be the outcome? What is going to be the societal response? And then not that you're predicting those things, but you're framing your communication to be mindful and sensitive to that reality. ⁓ that's a huge leap for a community that was largely brought up on, you know, I do the weather, you know. And so ⁓ this this is. Probably one of the the the not not controversial, but one of the more spirited debates that is happening within the meteor meteorological community, not just you know on my side, on the federal government side, but you know, on your side too, ⁓ in terms of I got three minutes to talk about a hurricane barreling towards the community. What what do I say? What do I include? What do I not include? Mm-hmm. Do you have the luxury at the Hurricane Center to kind of pick and choose who you're putting out there to do like the YouTube discussions, ⁓ depending on the community that's most at risk? Or is is that like not a luxury you have at this point to just like kind of pluck the right person to do the messaging? I mean, you can see that. I mean, have you noticed ⁓ a diversification of the the narrators that we we have started to use in in our ⁓ video? outreach. ⁓ it used to be that it was primarily the director and deputy director, you know, the face of the Hurricane Center, you know, the the institution, right? And then, you know, we sort of expanding out to the WCM and and other ⁓ positions. But now we're getting more and more of our younger and newer staff ⁓ involved. ⁓ and so, you know, this this is a a great evolution of ⁓ not only letting the world see, you know, our staff and who they are and You know, they're humans just like ⁓ everybody else. but you have the opportunity to potentially connect with newer audiences, younger audiences or or more diverse audiences. ⁓ that, you know, maybe 50-year-old me doesn't connect with them, but a younger version of our staff might. I mean, in so many ways, the Hurricane Center is like ahead of so many other agencies in that I see others doing it too, but like you guys have been doing it for a while. And you and I joked about this at the last conference, like the and I'm gonna now anger people, but like you're kind of doing away with this need for the middleman for these ⁓ science communicators, the ⁓ the more that the root source is doing the science communicating, there's less of a need. So ⁓ and I'm not against it, you know. I think it's it's all evolving and just changing the way that we get the information to people. So that that is only true if we go back to how we started this discussion. If If the science communicators don't pivot to the framing in the context. So if people pivot to the framing and context, I'm not going to show you this model at day 14 because there's no chance of it happening, then yeah, people are going to get frustrated with hype and hyperbole and gravitate towards ⁓ you know trusted government sources seeking you know non-hype. But if the broader community sort of pivoted to this framing and you know context. And we talked about this a lot at the National, you know, Tropical Weather Conference, this framing component where you're you're not just spitting out a number, you're framing it, you know, in a in a way that helps the individual understand what that number means to them. there's a huge demand and need for that ⁓ type of communication and and, you know, you us sort of eliminating the middle middle person would not be a discussion if people pivoted to that that space. Yeah. And it makes me think too, like we didn't learn about certain things in college, but what we did learn how to do is like create this pitting against each other competition thing, like even down to like forecast competitions. and then it it kind of moved into TV where local station is pitted against local station and who's forecasting better and who gets their ratings. But in this new dimension of weather communication, there's like room for everybody at the table to just kind of do all these different things. So I think that's part of it is like learning how to work with each other. And so people not seeing you or anyone else as a the enemy, but rather like, you know, just another piece of the puzzle is essential. Yeah. And I mean, I I mean I can prove this ⁓ in in some cases, ⁓ some parts of the country won't pick up the Hurricane Center for live interviews. You know, the the the director Mike Brennan and and I make ourselves available for for live interviews basically from sun up till deep into the to the evening. And some communities won't take the free interview and I'll ask them why. And they said, we we don't want you to be competing with our expert. And I'm like, ⁓ my goodness, that is that is so alarming to to to hear. So it's absolutely true, but the tenets of it go even deeper that you described it in college. It's actually the basics of storytelling. The basics of storytelling is to always have the juxtaposition of good and bad, right and wrong, right? If you any movie, have you ever watched a movie that didn't have conflict? You're right, it is boring. Like you wouldn't watch the movie, right? So the basics of storytelling are to have this sort of dual right, wrong type thing. And that has manifested itself into this Over infatuation with models. Don't you know? So let me play this out for you. European is here, the American model is there. Tune in at five, and I'll break it down which one are gonna be right. Right. So the the tenets of storytelling have have forced the communication in this place. But what I'm telling you is there's you can get the richness of storytelling without that. And because so few people are doing it, the first people who start doing it are probably going to dominate the communication because it's going to be fresh, it's going to be new, it it's going to be empowering, it's going to be helpful, and it's not going to be hype. And I'm telling you, people are sick of hype. And they are going to start gravitating away slowly but surely from those who pedal hype. ⁓ That that's my prediction. Okay. So tell me in that scenario, let's say ⁓ your producer comes to you at four forty-five and says we need a quick tease for the five o'clock news. What should they say? You you could depending on the situation, you could say our our probability of high impact wins and power loss are increasing. Tune in at five and I'll break it down for you. I'll show you which counties are most at risk. Right. Which counties are most at rich, which areas are most at rich. And more importantly, I'll tell you what you can do to protect yourself from this. Okay. So this makes me think also, ⁓ at the conference, something that you did a presentation that really stuck with me, ⁓ was about the biggest predictor of power loss. Can you take me through that? Cause you've done some research on this. So what came out of this? Cause this this is I like this kind of research. It really pinpoints, you know, risk. Well, first thing I'm I I'm gonna practice what I preach and tell you why. ⁓ which is the sort of inside and baseball tech thing. So ⁓ Those those old timers, myself included, used to always wanna know where the the fifty knot winds were. So so think sixty mile per hour winds. Like, you know, to the where where are those winds? Where are they where they predicted to be? And and some of the younger folks would show up. So why do you care so much about fifty knot winds? And I was like, Well, that's where all the power loss will be. Like we all knew that just from experience. ⁓ and you know, it in that Me just sort of flippantly saying, well, that's that's where the power loss will be, didn't resonate or sit well with people asking the question. They were like, show me. So we actually did a summer, we had a summer student come in and actually ⁓ look at sort of like 50 variables, right? And determine which variables were most highly correlated or linked ⁓ to power loss. And it turned out it was a 50 wins ⁓ where the were the highest, you know, one of the highest. ones ⁓ but also the ones beneath that, you know, weren't necessarily weather. They were all these socioeconomic things that you and I just talked about. You know, they were like the, you know, how well the house was built, you know, whether it's near trees or whatever. ⁓ and so ⁓ yeah, it turns out that ⁓ the 50 knot winds are are a a good first step approximation of power loss. Now, obviously that's not you can't just plot the 50 knot winds and get 100% accuracy. Power loss, there are other are other variables. But of all the variables we looked at, that was the one that was most highly correlated with power loss. Well, that's really telling because I mean TV meteorologists do have like good high resolution data when it comes to winds. So that's like a that's a valuable thing to show on air, right? Like this is where we're gonna see the highest winds. This is where the most likely power loss is gonna be. And if power loss is causing the death, that's that is like a really good substantial information. Well, I mean, look, if I weren't doing what I'm doing now and have access to all this, all this team of experts and all this data, ⁓ the first thing I would want to know if anybody showed me about a hurricane or talked hurricane or showed me a model 57 days from now, is I would want to know, I'm gonna lose my power. I mean, think about it. That's the most basic. fundamental question any reasonable person out there is going to ask. It is like, you know, the saying is it's like it's on the nose, right? It's right there in front of everybody. Yet none of us talk about it. And and and so again, meet people where they are. If power loss is what they want to hear, it is one of the leading, especially compounding ⁓ contributors to actual your mortality, then then let's talk about power loss and let's talk about what to do about it. you know, if you don't have the means or don't feel comfortable running a generator, then you set up a plan, family member, friend, someone that lives outside of the power loss area, and you drive and stay with them before the storm comes. If you are medically ⁓ dependent, upon power, then you've got to take all of that into consideration and and figure out a strategy that works. So you just gotta like stop and think about these things. I personally have two generators. ⁓ one's a backup or I can run them both. ⁓ they're on two different full fuel sources. So one's on regular gasoline and one's on natural gas. So that means that I'm independent if if one fuel source is not reliable, I can switch to the other. I routinely test them both. But that may or may not be the right solution for for everyone. The point is that you've got to think through losing power for not seven minutes or seven hours. I need you to think about losing power for seven days and what you would do or not do to combat that. All right. ⁓ before I run out of time with you, I wanna Dig into this season a little bit and get people ready. ⁓ something that I think is interesting to hear straight from the source, like you, is the ⁓ something I get asked if there's like a threat, is it what's really gonna happen? Like give me some insider information. How bad is it really gonna be? And I think a good way to give people that insider information is to tell them what like the alarming things are. And I I don't know if it was you or someone else that brought up. WPC, when they go into high risk, that is like a an alarm. Okay. And then also like storm surge warning, kind of an alarm. Are you can you give us some indicators where people need to really, really pay attention, some of these red flags? Yeah. So when when WPC, which is our sister office ⁓ up in the Washington DC area, ⁓ they do the heavy rainfall forecasts. When when they issue ⁓ a high risk. ⁓ excessive rainfall outlook is this the explicit name of the product. ⁓ it'll stop me on the floor. Like it'll stop what I'm doing. ⁓ if I'm doing interviews and and I have a break between the interviews, we'll stop and redo the graphics or redo the order of graphics or try to in some way it like totally changes how we execute from a communication standpoint. So if one is issued over your area, you should have the same reaction. Like Stop, read, listen, understand, and then act. And the the other interesting thing, because everybody wants to know how things work at the Hurricane Center, of all the products we issue, and we issue many of them, would people guess which one we spend the most time on, the most deliberation on? People assume it's the column. No, that's pretty much automated after you make the forecast. Or, you know, these other pretty graphics. No, it is the warning. It is the warning whether or not to put an area under a hurricane warning or storm surge warning is the most important thing we do here. It is what we spend the most time on. And we actually have permission to push that message to a cell phone. Okay. So think about all the regulatory permission that one has to go through to get permission to push a message from the federal government to someone's cell phone. All the paperwork, the documentation, the bureaucracy. It must be really, really, really important if we go through all that trouble to get permission to push a message to someone's phone. And we only push the warnings, hurricane warning and storm surge warning. So it is the most important thing we do. It is the thing we spend the most time on. It sometimes takes an hour of deliberation to decide who's going to go under a warning or not. And within a three hour forecast cycle, I mean that that's a huge, huge investment. So my take-home message is when we issue a warning, we mean it. And it is ⁓ I was trying to explain this to one ⁓ and and she's gonna know if she listens. ⁓ I I got frustrated and said, if a meteorologist could flip a table over and scream, there is a warning. And she goes, I understand that. I mean, it is like our equivalent of sort of almost yelling because at that point we feel the risk is is high enough to explicitly warn you. Do you have to think really hard about the timing of it though? Like, are we gonna wake everybody up in the middle of the night? If is this essential? Do we wait until the eight AM? Like does that factor in as well? Yeah. And that's probably the part that The the timing part is is often the part that requires the most time. You know, you got a category four barreling at you know ⁓ you know some state, the the it's a foregone conclusion that you're gonna need a warning at some point. The timing part is because you you want to avoid the overnight hours if you can. You wanna give people adequate lead time. And you'd like to be in sync with other messages coming out from local authorities. Like for example, if they're ordering evacuations or, you know, whatever messages. So to coordinate all of that and get it all sort of synced up and decide when and and and how is is a logistical, you know, big logistical lift. ⁓ that's why I say when we issue a warning, we don't it it's not easy for us. It's a it's a lot. of work. And so it's not just a button. You know, it's not just me there we go. So it's not something that's flippant, if you will. It's it's very serious. We take it very, very seriously here. The 2026 season, Colorado State has put out their forecasts, Hurricane Center, maybe less emphasis on like the seasonal forecast, but s the timing of El Nino is gonna make a difference in this forecast, right? Yeah. So I I I think it's a pretty pretty high probability that we're gonna get an El Nino developed at some point, you know, the next ⁓ six to nine months. ⁓ and it it's looking increasingly like a relatively strong El Nino. And and if we ended the discussion there, everyone would just walk away and say the season's gonna be less active. But what often the headlines don't talk about is the timing of the El Nino onset is really important. If we're talking about its impact on the hurricane season as a whole. So if it develops relatively early in hurricane season, it it could have ⁓ you know ⁓ suppress activity. But if it happens late in the season, yeah, all of the activity may have already occurred, right? And its ability to to impact the season would be lessened. There's also sometimes a little bit of a lag between sort of the onset of El Niño and and the response. So if it happens late and then you have this little response lag, we could have the most powerful El Nino ever envisioned. And if it happens outside of hurricane season, then it won't necessarily impact hurricane season. That's the part of the discussion that people aren't really talking about. And you you sort of see the Hurricane Center sort of pushing forward that it's too early to just declare the season slow and and have everybody lessen their guard. Not too early to get that kit ready though, right? Yeah, and to get that generator tested and make sure you can run it correctly. Awesome. Jamie, is there anything else you want to add? I know we could talk all day about this stuff, but we're gonna check back in hopefully in December and do a recap of the season. But anything else you want people to know before it starts? Hey, we practice what we preach here. ⁓ you'll see me out on a hot day in May, frustratingly getting my my generators working ⁓ and and tuned up and and making sure they're ready. So ⁓ Yeah, for for me, you know, that's ⁓ it gives me peace of mind. Like people always talk about hurricanes are so make you so anxious. But if you actually go through the motions of protecting yourself and your family, it'll bring down the emotions substantially. So so think of it this way. Even if you don't want to invest the money and time into preparedness, ⁓ it's good therapy. Hmm. That's good motivation right there. Very good advice. Awesome. Jamie Room, thank you so much for your time today. Hey, thank you for having us. Big thanks to Jamie Rome for joining me on this episode of Atmosphere and for such candid conversation. It's always lively when Jamie and I get to talking, and I really appreciate his time and willingness to share his perspective. If you have questions about today's show or weather in general, you can always find me on social media. On Facebook, I'm Meteorologist Emily Gracie. And on Instagram, just search Atmosphere Podcast. And while you're there, make sure you follow the National Hurricane Center accounts. During an active storm, they're one of the most reliable sources for hurricane information. They also post helpful YouTube updates, preparedness tips, and hurricane kit information throughout the season. If you enjoyed today's episode, please follow Atmosphere on YouTube, Spotify, or Apple Podcasts so you never miss a new conversation. And if you have a moment, please leave a rating or a review. That really helps support the show. Atmosphere is a production of Mike Burst. It's produced, edited, and hosted by me, Emily Gracie. If you're looking for even more weather content, check out Weekly Weather Brief, a quick rundown of the week's biggest weather and science stories hosted by me and fellow meteorologist Karen Jerriman. New episodes drop every Friday on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts to get you caught up before you head into the weekend. I'm Meteorologist Emily Gracie. Thanks for taking the time. Slow down, stay curious, and explore the atmosphere with me today. See you next week.