The repercussions of fatal flooding on the Fourth of July in the sun-scorched Texas Hill Country are being felt more than a week later and 1,500 miles away in the similarly hilly terrain of Western Pennsylvania.

Those reflecting on the tragedy are not just people shaken by the loss of at least 120 lives when a wall of water descended on unsuspecting residents and summer campers in the middle of the night. The event is a stark reminder of the importance of weather forecasts and observers who oversee our ever-­changing climate.

In the Pittsburgh region, those connected to the weather — be it a “boots on the ground” observer or a meteorologist in front of advanced computer modeling software — express a profound sense of duty to warn the public of imminent danger.

And statistics indicate those warnings are coming more frequently.

‘Boots on the ground’

When Steve Fazekas hears his phone buzz with a National Weather Service weather alert, he gets to work, even though, technically, it’s not his job.

Fazekas, 68, of Winfield in Butler County, is a ham radio operator and member of the Skyview Radio Society in Upper Burrell, able to communicate with other operators spanning the globe. He also is among hundreds of thousands of SkyWarn volunteers who report hyper-local weather conditions to the National Weather Service.

“When a warning comes out, we open up a network on our (radio) repeater system, and you read the warning off verbatim,” Fazekas said. “Then we take check-ins from our members who are listening and collect their reports.”

As advanced as modern meteorology radar is, it can only see as low as the radar waves, and those do not reach the ground. Volunteers like Fazekas report real-time ground conditions, in varying levels of detail, to help NWS staff refine forecasts, watches and warnings.

Patrick Varine | TribLive Steve Fazekas, 68, of Butler County amid ham radio equipment at the Skyview Radio Society’s headquarters in Upper Burrell. Fazekas is also a member of the National Weather Service’s SkyWarn program, through which citizens report local weather conditions to help NWS meterologists provide a more-accurate weather forecast.  

Those same warnings are conveyed over 911 communication systems, and NWS warning coordinators are also in contact with county emergency management directors, relaying what they see and what they think may happen, so local officials can put the proper resources in place when flooding does occur.

“I tally all our local information up in a SkyWarn report, and I send that off to NWS,” Fazekas said. “Amateur radio is kind of the ‘boots on the ground’ because we’re seeing things that they can’t. Every technology has an Achilles’ heel — theirs is that they can’t see below the radar.”

Ideally, the whole system works in concert during severe thunderstorms — which have been a more frequent occurrence during a wet summer in Southwestern Pennsylvania — with the hopes of providing residents in flood-prone areas crucial minutes to get to safety.

Those NWS warnings, and their timing, have been called into question as more information is released about the Texas flooding. Pittsburgh-area NWS officials said the way they provide weather information to the public over the years has changed and become more complicated. And, although science has advanced the way that both meteorology and large-scale communication work, there are still technological and sociological barriers to ensuring everyone receives and heeds emergency weather warnings.

Watching the weather

The main floor of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Weather Service in Moon is an unassuming place.

Shades of gray dominate the quiet room, where several multi-monitor workstations are staffed by meteorologists. They comb through torrents of real-time information to develop weather forecasts and the severe weather alerts that sometimes accompany them.

Matthew Kramar, science and operations officer for the NWS in Moon, is able to view screens that show a composite of radar imagery across the Midwest and mid-Atlantic states, temperature readings from throughout the region and scads of additional data that would only make sense to someone trained in meteorology.

“With any weather forecast and threat, you can think of it like a recipe — there are ingredients that go into it,” Kramar said. “For flooding, we’re looking for an atmosphere that has a lot of water vapor in it, gaseous water that can be turned into clouds, into rain and then condensed out. We’re looking for things like slow storm movement, because if there’s heavy rain falling, and it’s not moving very fast, it’s going to dump a lot of water in one spot.”

Previous precipitation is another ingredient. When a slow-moving storm parked itself over parts of Murrysville and Penn Township in early June, it dumped rain onto saturated ground. That meant water was not just rising from backyard creeks along Steele’s Run, but also was cascading downhill over land, trying to make its way into nearby Turtle Creek.

The result was flooded basements, damaged walking trails and several hours of swift-water boat teams ferrying people to safety.

Courtesy of Murrysville Medic One An aerial view of flooding in the Murrysville and Export area June 6.  

Occasionally, a series of storms will pass over the same area, producing rain that can cause flooding. Kramar and other NWS meteorologists are watching for conditions that could lead to one of those outcomes, so they can issue warnings in advance.

“We start several days out, looking for the combination of ‘ingredients’ that could produce a particular outcome, whether it’s flash flooding, severe storms, tornadoes, all of that,” he said. “Everything is on a forecast continuum from days ahead down to minutes before something happens. And there’s uncertainty with respect to whether those ingredients are going to come together in the right way.”

NWS officials will prepare a hazardous weather outlook days in advance, releasing messaging well ahead of suspected severe weather. As a weather event gets closer, that outlook will become a weather watch. Using radar data, Kramar can see areas of strong storm activity and draw a polygon on his radar map to create a geographic area where people will receive an NWS alert.

“At that point, some of that uncertainty has gone away, and we’re a little more confident that something will happen or that these ‘ingredients’ will come together,” Kramar said. “The next tier is a warning, where we feel like we can predict with, say, 80% confidence that something is likely to happen in this warned area.”

With a few clicks, Kramar can dispatch a digital weather alert to anyone in the polygon with a cellphone. But a precise and fully accurate forecast is just not possible, Kramar said.

“Not everybody in the warning area is going to see what we’re predicting,” he said. “Especially when you get into something like tornadoes, it’s very hard to predict those with more than 30 or 40% confidence. Seven out of 10 times, it’s not going to happen. But the risk of it happening is great enough that hopefully people will pay attention when they receive that alert.”

Warnings that do not pan out precisely as predicted can create an unintended “boy who cried wolf” effect for some people, Kramar said. But the warnings try to account for variability in unstable storm systems, and for weather forecasters, the mantra is “better safe than sorry.”

And just because bad weather isn’t present doesn’t mean that it isn’t coming. Kramar pointed to flooding in Millvale, Allegheny County, as a prime example.

“It can be raining only in the North Hills, but the water all channels into a creek and gravity brings it to the lowest possible point to eventually get it down into the Allegheny River,” he said. “So if it’s raining way up in Ross, it may never rain in Millvale or Etna at all. But all that water fills up the creeks that go right through both towns and it can be devastating.”

Millvale was among several Lower Valley communities hit with serious flooding in July 2018.  

Suburban sprawl in previously rural areas also contributes to flooding during severe weather.

“Staying in the North Hills, McKnight Road is a prime example,” he said. “They just built the road on top of the old creek bed, and channeled the creek beneath it. Well, when you have stormwater filling up the watershed, where do you think it’s going to go once you’ve removed the creek bed from the equation? It’s going to sit on the road, which is why McKnight tends to flood a lot.”

Staying prepared

As Kramar and other NWS staff are developing their forecasts and seeing how many ‘ingredients’ in the pot could contribute to severe weather, they also are in regular contact with county emergency management coordinators.

“Our role is information sharing and coordination,” said Cassandra Kovatch, spokesperson for the Westmoreland County Department of Public Safety. “The NWS provides multiple platforms that we monitor to define the potential hazards of each weather event and their impact on our communities.”

The department takes part in coordinated calls with NWS, the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency and surrounding counties in preparation for severe weather.

Any severe weather “product” coming from NWS — an outlook, watch or warning — is immediately shared by radio with local emergency response agencies such as fire, police, swift-water rescue teams, EMS and municipal emergency management coordinators.

“Weather has an extreme impact on everything we do,” said Allegheny County Emergency Services Department Chief Matt Brown. “Allegheny County is very prone to flash flooding. We’re always vigilant, so there’s not really a trigger to get the department involved.”

In the case of the late April storms that brought strong winds and knocked out power to hundreds of thousands in Southwestern Pennsylvania, Allegheny County emergency officials began warning the public two days in advance, as soon as they received a high-level NWS alert regarding the potential wind speeds.

Once a storm hits, communication remains key, according to Michael Mollick, Armstrong County’s public safety director and emergency management coordinator. Just like weather forecasters, first responders need information from residents about where weather emergencies are happening.

“Until someone calls and says they need us, we don’t know where to send extra resources,” Mollick said. “With all weather events, it’s important for people to pay attention and be ready. Be prepared to move. Don’t wait for someone to tell you.”

A lot has changed in the meteorology world over the past few decades, including the main focus of NWS forecasts, Kramar said.

“Our job is rapidly getting away from a specific, deterministic forecast of ‘it’s going to be a high of 80 degrees tomorrow,’ to explaining the range of possible outcomes,” he said. “With severe weather, our forecasters have the skills to take the information, translate that and present it to emergency management coordinators in a way that can help them make the best decision at the time.”

Patrick Varine and Haley Daugherty are TribLive staff writers. They can be reached at pvarine@triblive.com and hdaugherty@triblive.com.

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