Severe Weather Awareness Week begins
JACKSON, Tenn. — Severe Weather Awareness Week began on Monday.
This is a national campaign by the National Weather Service to discuss severe weather planning and prep.
“The whole point is to mitigate, to mitigate the deaths. We’re trying to save lives. That’s our goal, our mission, our goal. That’s my whole point of me being up here, preaching during severe and tornado warnings, etc. It is to let you know what’s coming. It’s not to scare you. It’s to tell you that this is possible and this is what you need to do to protect yourself,” said WBBJ Storm Team Meteorologist Moe Shamell.
Our WBBJ Storm Team meteorologist have a list of the top causes of weather-related fatalities.
According to the National Oceanic Atmospheric Association, at the top of the list with the most fatalities is heat. Shamell shared tips to avoid falling victim to the heat.
“Making sure you’re staying hydrated, staying cool, taking plenty of breaks. When you’re outdoors, making sure you’re having light color clothing. That’s a big one. Also, especially during those heat waves we typically get in July, August, and September, make sure you’re checking on the elderly and children. Make sure if they don’t have A/C, you’re definitely checking on them because heat stroke is the killer,” Shamell said.
Next on the list is flooding, which kills around 87 people a year. Flooding is dangerous due to how quickly the flooding can occur.
“The main safety tip is turn around, don’t drown. That’s our main coined phrase, ‘Turn around, don’t drown.’ Don’t try to drive through a flooded roadway. Sometimes the road is not there. We found that out last week on Elizabeth Road in Friendship. The road was completely gone. You can not see that when there’s two or three or four inches of water over that. So the best tip I can advise for flooding is to not try to cross flooded roadways,” Shamell said.
Included in the top five are tornadoes, hurricanes and lightning.
Our WBBJ Storm Team Weather Team will be covering a different kind of severe weather each day for this week.
“Severe Weather Awareness is, basically, to bring awareness of severe weather. Of course, going into March and April, that is the severe weather season. So we just want to highlight specific topics when it comes to severe weather,” Shamell said.
You can follow all of weather team on Facebook below:
You can also find them all on Twitter:
And remember, you can follow the National Weather Service out of Memphis on Facebook and on Twitter.
Find live radar, hour-by-hour forecasts and more in the WBBJ Weather app.
