Carolina Sky Watcher

Carolina Sky Watcher

New and Improved NOAA Weather Radio Voice 

require a sophisticated text
to speech software with virtually unlimited vocabulary in order to
provide the full range of watches, warnings, advisories, forecasts, and other hazard information necessary to public safety.

A Request for Proposals was issued in March. The National Weather Service will evaluate proposals  received on the basis of cost effectiveness, speed of system, integration of voice with existing console system, and voice quality.  A contract should be awarded by June 25th, and implementation of the new voice begun by Christmas 2001.

Samples of the type of new computerized voice systems now commercially available can be heard on the internet at  www.nws.noaa.gov/nwr/voicesamples.htm. The site features five new voices and asks listeners to cast a vote for their favorite voice.

     Taken from the "NWS Focus"

into a hail-producing storm over the central part of the county.  As it moved toward Morehead City, the thunderstorm spawned an F1 tornado and produced some minor damage to several homes as it snapped trees along a path several miles long.

On Tax Day, April 15, 2000, a weak thunderstorm moving onshore along the Crystal Coast rapidly intensified and produced a weak tornado which damaged the roof of a grocery store in Cape Carteret.  The tornado then tracked over the Croatan Forest before entering Craven County.  As the rotating cell moved over central Craven Country, an F1 tornado re-emerged from the cell over Bridgeton, and resulted in seven mobile homes and five commercial buildings being either severely damaged or destroyed.
 
The most serious of all the tax week tornadoes occurred just a year earlier, during the evening of  April 15, 1999. One multi-vortex tornado touched down in Duplin County about a half mile south of Kenansville. The  tornado, which was an F2 at times, tracked east northeast between Pink Hill and Beulaville and just to the north of Potters Hill before entering Jones County. Once in Jones County the tornado passed just north of Hargetts crossroads and tracked north of Route 41, ending near the intersection of Routes 58 and 41. The tornado track covered nearly 30 miles and ranged between a half mile to around one mile wide. An unconfirmed wind report of 165 mph was (continued on page 6) 

Improvement of voice quality is coming for NOAA weather radio soon.

The National Weather Service is in the process of replacing the
computer-synthesized voice currently used on the NOAA Weather Radio System.

The existing voice and system was implemented in December 1998, and represented an enormous advance in speed and technology in delivering warnings, watches, forecasts, and other hazard information 24 hours a day.  Prior to that time, staff members had to manually record and transmit each of these messages individually.

While the computer synthesized voice was a great advance in public safety, there were complaints from people that the voice was hard to understand.

In August 2000, John J. Kelly, Director of the National
Weather Service set a goal for       improvement of the voice quality of the NOAA Weather Radio for all radio messages, without sacrificing the speed which translates to public safety.

NOAA Weather Radio would

Tax Day Tornadoes

The days surrounding April 15th can mean a lot more than Tax Day!  You might have thought that your taxes were the only thing due during that week.  The past few years have proved otherwise around Eastern North Carolina. 

If the past few years have provided any trend, climatology suggests Eastern North Carolina is very susceptible to severe weather and particularly tornadoes during the days surrounding April 15th.  Just take this past April 17th for example.  A weak thunderstorm entering western Carteret County rapidly intensified

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