FLHurricane.com: A New CFHC User Group

From the 'About CFHC' page:
"What this site is all about is tracking storms, warning folks, and preventing injuries and deaths that would otherwise be catastrophic."

I'll start this with two important comments:
1) The primary purpose of CFHC is to keep you informed about tropical cyclones in the Atlantic Basin, and to give you (and us) the opportunity to learn more about these systems.
2) CFHC is not an official source for information related to these tropical systems. It only supplements information from official sources such as the National Hurricane Center and your local National Weather Service office or Emergency Management resource.

CFHC satisfies its goals (or at least tries to) in these two areas through the use of Forum discussions, Meteorological Blogs, definitions and explanations, high resolution storm track displays, and a variety of Weather links.

I've often wondered how a newer site User manages to sift through all of the often confusing and conflicting discussions in order to separate the wheat (good advice) from the chaff (bad or unlikely advice). After a bit of time on the site, everybody probably learns how to do this - but thats not much help to the new visitor when something is threatening a coastline. Keep in mind that for every 5 registered Users on the site there are often 100 unregistered visitors who are also seeking knowledge and clarity.

As at least a partial solution, CFHC will soon implement a new User Group called 'Weather Analyst' In the past few weeks I've reviewed thousands of your posts in an attempt to identify likely candidates for this title. Here are the 'consideration factors' that I used:

Has a good understanding of meteorological processes.
Good analysis with reasonable/realistic expectations.
Non-emotional approach (even keeled).
Non-argumentative (treats others with respect).
Their posts consistently have quality info.
Usually gives sound advise.
Tends to answer questions rather than ask them.
Offers some original thought rather than quoting some other source.
Positive contributions to site discussions.
Aware of the CFHC site philosophy and tries to enhance it (stays on topic).

Nobody is expected to meet all of these factors all of the time, but at least they provided a good starting point. Note that the title is intentionally targeted to the non-professional site poster. I would expect that the site officials and Meteorologists provide a helpful starting point for everyone who visits here - but we are not all online all of the time and weather conditions can certainly change in those interim periods.

I have identified an initial small group (and this group will remain rather small - probably less than a dozen) and this group is under review by a few of us. Their primary purpose will be to continue to provide good guidance in their posts, i.e., just to keep doing what they always have been doing. It is not an elitist group (they can do nothing more than what they already do) - probably far from it since they are still subject to correction just like everybody else on the site. Note that the 'number' of posts was not a factor - but the quality of what was posted was an important factor.

In the next few days I'll be contacting a few of you to see if you'd be willing to accept this title change - and if not, I'll certainly understand. Some of you may feel that you 'fit the bill' but you don't get contacted. Don't dismay - it probably means that there are a couple of those factors that you still need to work on - and the group members will change over time. We certainly hope that this will generally be a positive step toward that 'learning' goal that I mentioned above.
Cheers,
ED

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