Apparently, I was right to be suspicious of CNN's usage. Only yesterday's 11 AM update was correct and used km/h. After that it was back to kph. NOAA and NHC have included metric in their public advisories for some time. Prior to this year they used KM/HR for wind velocity. This year, they changed to KM/H (their advisories are all upper case). I wrote to them last fall suggesting the change, although I have no idea if they changed on their own or because of my letter. I'd also like to get them to use metric units for rainfall and storm surge in their public advisories. Apparently, someone just lower cased the KM/H to km/h instead of changing it to AP-approved (but incorrect) kph. No doubt they were reprimanded for negligently doing something correct.
--- On Sun, 8/21/11, G. Stanley Doore <[email protected]> wrote: From: G. Stanley Doore <[email protected]> Subject: [USMA:51005] Re: CNN uses "km/h." Accident or new policy? To: "U.S. Metric Association" <[email protected]> Cc: "U.S. Metric Association" <[email protected]> Date: Sunday, August 21, 2011, 4:16 PM Including metric units in hurriane/tropical storm warnings is natural and a safety measure, especially for the Carribean. It makes U.S. weather warnings more universal and understandable since the warnings are also used heavily outside of the U.S. It avoids misintrepretation. Good move! I hope the NHC and others keep it up. The U.S. computer forecast models have used metric internally for decades and the results have been converted to English units for U.S. consumption. Regards, Stan Doore, NOAA NWS Retired On Aug 21, 2011 12:35 PM, "John M. Steele" <[email protected]> wrote: > An earlier (today) article on Tropical Storm Irene used kph. Now they are > using km/h for wind speed and storm speed. Intentional, or assigned the > article to the new guy? Who knows. I like it. > > http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/americas/08/21/tropical.weather/index.html?hpt=hp_t2 > At 11 a.m. ET, Irene was about 235 miles (375 km) east-southeast of Puerto > Rico, heading west-northwest at about 20 mph (32 km/h), the National > Hurricane Center in Miami reported. Its top winds were 50 mph, (80 km/h), > according to forecasters.
