I may have been wrong on NHC. They have not yet associated a numeric value with storm surge in any units. However, they are now predicting rainfall from the storm in dual units. The first time I've ever seen this (I urged them to make this change last fall). Since the whole advisory is "all caps," the closest they can come is "MM." I think it is perfectly clear in context.
http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/text/refresh/MIATCPEP3+shtml/DDHHMM.shtml RAINFALL...CARLOTTA IS EXPECTED TO PRODUCE TOTAL RAINFALL ACCUMULATIONS OF 3-5 INCHES...75-125 MM...WITH ISOLATED MAXIMUM AMOUNTS OF 10-12 INCHES...250-300 MM...OVER THE MEXICAN STATES OF GUERRERO...OAXACA...CHIAPAS...AS WELL AS OVER THE SOUTHERN PORTION OF GUATEMALA. THESE RAINS COULD CAUSE LIFE-THREATENING FLASH FLOODS AND MUDSLIDES. --- On Thu, 6/14/12, John M. Steele <[email protected]> wrote: From: John M. Steele <[email protected]> Subject: AP gets it wrong; Reuters gets it right To: [email protected] Date: Thursday, June 14, 2012, 7:51 AM What's the subject? Metric, of course. Well actually, Tropical Storm Carlotta, expected to be a hurricane by Friday. AP goes out of their way to change the the symbol for kilometers per hour (km/h) used by the National Hurricane Center to a wrong "kph" to help confuse readers who understand metric better than Customary. (Yes, guilty, I made the bitter comment which follows the article.) http://news.yahoo.com/tropical-storm-carlotta-forms-pacific-south-mexico-expected-085210645.html Reuters uses metric correctly, has a nice graphic, and even goes to the trouble of converting storm surge to metric (a suggestion I made to NHC which they apparently did not accept). http://www.trust.org/alertnet/news/tropical-storm-carlotta-is-forecast-to-strike-mexico-as-a-hurricane-at-about-0000-gmt-on-16-june/ When the numbers count, you can count on AP to confuse you.
