One of the obsessions in the meteorological realm over the past few years has been consistency. It’s a wide-ranging thing: consistency in colors of watches/advisories/warnings, consistency in severe weather outlooks, consistency in messaging, and so on.
I get the idea that, if our end users are accustomed to seeing the same thing across different mediums/providers/etc., they will internalize it. It will, in theory, become engrained and won’t require second thought to understand.
But what if the consistent word or message or color or whatever is the wrong one? I don’t mean a wrong forecast. What I mean is, what if the choice does not work intuitively for our end users, no matter how much we use it?
An easy target is the “enhanced” level of the Storm Prediction Center’s severe weather outlook thresholds. It’s been discussed over and over and over again, and research shows it’s not well-understood, despite having been introduced five years ago.
In fact, here’s a real-world example from the Warning Coordination Meteorologist at the Milwaukee National Weather Service office:
There seems to be this idea that, if we’re consistent, we get to pat ourselves on the backs and congratulate ourselves because we’ve reduced confusion. But if what we’ve chosen isn’t the best choice, then the confusion doesn’t go down, and we’re just being consistent for consistency’s sake. That’s not useful.
If consistency helps reduce confusion, then yes, of course we should go for it. But we have to be targeted. Consistency is not a panacea.