Should the NWAC be publicly funded?

Very fine post Friends of NWAC.
I will continue to donate to FOAC and I fear private support is going to be more and more needed. Budgets are being cut and the solution is far from sight. NWAC will suffer like everybody else.
However, some immediate suggestions for you.
1) Change your board to reflect the true demographics of skiers and snowmobilers and change your copy to omit "This guy is the only member who does not ski." Perception is reality.
2) Sponsor a snowmobile event like verfest and advertise it on TAY and any Snowmobile websites.
3) Ensure your Board member by-laws says a board member cannot lobby against snowmobiles or be derogatory about snowmobiles or post on web sites that people should lay fishing gut down to mess up their tracks. You can't promote to them if you publicly decry them as well.
4)Hire your lobbyist back immediately..... you need him.
5) Hire a professional fund raiser to increase private donations from wealthy individuals and corporations. Trust me a professional fund raiser is worth every penny especially in these hard times and considering your web hits.... private donations are paltry.
6) Find a snowmobiler who is prepared to dig pits and post on FOAC so you can refer to them and not just TAYers and ski areas in your forecasts. Shouldn't be that hard if you tried.

Good luck

So this thread was never really about public funding of NWAC, was it?

I think it's a great idea to encourage outreach to the snowmobile community. You could have just said that to begin with.

May I discuss some of the science behind the forecast? It is possible that the science may reveal why the forecast is a useful public service. ( Just for those who have questions. )

There are three basic scales that apply:

Synoptic = 1000km ( Public avalanche bulletin, weather forecast )
Meso = 10km ( Telemetry )
Micro = 1km ( On site observations, data from TAY, FOAC obs page )

NWAC provides ~synoptic forecast products that are not directly applicable at the the meso or micro scale. The idea is to start with the public avalanche bulletin and gradually work out the details by supplementing the general information with data acquired at a very specific place and time.

Many advanced backcountry skiers find that using the public avalanche bulletin by itself is a bit confining. This is because using the forecast alone requires advanced backcountry skiers to follow a fixed set of rules. The Avalanche Handbook discusses the inapplicability of fixed rules for advanced backcountry skiers.

Beginner recreational backcountry skiers who lack the skills of their advanced counterparts will definitely find the forecast useful. This is because fixed rules are appropriate for beginners. The Avalanche Handbook discusses the suitability of fixed rules for beginner backcountry skiers.

***

Considering the foregoing, the value in the public avalanche bulletin is fairly obvious. I read the avalanche bulletin every day, even though I could almost certainly write a decent forecast on my own. I read the avalanche bulletin because it helps me get a sense of what is going in a large area, and it saves me a lot of time.

It takes a lot of work to produce an avalanche forecast product with the level of quality offered by NWAC. You have to understand quite a lot about meteorology and the interaction between weather and terrain in order to produce a usable public avalanche bulletin. I certainly know a lot about these subjects, but honestly, I don't have the time, and may not have the experience or skill required, to integrate the hundreds or even thousands of data points necessary to issue this type of forecast.

For those who are interested, perhaps Ferber or Kramer would be so kind as to provide a list of forecast data products used to produce the public avalanche bulletin. This almost certainly includes things like quantitative precipitation forecasts, but could also include things like orographic precip forecasts that they develop in-house. It's not quite as simple as watching the weather and saying "okay, today the avalanche danger is High". That's an assumption, not a forecast.

Conclusion: advanced backcountry skiers should refer to the public avalanche bulletin because it helps them develop a holistic, seasonal perspective if nothing else. A big picture understanding of the 'characteristic' of a particular winter can help everyone. Including know-it-alls like myself who can rattle on for hours about snow, QPFS, orographic precip, and other noise.

***

How to use the forecast, from a blog post I wrote last year.

avalanchesafety.blogspot.com/2009/11/bac...orecasting-size.html

So this thread was never really about public funding of NWAC, was it?

I think it's a great idea to encourage outreach to the snowmobile community. You could have just said that to begin with.

You ASSume too much Lowell, but then you always have.
I learnt a lot from the discussion but I'm sure you knew it all already.

Very fine post Friends of NWAC.
I will continue to donate to FOAC and I fear private support is going to be more and more needed. Budgets are being cut and the solution is far from sight. NWAC will suffer like everybody else.
However, some immediate suggestions for you.
1) Change your board to reflect the true demographics of skiers and snowmobilers and change your copy to omit "This guy is the only member who does not ski." Perception is reality.
2) Sponsor a snowmobile event like verfest and advertise it on TAY and any Snowmobile websites.
3) Ensure your Board member by-laws says a board member cannot lobby against snowmobiles or be derogatory about snowmobiles or post on web sites that people should lay fishing gut down to mess up their tracks. You can't promote to them if you publicly decry them as well.
4)Hire your lobbyist back immediately..... you need him.
5) Hire a professional fund raiser to increase private donations from wealthy individuals and corporations. Trust me a professional fund raiser is worth every penny especially in these hard times and considering your web hits.... private donations are paltry.
6) Find a snowmobiler who is prepared to dig pits and post on FOAC so you can refer to them and not just TAYers and ski areas in your forecasts. Shouldn't be that hard if you tried.

Good luck

Chris, I don't think snowmobilers really care or think about avalanches much. The only sledheads that seem to care or have some awareness are those who ride and ski too in my experience. It seems that there is this perception that highmarking in steep alpine terrain is akin to dirt biking at a moto cross park like Horn Rapids.

mmmmh  Aaron. Not from my personal experience with my snowmobiling co-workers. They know that avalanches are a danger and 100% of them express a desire to stay alive and come home to their family but I understand some of the points you and others are making about it being their responsibility to educate themselves and they they should outreach as well and I don't disagree.
However, not outreaching to them because they seem reluctant to outreach themselves doesn't seem a good argument either if you truly want to save lives.

There is I think , and I hate to bring it up, a cultural and call it "social position" element to all this. The majority of the snowmobilers I know are, for want of a better word" working class guys" not college educated( although they are union craftsmen and probably earn much higher wages than a lot of college grads, $120K plus in some instances). The  backcountry skiing touring demographic seems, to me at least, to be comprised of a much more liberal leaning, college educated crowd more used from education and job training to seek out information from the internet or whatever sources are available.
These are broad generalizations( based upon MY personal experience and only valid to me) and many exceptions apply. However I think therein lies some of the challenges involved both in understanding why snowmobiler avy deaths are increasing and current outreach programs seem fairly unsuccessful. To quote " a sign of lunacy is to do the same thing over and over again and expect a different outcome.

And yes Lowell, I know this post in this thread isn't directly about public funding, but discussions devolve into interesting tangents at times and thread drift is acceptable after the 4 th post. I know because I made the rule as CEO.

Edit to add: I read Cookie Monster's article he referenced above regarding experienced BC tourers using NWAC regional forecast as well as micro terrain judgements and it's good... but I had to read it twice to try and understand all he was saying ( and still don't fully get it ...but near enough). I'm not saying it should be dumbed down but maybe rewitten in more easily understood language and concepts. A lot of avy stuff I see written seems not only to give information but also to impress the reader with the author's scientific accomplishments. You see that a lot on TAY.... see some of AndrewW posts about science in this thread. I only bring it up as I also think it has a bearing on what I wrote abut snowmobilers above this edit.

mmmmh  Aaron. Not from my personal experience with my snowmobiling co-workers. They know that avalanches are a danger and 100% of them express a desire to stay alive and come home to their family but I understand some of the points you and others are making about it being their responsibility to educate themselves and they they should outreach as well and I don't disagree.
However, not outreaching to them because they seem reluctant to outreach themselves doesn't seem a good argument either if you truly want to save lives.

Should we go door to door like the Mormons or Jehovah's Witnesses?