Providing warnings that a Texas Coastal port will be closing its gates due to severe weather

I monitored the weather from home for my husband. I watched a lot of the Weather Channels and have used state facebook pages in areas such as IN when the roads were frozen over or high winds expected. Everyone does not have the option of this though. He has changed routes and dropped to lower levels to avoid expected bad weather conditions. I would think a major company could send out vital information on the qualcomm if an area is predicted to be closed due to hurricane, tornadic weather conditions. Even O/O are usually hooked into these qualcomms if they are lease.

 

Most megas do. I know Stevens transport does.

 

Most newer trucks are am/fm/noaa. That should take care of the people that are actually driving. A mailing list is still the best way though. Even if that's the only notice the driver gets, well we have to stop at least every 8 hours....

 

Emails and texts are unobtainable to a driver driving.

communications to a driver is limited by law, hand held and distracting devices are just two issue, there are others.

 

If the overhead highway signs flashing "Hurricane Conditions Expected / Exist" doesn't stop a driver then nothing else will either. This happened last year during the hurricane in the Valley.

 

I don't think the distance in miles is the right question. Distance in time is better, but my thought is that the driver needs to be informed before it's too late to park and shelter in place or divert. My few years in Texas taught me that hurricanes lose their power differently depending on their path, severity, terrain, speed, etc.

For some hurricanes, College Station is plenty safe. For the occasional whopper, DFW is probably a better stopping point. So setting an arbitrary limit is not productive. When they close Donner Pass, warnings go up as far east as a couple of hundred miles -- even if the closure is expected to be for a few hours. That makes little sense.

The other thing to consider is that if it is a Whopper, they may well be running both sides of the freeways inland, so then the whole point is moot......

Another thing to consider is where the trucks are going / coming from. Many times the truck that goes inland is not the truck that goes to the port. So giving someone notice that the port is closing doesn't necessarily mean something to a trucker that is picking up at a container transfer or transloading facility.

 

I compliment you and your insight. Your instincts and answers to certain suggestions of drivers is a step or two ahead of those suggestions.

CB is useless for 95% of those in trucks due to no CB, languages out here these days, and no real way to distinguish anofficial announcement from some prankster. Legal CB is short range.

I'd suggest Public Service type ads on satelite AM/FM radio shows. Sirus/XM Road Dog channel is usually 24/7. The radio show with George Noory Coast to Coast? From Premier is widely heard overnight. It's not only ubiquitous, it's heard everywhere. (I've been waiting years to use that joke.)

You can use Twitter. Oregon uses it effectively as well as a rich web page called TripCheck.com

 

I'm in the fire areas and there are a lot of false alarm warning signs. If the warning isn't specific to that driver he will usually drive right to the road closure before stopping.

 

You are correct about AM/FM/NOAA but in my last 3 trucks AM in unusable due to interference from the inverter.

 

I'd post a web page for the port and let drivers look up the status of the port. They know if they are going there and if there a storm threat. You'll ned to post 20 translations of the English page.