MO - Duck boat carrying 31 tourists capsizes, killing 17, near Branson, July 2018

IMO the way these Duck Boats are laid out, it tends to cause people to feel very safe. Much like driving a bus on water. Much like being on a Ferry in New York. You feel very casual about the whole thing while taking in the views. I'm quite sure the pilot of this vessel had absolutely NO experience driving that type of boat in very choppy water with 5-6 foot waves. Just like driving on ice the first time, not steering into the skid.

JMO

www.ky3.com/content/news/Mourners-plan-3-candlelight-vigils-Friday-night-for-victims-of-Ride-the-Ducks-tragedy-488743281.html

The driver died too.

They whole thing is horrific. I'm trying hard not to think of the last moments of those poor babies who died.
 
No doubt that was the case with these boat operators. It happens a lot- forecasts that don't pan out. So they stand to lose a lot of dough if they don't go out when a storm is forecast.

The problem is those things are like buses. We can see how poorly they navigated the waves. Seems very risk to ever have those vessels on the water if there's even a hint of storm.

Can they make enough money if they have a policy of never going out when there's a storm forecast? I don't know.

They could still drive them on land and maybe could have an alternative when they can't go on water.

Like a different activity, a partial refund and/or a different type of vessel available, which of course would costs as well.

I don't think a partial refund would work. One of the points of riding "the ducks" is to be on the water, to get a combination bus tour and boat ride. I think you'd have people cancelling. If I'm going to take just a bus tour, I'd do it in a nice bus with comfy seats and AC.
 
I found a link that describes how the wind pushed the boat back out deeper and behind the larger boat. I realize the death toll is higher but this article is from earlier on.

11 dead in Branson, Missouri, after tourist boat accident on Table Rock Lake

This second link is to an interview with a lady who was on one of the boats that were in the water. She explains how nonchalant the whole day was, down to and including getting off the water with the first Duck in "the way" WARNING This video taken of the boat struggling before capsizing is hard to watch. It literally is last 2+ minutes of 17 lives.

Dallas woman on board duck boat describes storm that sank other vessel
 
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Reading the NWS forecasts for Thursday makes for interesting reading.

This was posted at 12:30pm: National Weather Service Text Product Display



I thought it wasn't the 1800s anymore?

Easy to take that out of the context of the entire forecast discussion. This was just a few paragraphs later, in the same forecast discussion:

“Inspection of RAP forecast soundings indicates that supercell structures (possibly splitting) are in play this afternoon and this evening across central Missouri. Thus, large hail would be a concern if this panned out. High 0-3 km theta-e differentials (30-35 Kelvin) will also support strong cold pool conglomeration and a damaging wind threat with storms that congeal into line segments and move southeast across the region.”

They nailed it! Think they could have done that in the 1800s? Heck no! You seem to be defending the boat company here and bashing meteorologists. Several weather experts are all saying the boat company screwed up, and these 17 people died needlessly. They are right.

Look, weather is at its face powerful and in a lot of ways unpredictable, and sometimes forecasts do not pan out, but the weather forecasting technology we have today is unreal, and usually more accurate than not. There was a severe thunderstorm warning issued. That means the storm had formed and was on its way. That cannot be ignored.
 
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This probably goes back to people not visually seeing the dangers, saying, oh we will be back on land in plenty of time before the storm hits. Some have commented that the water was calm - then all heck started. I really cannot come to a conclusion to who to put blame on, only that it happened and they were trying to get back to land. I have to give the drivers credit for that, one even died. But the Belle was out there as well as others in their own personal boats. Does that area have a patrol that tells people to get off the water and park their boats?
 
I live in Central MO. Columbia to be specific. It doesn't get much more Midwest than that. I-70 literally goes diagonal down the center of Columbia. I could not tell you how many forecasts are split between whether you live north of 70 or south. Some 20 miles apart. Add that to how quickly and how quickly weather can change. If we followed every forecast to the letter we would never get anything done. Of course I am not responsible for 30 lives either. In any given year we have about 30,000 college students not aware of this, and it takes them about a year to catch on.

If I really want to know where a storm is in my area, I go to my computer and dial up an interactive radar that updates itself.

JMO
 
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I live in Central MO. Columbia to be specific. It doesn't get much more Midwest than that. I-70 literally goes diagonal down the center of Columbia. I could not tell you how many forecasts are split between whether you live north of 70 or south. Some 20 miles apart. Add that to how quickly and how quickly weather can change. If we followed every forecast to the letter we would never get anything done. Of course I am not responsible for 30 lives either. In any given year we have about 30,000 college students not aware of this, and it takes them about a year to catch on.

JMO

Correct that forecasts sometimes do not pan out. But this was not ignoring a forecast. It was ignoring an already existing, severe thunderstorm on its way. That is different.
 
What a horrible tragedy. I have never been to MO, but have been on many of these duck boats along the East Coast. Obviously the deadly crash from 2010 here in Philly comes to mind. IIRC the reason so many of those passengers survived is that they abandoned ship before it sank (I think they saw that the barge wasn't stopping?) and life jackets were actual life savers for this reason. I don't know that getting into those choppy waters in a storm would have helped them any..... but I do wonder what their life-saving precautions are and how they failed so miserably?
 
Easy to take that out of the context of the entire forecast discussion. This was just a few paragraphs later, in the same forecast discussion:

“Inspection of RAP forecast soundings indicates that supercell structures (possibly splitting) are in play this afternoon and this evening across central Missouri. Thus, large hail would be a concern if this panned out. High 0-3 km theta-e differentials (30-35 Kelvin) will also support strong cold pool conglomeration and a damaging wind threat with storms that congeal into line segments and move southeast across the region.”

They nailed it! Think they could have done that in the 1800s? Heck no! You seem to be defending the boat company here and bashing meteorologists. You are in the minority, just so you know. Several weather experts are all saying the boat company screwed up, and these 17 people died needlessly. They are right.

Theta-e? Cold pool conglomeration? Just say "storm is coming around this time, high winds so stay off the water." It's buried in text that the average person will stop reading well before they get to the important part. They don't even say what windy is.
 
Theta-e? Cold pool conglomeration? Just say "storm is coming around this time, high winds so stay off the water." It's buried in text that the average person will stop reading well before they get to the important part. They don't even say what windy is.

Forecast discussions are not written for the average person. They are for the greater forecast community. Even though I do not understand every single part of them, I read them regularly to get the basic gist of the forecast. Maybe that is part of what the meteorological community could do better, as mentioned in the article I posted earlier.

Can you, though, understand the posted photo of the storm warning I posted earlier, posted again? Of course you can! Apparently the boat company could not.
 

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This article quotes a mother whose daughter and ex-husband survived the disaster. It answers some of the questions people have asked.

-"Keller said she was told people aboard the vessel were not wearing life jackets."

-"Keller said her daughter and ex-husband reported the vessel began to sink in the stormy conditions Thursday night, and the occupants were briefly trapped under the duck's canopy.
Eventually, one of the duck boat operators was able to release the canopy and people swam toward the surface, according to the account Keller received."

-"Keller said her ex-husband reported it took all his strength to swim to the surface since the sinking vessel was sucking people downward."

The daughter and her father swam to a nearby restaurant where people helped pull them out.

'God spared my child': Mom of Branson duck boat survivor speaks out
 
Forecast discussions are not written for the average person. They are for the greater forecast community. Even though I do not understand every single part of them, I read them regularly to get the basic gist of the forecast. Maybe that is part of what the meteorological community could do better, as mentioned in the article I posted earlier.

Can you, though, understand the posted photo of the storm warning I posted earlier, posted again? Of course you can! Apparently the boat company could not. I think your blame is being misplaced.

The screenshot is readable, actionable, and wasn't available until 6:30pm. There are locals on Twitter who said they they did not receive weather notifications about this event.

This was, in my opinion, something that the weather service caught very late in the day - note 6:30pm is after the local nightly newscasts, so your friendly weatherperson wouldn't be reporting this during their segment. None of the texts on the NWS site before this time were close to this clear about the predicted event.

Think about it this way: what if you were already on the water and this alert went out? Depending on the lake, and the number of landings, everyone and their friends would be making a mad dash for land. That didn't even happen since we have the cell phone camera footage, and I haven't seen reports of lots of boats headed towards shore, people running home to make sure they weren't out in a nasty thunderstorm, etc.

Too little too late.
 
The screenshot is readable, actionable, and wasn't available until 6:30pm. There are locals on Twitter who said they they did not receive weather notifications about this event.

This was, in my opinion, something that the weather service caught very late in the day - note 6:30pm is after the local nightly newscasts, so your friendly weatherperson wouldn't be reporting this during their segment. None of the texts on the NWS site before this time were close to this clear about the predicted event.

Think about it this way: what if you were already on the water and this alert went out? Depending on the lake, and the number of landings, everyone and their friends would be making a mad dash for land. That didn't even happen since we have the cell phone camera footage, and I haven't seen reports of lots of boats headed towards shore, people running home to make sure they weren't out in a nasty thunderstorm, etc.

Too little too late.

A severe watch was issued that morning. The storm was already severe warned up in Springfield. That continued as it headed southeast then south. Even if the operators were not aware of that, the boat sank more than half an hour after the warning went out that included Table Rock Lake. That was too little too late?
 
In my opinion as much as I hate to say it, going head on into those wave instead of away with that low profile of a boat with not much engine horsepower will not end well. Typically the engines used in those boats are of a trolling type that do not go very deep in the water.

JMO
 
It was just reported on the local news here that the owner of this boat is the same owner of the boat that 13 deaths happened in 1999. In the Coast Guard findings they found the canopy to be part of the cause of deaths (among others). They TOLD this company to remove the canopies on these boats.

Per KMIZ (17) Newscast
 

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