Hurricane Matthew: Sandy lessons forgotten?

Inland-flood warnings remain in effect for the eastern third of North Carolina and southeastern Virginia, the result of cosmically heavy rains produced by Hurricane Matthew.

But you won't find any inland-flood advisories on the National Hurricane Center site, complains Gary Szatkowski, retired head of the National Weather Service in Mount Holly.

At 5 p.m. Sunday, the hurricane center signed off on Matthew, by then a "post-tropical storm."

In a series of Tweets Szatkowski argued that the hurricane center, in Miami, was ignoring the lesson of Sandy.

Recall that four years ago, the center ceased to issue advisories on Sandy after it lost its so-called tropical characteristics.

That was criticized as an inside-baseball decision that evidently confused some emergency managers.

When the government completed its assessment of its own performance on Sandy, its first recommendation stated:

"For future storms like Sandy, NHC should be the principal point of contact responsible for the event, including delivery of a consistent suite of products and a unified communications protocol."

Szatkowski said he was nonplussed to find that on Monday Matthew had all but disappeared from the hurricane center radar.

"So perhaps one of the other lessons learned from Matthew," he wrote, " is to finish the implementation of the Sandy recommendations."

The NHC did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Monday was a federal holiday.