At the end of the day, it boils down to common sense. There is only so many helicopters/boats that can get people in back to shore in a safe manner. Some chopper companies fly when others won't, and some boat companies will not go out if it gets above a certain sea height, when others will. Thus, it takes a lot of communication from the operators, vessle/chopper companies, and the weather geeks. At the same time, their is a million other things that determne if a platform flows or not when evacuated. Sometimes the platform is manned and can flow with no one there with SCADA controls. Sometimes it is a small unmanned platform that always has flow on SCADA, but has to be shut in because the pipeline company shuts down their pipeline so there is no where for the product to flow.
Usually, if it is a named storm, the non-essential people get shut down just as a precaution. I have been out there when it was a storm that caught us before we couldn't get off the rig. I have also been out there in a wintertime storm where the wind blew 40-50 knots for 2 days and they never even thought about bringing us in, because it was not "tropical" in nature. Rough as he!!, but they didn't see it as a threat. Had guys getting thrown out of bunks on a jack-up it was so bad, but to everyone else -it was just a "front".
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