The "Landspout" Fad

[Mike Smith]

I started noticing television and NWS meteorologists mistakenly calling "regular" tornadoes "landspouts" a couple of years ago. Unfortunately, the mis-naming of landspouts has reached epidemic proportions. I posted a piece this morning, got to Kansas City this afternoon, turned on the TV (wanted to hear about JLN's tornado) and .... "landspout." Which is clearly was not.

Details here: To Meteorologists: Regarding "Landspouts" - [4:05pm, Addition]

And, unfortunately, given what happened in 2011 with the poor quality warnings that led to very many deaths, the tornado warning this afternoon came out after the tornado was in progress.

 

[Mike Smith]

And, here is my piece regarding the -- yet again -- poor warning strategy of the SGF NWS office.
www.mikesmithenterprisesblog.com/2024/05/joplin-tornado-warning-redux.html

And........ guess what they called the black, dark, elephant's truck? You guessed it! A "landspout."

 

[Jeff Duda]

I have also noticed an uptick in the number of tornadoes being reported as landspouts, but I see it from a different perspective than you do, Mike. I think that in reality a lot of tornado reports from years past (especially those on the high plains on low-SPC-swody1 days) were landspouts, but since the category distinction wasn't being made, it made the days with lots of landspouts appear to be quasi-tornado-outbreaks. An example is from May 2021: SPC Severe Weather Event Review for Saturday May 22, 2021. 10 tornado reports in CO, but I think every one of them were landspouts.

I, for one, am glad to see this distinction being made, and I hope more is done to address the mesocyclonic/landspout tornado distinction in forecasts and verification.

I am not arguing that landspouts are not tornadoes. They definitely are.

However, I think it is well accepted at this point that landspout tornadoes are typically short-lived and weak and rarely do anything more than minor damage, and are a much reduced threat to human life and property compared to mesocyclonic tornadoes. And I sense that SPC and NWS are trying to offer this distinction as a way to structure the warning of people about "twisty things on the ground" - not all twisty things are life-threatening emergencies. And I think it's easy to argue that landspouts are predominantly in the category of "twisty things that are not life-threatening emergencies" like mesocyclonic tornadoes are. Thus that's probably why you're starting to see more distinction made. Again, I think that's a good thing.

 

[Mike Smith]

Hi Jeff,

It has taken us, literally, 60 years to get people to understand the difference between watch and warning. I don't know if you saw my post from the chaser staying in the hotel when a tornado warning was issued at 3a. He asked when they were going to sound the alarm for the guests and the front desk person said, "They [the mysterious "they" in meteorology] only recommend sheltering when it is a tornado emergency." This is the danger of "uneducating" people with different categories of TOR.

To be clear, I'm talking about tornadoes from supercells which are not landspouts ( https://glossary.ametsoc.org/wiki/Landspout ). The appearance of a tornado (from a supercell) is an inadequate way to judge intensity.

For genuine landspouts (under a cold air pocket at 500mb), it is fine with me to handle those with a special weather statement. I don't want to see us institute a "landspout warning" as it will just confuse the public more.

 

[Mike Smith]

While I question whether some of these are actually landspouts (the ones that were produced by thunderstorms with considerable lightning), I do like the way OMA handled communicating the threat.

 

[Lou Ruh]

It does seem that some of the NWS offices may have some people confused about landspouts. PBZ recently issued a SVR with "LANDSPOUTOSSIBLE" but, the text only talked about a gustnado. Preaching to the choir, of course ... but ... not the same thing.

 

[Matt Zumbrunn]

We had this early this spring. Did damage to homes and businesses. It was rated EF-1. I don't know what the answer is, but from a social aspect I do not believe our current methods are working. We continue to add layers that further confuses the people it is designed to protect.