Blaming nws in wilmington ohio

[Kevan Wagner]

Yesterday in Beavercreek Ohio there was a tornado on the ground for 1 minute it was an ef1 on the leading edge of a qlcs squall line.Some people on their Facebook page is blaming them for not issuing a warning.You can't and shouldn't put a tornado warning trying to catch every qlcs tornado because they occur between scans and they dissipate as quickly as they form.They did the best job that they could.Squall line tornadoes are hard to detect we can't be putting tornado warning on every rotation in a squall line because that would be overkill.I would like to get your thoughts on this.

 

[Warren Faidley]

Same old story.

People don't pay any attention to the weather until it kills someone or wrecks something. Not the NWS's fault.

W.

 

[John Olexa]

Doppler radar had to at least show rotation, right? Don't they issue Tornado warnings then? Here they make sure they say its a "Doppler indicated tornado" Having said that though, I must say people sadly have started treating Doppler indicated tornado warnings like a watch.

 

[Jason Myers]

The tornado was on the ground for one minute between scans of the KILN NEXRAD. The only radar that caught it was TDAY, dayton TDWR. It was there and gone in 1 scan, so it was easily missed. I was watching closely as it came through and never noticed it. The tornado was a QLCS so the rotation was there and gone very quickly. If there was any indication before the tornado there would have been a warning.

 

[George Tincher]

Situations such as these are the reason why the NWS often uses the statement "severe thunderstorms can and occasionally do produce tornadoes" within their severe thunderstorm warnings. Weak spin-ups such as these from a QLCS can form and dissipate in the blink of an eye. So even when the network of phased array radars (which have much quicker scan cycles) are in place across the country at some point in the future, there will still be some of these spin-ups that get missed. Some of them develop and dissipate so quickly that they are gone by the time a warning can be prepared and issued, even if they are detected.

Do you happen to know if a severe thunderstorm warning was in place for the segment of the line in question? More often than not, that seems to be the case with QCLS spin-ups. It is unfortunate that people are sometimes injured or killed by these type of brief, weak, spin-ups because simply taking basic severe thunderstorm precautions would save them in most cases. But in far too many cases, the general public views it as "only a severe thunderstorm" and doesn't take the threat severe storms can pose seriously. It is what it is. I certainly can't place any blame on the NWS when examples such as these occur. The NWS can't hold our hands and make us seek shelter in the interior portion of a sturdy structure. That responsibility is ours.

 

[Mike C]

What's the time between scans...3-5 minutes depending on the radar station? A radar station is not like Ash from Pokemon, it just doesn't catch them all.

 

[Drue Bernardi]

This is today's society.

The times the NWS gets it right, people ignore the warnings or they heed them but never say "Hey NWS, thanks for giving us the heads up before that tornado flattened the hell out of our town!" Instead they whine that the warnings interrupt their day or local stations have to interrupt their show.

Then the ONE time the NWS gets it wrong out of LITERALLY HUNDREDS TO THOUSANDS OF TIMES they jump all over them with "YOU SHOULD HAVE WARNED US!!"

Freakin' Muggles I swear.