Josh Frank
EF0
Which storms have you seen that you think were either overrated or underrated?
Overrated/Underrated Storms
- Thread starter Josh Frank
- Start date
Ethan Schisler
EF5
I think this is all subjective to the chasers experience? A single storm that a chaser had very good/close positioning on will obviously foster up a different experience than another person (on the same storm) from a completely far away position. Even brief tornadoes can be dramatic if you are positioned up close and personal with them (not advised unless you know what you are doing). And that would obviously be a much richer experience than someone that was watching the storm from 5 miles away. Not to mention that I don't think unless you were actually there to view the event, could you make a judgement call on whether a storm was over-rated or under-rated. So I guess I'm confused on what the question is here? lol.
Jason Young
EF2
may 9 2016. sulphur tornado
may 16 2015 Tipton tornado
may 3 1999 Orlando tornado
may 16 2015 Tipton tornado
may 3 1999 Orlando tornado
James Wilson
EF5
Exactly ... I saw the Lee Summit tornado last July from about 0.15 miles away and it roared much louder than you would think for a weaker tornado. To me that was one of my favorites but most people being further back through it was a birdfart.
Brad Dormer
EF1
April 27th, Omaha, underrated, no local mets said anything about even isolated tornadoes and we were BARELY in the slight risk.
Royce Sheibal
EF3
I was in North Dakota for work that day or I'd have been on that storm, totally. I had put out forecasts for a tornado threat on my lame Facebook page for my friends, both that day and the tornado day before in Lincoln. The SPC and local NWS have really dropped the ball so far this season on what were clearly decent days with a noteworthy tornado risk.
Brad Dormer
EF1
Yeah, I can't really trust them anymore, especially in my area (20 south of Omaha) I believe the first 5 days of May every single tornado warning in Nebraska was for a confirmed tornado, some large, some small and the highest rating was an EF-2 in my county. Then there was an EF-1 near my birth town (Chapman, NE) the day after that I believe. I don't know but you're right about them dropping the ball.
Actually the Omaha NWS office mentioned the possibility of low topped supercells in the discussion the night before. They also had a graphic out on their homepage that said isolated tornadoes. I remember this very clearly as I was going to go out chasing that day in Southwest Iowa before plans fell through. Also Bill Randby from KETV talked about conditional severe weather threat if there was enough clearing.
The tornado watchbox was issued for one row of counties over from eastern Nebraska so in other words, the width of the Missouri River away from Omaha. And watch text always says "in and close to the watch area". Lastly, who cares if we were "BARELY" in the slight risk. This was a slight risk day based on reports etc. Why would they have had it any higher? The cutoff has to be somewhere between slight and marginal, so why would they put the slight risk way west of Omaha just to make it look like Omaha was in the slight risk "more". If your city is in the slight risk area, it's a slight risk whether you're in the middle of the graphic or near the edge.
With the storms near Lincoln and Nehawka, all you had to do was look at the mesoanalysis from that afternoon. It showed like 20 kts of bulk shear and under 100 kts of SRH. No wonder nobody thought there would be tornadoes that afternoon. Apparently there was some kind of outflow boundary, that caused stuff to spin more than anyone could have predicted that day.
I know there are instances where weather forecasters "drop the ball", but to me these aren't great examples. Just my opinion though....
Royce Sheibal
EF3
The SPC had actually nailed the Lincoln area event really well. Local stations, however, interpreted a 5% TOR day as no risk of TORs, and multiple stations had focused on the risk of hail and only hail. The general public had no idea there was a TOR threat and got caught by surprise, not just by the tornadoes, but the crazy size of the hail. Storms went severe quite fast that day and the watches and warnings didn't come out for folks until it was far too late to realize what was going on. Both the SPC and NWS were more reactive than proactive, IMO.
The Omaha event was just not well forecasted by the SPC, who didn't add Omaha into the 2% until the 1630 Day 1 update. Some models had pulled the dry-slot quickly into Omaha, but it lagged behind and storms went up with basically no warning to the public that there would even be any storms at all. SPC dropped a TOR watch on the wrong side of the river at 230, I told my friends via Facebook to watch out for TORs in Omaha at 300, and Tornado drops at 345 with no one having any idea what is going on. Being 'close to the watch box' means nothing as it doesn't activate phone notifications, which are based on your county, not proximity to a box on TV.
Neither of these events were hard to forecast, even with mesoscale considerations, as the Lincoln event had several models indicating pretty decent STP values, and the Omaha event, whilst not consistent across all models, was reliably being predicted by high-res models, but everyone seemed to listen to one model like it was gospel that day.
Moral of the story: Don't downlplay 5% days, and don't believe dryline locations based on one model. Having been chasing in Nebraska for 12 years now, those are both things you have to learn very quickly to chase here.
The Omaha event was just not well forecasted by the SPC, who didn't add Omaha into the 2% until the 1630 Day 1 update. Some models had pulled the dry-slot quickly into Omaha, but it lagged behind and storms went up with basically no warning to the public that there would even be any storms at all. SPC dropped a TOR watch on the wrong side of the river at 230, I told my friends via Facebook to watch out for TORs in Omaha at 300, and Tornado drops at 345 with no one having any idea what is going on. Being 'close to the watch box' means nothing as it doesn't activate phone notifications, which are based on your county, not proximity to a box on TV.
Neither of these events were hard to forecast, even with mesoscale considerations, as the Lincoln event had several models indicating pretty decent STP values, and the Omaha event, whilst not consistent across all models, was reliably being predicted by high-res models, but everyone seemed to listen to one model like it was gospel that day.
Moral of the story: Don't downlplay 5% days, and don't believe dryline locations based on one model. Having been chasing in Nebraska for 12 years now, those are both things you have to learn very quickly to chase here.
Ryan Pfeifer
EF0
- Joined
- May 22, 2007
- Messages
- 41
IIRC, one of the OAX forecast discussions made it sound like they basically called up the SPC to say "Hey, there's a decent risk of mini-supercells; you should probably put a slight risk up here"
Shane Adams
That we as chasers feel we're qualified to "rate" tornadoes is just another annoying aspect of this generation. It's not been good enough to see a tornado for a long time, because nobody has to work for it anymore. That leaves room to start judging Nature's "performance' and whether or not it was worthy of our time and (most importantly) investment. Chasers today are simply spoiled rotten brats who have it so damn easy that nothing's good enough anymore.
Once in a blue moon I'll see a chaser lamenting about "busting" and I'm always like "Good. That's the best thing for you."
Once in a blue moon I'll see a chaser lamenting about "busting" and I'm always like "Good. That's the best thing for you."
Jeff House
Supporter
Agree we chasers really cannot rate tornadoes. We can only reflect on our personal favorites. Nothing wrong there!
May 24, 2008 is one of my favorite chases in north-central Oklahoma. Previous days had produced some gems in Kansas, including Quinter. However May 24 does not get much discussion.
Cyclical supercell dropped multiple tornadoes in Kingfisher and Garfield Counties, OK on May 24, 2008. We had based out of Wichita but a large MCS in Kansas caused problems on the triple point. Outflow had dropped into northern Oklahoma. Upper shear was still adequate that far south. We saw three of four good cycles before the supercell went HP and into jungle east of I-35. First cycle we arrived a little late, seeing it rope out from a distance. After what felt like an eternity, Cycle 2 was a nice elephant trunk. Cycle 3 was a cone and later stovepipe. Cycle 4 became a rather large wedge eventually wrapped in rain. It was a nice conclusion to the chase trip with light chaser convergence.
May 24, 2008 is one of my favorite chases in north-central Oklahoma. Previous days had produced some gems in Kansas, including Quinter. However May 24 does not get much discussion.
Cyclical supercell dropped multiple tornadoes in Kingfisher and Garfield Counties, OK on May 24, 2008. We had based out of Wichita but a large MCS in Kansas caused problems on the triple point. Outflow had dropped into northern Oklahoma. Upper shear was still adequate that far south. We saw three of four good cycles before the supercell went HP and into jungle east of I-35. First cycle we arrived a little late, seeing it rope out from a distance. After what felt like an eternity, Cycle 2 was a nice elephant trunk. Cycle 3 was a cone and later stovepipe. Cycle 4 became a rather large wedge eventually wrapped in rain. It was a nice conclusion to the chase trip with light chaser convergence.
Marc R. O'Leary
EF5
I've had more "better/fun" days sans tornados than with. Its all just in one's perspective.
