Brandon Clement
EF4
Being located in the south I can relate to a lot of what is said in this thread but I also have a different take that isn't mentioned.
My first trip to Kansas we were on this massive cell outside of Concordia, Ks. While chasing we had a local radio station on and they were basically covering the event in real time. This massive rotating wall cloud was not tornado warned because the NWS knew 100% for a fact it was not producing a tornado. The second a funnel started lowering a tornado warning went out and the guy on the radio reported the funnel in real time. It was almost like he was a color analist giving a play by play from the 50 yardline of this cell. Their must have been a thousand chasers out on this storm and some of the streets looked like a parade with cars parked up and down each side. The cell had a huge hail core, a big dry slot and very defined wall the entire time. This was also visible for many miles. I was extremely impressed with the amount of chasers, the structure of the storm and the coordination between chasers, spotter, the NWS and the public. The storm that day was moving about 25mph.
Fast forward to chasing in the south. I was sitting in Greenville, Ms about 2pm when the first cell was chugging along and became tor warned in N. La about to cross over into Ar. We positioned for an intercept just west of Lake Village, Ar and there was a sheriff and a couple volunteer fire guys spotting from the lone intersection for 15 miles. The storm came over and did not have a tornado down but had been warned for an hour. However, it did have a wall cloud with rapid rotation and easily the best structure I have ever seen in the south. We watched the storm until it moved a few miles to the north before rerouting to try and catch it on the other side of the river. The radio station had good solid reports and knew exactly what was going on with it as it moved north of Greenville. When I crossed the river I was flying up the delta through these mostly empty highways and never could catch up to it even though I could see just about everything from the trailing position. We finally gave up when we hit the trees in central Ms because we couldn't catch it, it was getting dark and the trees would likely obstruct our view. At this point it had moved through about 9 counties with a tornado warning on it and was warned for several straight hours. The only tornado report from the storm was uncomfirmed with no damage, likely a sherifnado in far SE Ar.
This storm was moving 60mph, 150 miles from the nearest big city and on the edge of 3 television viewing areas. NWS in Shreveport, Jackson, Little Rock and Memphis all issued warnings and likely had no idea what was happening on the ground for 95% of its span. Once it got in the trees in central Ms nobody knows what is going on. Spotters have to get extremely lucky and just happen to be in the right place at the right time. There were well over 1000 tornado warnings issued for this outbreak yet there were 70 reported tornadoes, many of these we are finding out were long tracked tornadoes and multiple reports for the same tornado. This means the NWS is getting 4-6% of the warnings right and this was on a historic outbreak were the storms were actually producing tornadoes.
I read somewhere that the national average the NWS was batting 10% but on the plains and the caprock area it is much higher because eyes and ears are on the ground. In the south it is probrably between 1-4% because they issue tornado warnings for every storm that shows weak rotation. In the south storms are usually moving much faster, they happen more often than not at night or very late evening, the terrain consists of trees and hills so it is common to be a half mile from a major tornado and you would simply never know it. In Ms it seems like we get as many tornado warnings between 10pm and 6am as we do the rest of the day combined. So now you have weather radios that are going off non stop in the middle of the night, they are wrong 96% of the time, 95% of the time they are going off because of warning in another county, 75% of the time when they go off and it is for the county you actually live in the storm is in part of the county that doesn't impact you and this doesn't even take into consideration severe thunderstorm warnings, flash flood watches, severe thunderstorm watches, flast flood warnings and other NWS warnings.
So if you have a weather radio that goes off in the middle of the night several times a month and it was only right about tornadoes in your area about .005% of the time would you keep it on? Of course most of us would and most of us would not because we are scared but instead curious. The average person isn't going to sacrifice a night of sleep when they hear 1000 tornado warnings without ever having a tornado impact their general area.
It may sound like I'm bashing the NWS but I'm not. It is simply a catch 22. If they don't issue the warning and a tornado does hit then more people may die as a result and they look bad on national television. I have seen some pretty weak couplets produce a tornado in the south. The killer tornado in Alabama this past week is a perfect example, it had a good solid couplet for two or three frames but the radar image wasn't that exciting yet it put down a EF-3 killing several people.
In the south storms are usually rain wrapped, not visible because of tall trees combined with low LCL's, embedded supercells, at night and moving fast. The NWS doesn't have the eyes on the ground and has know idea what is really happening, many of the storms aren't classic looking on radar and if it wasn't for velocity scans it would be impossible to determine which storms are rotating. They have to blow the horn everytime something starts showing signs of rotation and they are wrong so often that people ignore the warnings. Tornado warnings during a squall line is nothing uncommon here so even I turn the radio off when I go to sleep as a squall line is approaching.
If someone has the actual statistics of the number of warnings compared to verified tornadoes I am willing to bet central Ms is somewhere around the 3% mark at best and it is at least three times lower than the national average. Again, to no fault of the NWS.
Let me ask you this. If there was a high risk day in Kansas that produced 50+ tornadoes and a lot of people were out chasing how many videos and pics of tornadoes would you expect to see that night? Notice nobody has a good video of any of these tornadoes? Some have bried video sightings but for the most part most people struck out, myself included. Do you think this would have happened outside of Childress or Wichita?
My first trip to Kansas we were on this massive cell outside of Concordia, Ks. While chasing we had a local radio station on and they were basically covering the event in real time. This massive rotating wall cloud was not tornado warned because the NWS knew 100% for a fact it was not producing a tornado. The second a funnel started lowering a tornado warning went out and the guy on the radio reported the funnel in real time. It was almost like he was a color analist giving a play by play from the 50 yardline of this cell. Their must have been a thousand chasers out on this storm and some of the streets looked like a parade with cars parked up and down each side. The cell had a huge hail core, a big dry slot and very defined wall the entire time. This was also visible for many miles. I was extremely impressed with the amount of chasers, the structure of the storm and the coordination between chasers, spotter, the NWS and the public. The storm that day was moving about 25mph.
Fast forward to chasing in the south. I was sitting in Greenville, Ms about 2pm when the first cell was chugging along and became tor warned in N. La about to cross over into Ar. We positioned for an intercept just west of Lake Village, Ar and there was a sheriff and a couple volunteer fire guys spotting from the lone intersection for 15 miles. The storm came over and did not have a tornado down but had been warned for an hour. However, it did have a wall cloud with rapid rotation and easily the best structure I have ever seen in the south. We watched the storm until it moved a few miles to the north before rerouting to try and catch it on the other side of the river. The radio station had good solid reports and knew exactly what was going on with it as it moved north of Greenville. When I crossed the river I was flying up the delta through these mostly empty highways and never could catch up to it even though I could see just about everything from the trailing position. We finally gave up when we hit the trees in central Ms because we couldn't catch it, it was getting dark and the trees would likely obstruct our view. At this point it had moved through about 9 counties with a tornado warning on it and was warned for several straight hours. The only tornado report from the storm was uncomfirmed with no damage, likely a sherifnado in far SE Ar.
This storm was moving 60mph, 150 miles from the nearest big city and on the edge of 3 television viewing areas. NWS in Shreveport, Jackson, Little Rock and Memphis all issued warnings and likely had no idea what was happening on the ground for 95% of its span. Once it got in the trees in central Ms nobody knows what is going on. Spotters have to get extremely lucky and just happen to be in the right place at the right time. There were well over 1000 tornado warnings issued for this outbreak yet there were 70 reported tornadoes, many of these we are finding out were long tracked tornadoes and multiple reports for the same tornado. This means the NWS is getting 4-6% of the warnings right and this was on a historic outbreak were the storms were actually producing tornadoes.
I read somewhere that the national average the NWS was batting 10% but on the plains and the caprock area it is much higher because eyes and ears are on the ground. In the south it is probrably between 1-4% because they issue tornado warnings for every storm that shows weak rotation. In the south storms are usually moving much faster, they happen more often than not at night or very late evening, the terrain consists of trees and hills so it is common to be a half mile from a major tornado and you would simply never know it. In Ms it seems like we get as many tornado warnings between 10pm and 6am as we do the rest of the day combined. So now you have weather radios that are going off non stop in the middle of the night, they are wrong 96% of the time, 95% of the time they are going off because of warning in another county, 75% of the time when they go off and it is for the county you actually live in the storm is in part of the county that doesn't impact you and this doesn't even take into consideration severe thunderstorm warnings, flash flood watches, severe thunderstorm watches, flast flood warnings and other NWS warnings.
So if you have a weather radio that goes off in the middle of the night several times a month and it was only right about tornadoes in your area about .005% of the time would you keep it on? Of course most of us would and most of us would not because we are scared but instead curious. The average person isn't going to sacrifice a night of sleep when they hear 1000 tornado warnings without ever having a tornado impact their general area.
It may sound like I'm bashing the NWS but I'm not. It is simply a catch 22. If they don't issue the warning and a tornado does hit then more people may die as a result and they look bad on national television. I have seen some pretty weak couplets produce a tornado in the south. The killer tornado in Alabama this past week is a perfect example, it had a good solid couplet for two or three frames but the radar image wasn't that exciting yet it put down a EF-3 killing several people.
In the south storms are usually rain wrapped, not visible because of tall trees combined with low LCL's, embedded supercells, at night and moving fast. The NWS doesn't have the eyes on the ground and has know idea what is really happening, many of the storms aren't classic looking on radar and if it wasn't for velocity scans it would be impossible to determine which storms are rotating. They have to blow the horn everytime something starts showing signs of rotation and they are wrong so often that people ignore the warnings. Tornado warnings during a squall line is nothing uncommon here so even I turn the radio off when I go to sleep as a squall line is approaching.
If someone has the actual statistics of the number of warnings compared to verified tornadoes I am willing to bet central Ms is somewhere around the 3% mark at best and it is at least three times lower than the national average. Again, to no fault of the NWS.
Let me ask you this. If there was a high risk day in Kansas that produced 50+ tornadoes and a lot of people were out chasing how many videos and pics of tornadoes would you expect to see that night? Notice nobody has a good video of any of these tornadoes? Some have bried video sightings but for the most part most people struck out, myself included. Do you think this would have happened outside of Childress or Wichita?
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