Unconfirmed Tornadoes

[Marc Austin]

Has anyone experienced a situation in which you knew you were looking at a tornado on the ground, debris cloud and all, only to find out that there were no confirmed reports of the tornado that you witnessed? I would be interested to see how many of you have any photos/video of an unconfirmed "tornado". I have a couple of photos that I can post, but I will wait to see if anyone responds first. I also don't have them on the computer yet, so I need some time to size them.

 

[Jeff Snyder]

Has anyone experienced a situation in which you knew you were looking at a tornado on the ground, debris cloud and all, only to find out that there were no confirmed reports of the tornado that you witnessed? I would be interested to see how many of you have any photos/video of an unconfirmed "tornado". I have a couple of photos that I can post, but I will wait to see if anyone responds first. I also don't have them on the computer yet, so I need some time to size them.
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I'm always willing to submit video and photos to the NWS, and I'm particularly willing should there not be any sort of prelim tornado report. I do know that some tornadoes have been 'confirmed' by video/photo alone, so I'd imagine NWSFOs would love to see any photos or video that you have.

 

[Bob Schafer]

Heck yeah....happens all the time! I have several such vids that I took to the local NWSFO's that never showed up on reports. Don't care. I don't believe that the reports are worth much, and so what?

Bob

 

[S Klein]

Sorry to bump an old post, but this just recently happened to me, again on Thursday, and I wanted to see if anyone had brought it up here. I was thanked for my report and photos, but never heard back after that. Probably the most egregious was when I followed a storm in 2019 that was warned for a confirmed tornado, but the SPC listings later had no tornado reports from that area. People need to stop taking the NWS as gospel truth, I can point out numerous times they've completely messed up the tornado reports, like the time they listed a gustnado in the storm reports, or the time they missed 11 tornadoes a news crew was chasing.

 

[Ryan Schwartz]

I think reports get missed on bigger severe weather days comes down to staffing. Some reports just get forgotten about because of the volume coming into a NWS office. While you are out experiencing the weather, the NWS is receiving a verbal or written narrative of what is happening in a lot of cases. With that said, I think there are too many ways of reporting...1-800 NWS office number, ham radio, Facebook, Twitter, SN, mPing, NWS office website...and not all are checked equally. Spotter training sort of steers people away from using mPing, but these reports seem to show up on LSRs more often than not, usually outside my home WFO. I would like to see a universal method of reporting severe storms.

Not pointing fingers, just looking to make processes better/more efficient.

 

[Steve Frederick]

People need to stop taking the NWS as gospel truth, I can point out numerous times they've completely messed up the tornado reports, like the time they listed a gustnado in the storm reports, or the time they missed 11 tornadoes a news crew was chasing.

Amen

 

[Todd Lemery]

If they’re brief and don’t hit anything, don’t be surprised if they fail to be confirmed. Video or pics you take would help them do that, but I suspect not many people will do that for a low end twisty.

 

[Paul Lemery]

A group of us were chasing West of Fairview, OK on June 21, 2019, and as night fell, we stopped chasing on a hill to watch the storm move away from us. Far in the distance the storm appeared to put down three tornadoes at the same time yet there was no report. We did not report it either, as it was too far away for an accurate location and couldn't confirm they were on the ground. Here is a pic of the triplets.

 

[Jeff House]

If one truly does know which storm, probably better not to clutter the reports.

However if one knows at least which cell (esp a warned cell) NWS would probably like the report - even if delayed. They can match up the location with radar and check it out.