I suspect this will continue to pose PR nightmares for the foreseeable future: https://www.washingtonpost.com/weat...mpany-tornado-warning-that-can-be-problematic I worked for a private company, and I believe in what they do. The issue is when these warnings and forecasts are sent to their clients, and are not really intended for public consumption. Or in the case of Maryland, it creates nothing but confusion for many people cause they have no idea where that warning is coming from. If it were an NWS warning, the WEA messaging would be activated. It'll be interesting to see how this continues to evolve. Especially if the AccuWeather CEO is confirmed to lead NOAA...
Interesting article. As someone that is still with a private company, I do think that a place like AW (since they are used in this example) issuing their own tornado warnings can only lead to the opportunity for conflicting information, and as you say, just can make things more confusing. I understand that you want to add some value for your clients, but I think there are different ways to go about it. I think the way my company goes about things is a nice middle ground. We only alert for tornado warnings issued by the NWS, so we avoid having drastically different information, but do phone consultations as part of that alerting so that we can still add value and give them more specific information for their exact location that may only be broad-brushed within the warning itself. That said, there are also times that you will have clients that- if you feel like the NWS may be off on something- they want you to stick your neck out and say why you think X is more likely to occur than Y and Z. This doesn't really happen for us when it comes to severe weather, but for tropical forecasting and winter weather forecasting, it is something that we have to address at times. But for the most part, these also tend to be days-out type of forecasts, and not so much for real-time forecasting.
It's certainly tough. My old company did things similarly. We would provide alerts for thunderstorms, but never tornado alerts. We either made them aware of the tornadic threat, if any, or called when the NWS issued one. The private sector has a lot to add that the NWS can't do, or shouldn't even attempt to do. Doesn't make me like AW at all, however.
Massive tornado in Ottawa and Gatineau, Canada. https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2018/09/21/tornado-touches-down-in-ottawa-and-gatineau-que.html
Yeah, the next few days are gonna suck. I'm hoping we stay a bit too warm, we'll see. We were 85 yesterday...
Shit I'd take 85. We were 50s. Dropping to the 30s- low 40s for the next two weeks is going to be great.
Most recent SPC discussion mentioned a few things that prevented an upgrade to a moderate risk. Particularly extensive cloud cover right now. Still, pretty impressive shear parameters and overall dynamics today. Will be interesting to see how it evolves
I know officially the 1999-2007 drought is the longest but the Franklin/Girard, KS tornado on 5/4/03 was an F5 and there's nothing anyone can say to change my mind about that. Meaning as far as i'm concerned we are in the longest F5/EF5 drought since 1950.
The Vilonia, AR tornado of 4/27/14 was probably one too but unfortunately the homes it swept away were apparently made of balsa wood so they couldn't give it the EF5 designation.
Think the train tracks being ripped up, and the combines being turned in to balls made me think possible EF5
Eh. I’ve never seen a single damage photo of anything swept away. I can see why it got the EF-4. That day I think the Ringgold, GA tornado was absolutely an EF-5. Flat Rock and Cordova, AL tornadoes probably were too.
I was looking at the spc stats for the year and for June it shows the month of June having a preliminary of 166 but actual at 30. That seems like a crazy difference. Are they still trying to confirm some or something. I don't think I've ever seen that type of difference.
If ends up around 400 through June, do you know where that would rank in lowest total through that time?
SPC outlook has “multiple, discrete tornadic supercells” targeting NW Missouri and central Iowa around peak heating.