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Severe weather threat 4/23/26 (Central/Southern Plains)

Muwx said:
I think yesterday was pretty obviously more than a conditional strong tornado threat though. They have been putting cig 1 tors on crashing cold fronts…. Yesterday was in a completely different universe but they both still got cig 1. Doesn’t add up.
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Also fair, but yesterday was definitely a strong tornado threat conditional on storms forming. I posted in this thread either the day before or two days before that I felt like the SPC was significantly downplaying the risk for this system so I do understand your point
 
jiharris0220 said:
Perhaps, but theres been plenty of CMU foundations that have been rated ef4 before.
Obviously it’s old construction, but of course we won’t know how much of that will come into play until the engineers surveys it.
All of the other slabbed homes in the subdivision further southwest have around an equal chance of a low ef4 rating.
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CMU isn't my main concern. It's that it's part CMU and part masonry.

A masonry foundation is about the weakest foundation possible, short of a pier and beam w/ no anchoring, a home on stilts, or nothing at all (small cabin or mobile home).
 
On one hand, people arguing that yesterday’s forecast was bad really need to make sure they fundamentally understand how this system works before making such claims otherwise it renders them off base.
On the other hand, the fact that people, (even well informed weather enthusiasts) need to have such a deep understanding just to make sense of how the CIG systems works points to an obvious flaw with the system itself in terms of clear communication.
For a system to be good, it needs to be easy to interpret and communicate to the public, if it fails to do this, no matter how good it is in practice, it’s a bad system.
This isn’t a slamming of the SPC or NWS, but it’s quite clear at this point that when this many people are confused and so much has to be explained regarding the CIG risks, the system definitely needs a lot of fine tuning.
 
TH2002 said:
CMU isn't my main concern. It's that it's part CMU and part masonry.

A masonry foundation is about the weakest foundation possible, short of a pier and beam w/ no anchoring, a home on stilts, or nothing at all (small cabin or mobile home).
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It really depends, if the blocks are filled with concrete and have anchor bots installed in them, it can at least match standard construction.
But yes, in most cases the blocks are hollow and just stacked together with concrete as the adhesive, which effectively makes the house a slider or mobile home literally just sitting on top of a basement letting gravity do the “anchoring”.
 
jiharris0220 said:
It really depends, if the blocks are filled with concrete and have anchor bots installed in them, it can at least match standard construction.
But yes, in most cases the blocks are hollow and just stacked together with concrete as the adhesive, which effectively makes the house a slider or mobile home literally just sitting on top of a basement letting gravity do the “anchoring”.
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To clarify, when I say "masonry foundation" I'm referring to a brick or stone foundation. Like this:
1fc6mblsrpgb1.jpg


Concrete block/CMU foundations can indeed be made almost as strong as a traditional poured concrete basement, especially if properly filled/reinforced, and the home's sill plates are anchored.

But since CMU literally stands for "concrete masonry unit", I see where that could be confusing. But by "masonry" vs "CMU", I'm referring to two distinct foundation types. I do think using the terms "brick foundation" or "stone foundation" would alleviate future confusion.
 
Muwx said:
That doesn’t really change my thought process. He says he wouldn’t have questioned anyone who went cig2, you say anyone who questions cig 1 is unintelligent.

Also, if we’re just going to reply on what STP says… what’s the point of human Mets. Most draw up the STP criteria and call it a day.
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Am I misremembering? I was looking at mesoscale analysis all day throughout the event and VTP were up to 20 while STP were peaking around 10 to 12.
 
TH2002 said:
To clarify, when I say "masonry foundation" I'm referring to a brick or stone foundation. Like this:
1fc6mblsrpgb1.jpg


Concrete block/CMU foundations can indeed be made almost as strong as a traditional poured concrete basement, especially if properly filled/reinforced, and the home's sill plates are anchored.

But since CMU literally stands for "concrete masonry unit", I see where that could be confusing. But by "masonry" vs "CMU", I'm referring to two distinct foundation types. I do think using the terms "brick foundation" or "stone foundation" would alleviate future confusion.
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Ah, gotcha.
And looking further, it appears apart of the flooring that was “attached” to the foundation of this home was displaced downstream.
So it seems this house was most certainly a slider. Definitely no ef4 DI here.
 
Muwx said:
That doesn’t really change my thought process. He says he wouldn’t have questioned anyone who went cig2, you say anyone who questions cig 1 is unintelligent.

Also, if we’re just going to reply on what STP says… what’s the point of human Mets. Most draw up the STP criteria and call it a day.
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I'm saying that anyone who complains about yesterday's tornadoes being in a 10% CIG1 should really focus their priorities elsewhere and yes, are not really thinking very critically/intelligently. You're saying it was obvious that an EF3+ would happen yesterday? Well, no it actually wasn't. IMO the thermodynamic environment was in question especially regarding LCL heights in some models and even some observations in N OK.

Now, if you're criticizing the overuse of CIG1 with more marginal threats, that I agree with.
 
andyhb said:
I'm saying that anyone who complains about yesterday's tornadoes being in a 10% CIG1 should really focus their priorities elsewhere and yes, are not really thinking very critically/intelligently. You're saying it was obvious that an EF3+ would happen yesterday? Well, no it actually wasn't. IMO the thermodynamic environment was in question especially regarding LCL heights in some models and even some observations in N OK.

Now, if you're criticizing the overuse of CIG1 with more marginal threats, that I agree with.
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Regardless of how obviously or not favorable the environment was yesterday, the main point here is that this current system is simply too confusing to be reliable. Hell, even meteorologist agree that it’s too discombobulated.
 
I think an EF4 rating for the Enid tornado is for sure a likely. The contextual damage is high end and with how good Norman’s surveys have been, I wouldn’t be surprised at all to see an EF4. Unsure about EF5 though with the information we currently have.
 
US_Highway15 said:
Hot take: Even if the SPC came up with the perfect forecast, we still end up with the same amount of injuries.
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Also to add on: I don't understand the logic of dunking on the SPC whenever an event like this happens. It's so, so easy to Monday morning QB a forecast when you see the results.

Should the SPC have faced backlash for only having a Moderate Risk in place when one of the most deadly tornadoes in modern history touched down in Joplin? I don't think so. They only go by what they're presented with. That's forecasting. It's a forecast, not a crystal ball that says, "X Y and Z will happen."

It's moments like this, when I'm so so happy that I decided to deactivate my Twitter so I can avoid reading so many nonsensical comments from people who say stuff that they wouldn't dare say to a forecaster's face.
 
US_Highway15 said:
Also to add on: I don't understand the logic of dunking on the SPC whenever an event like this happens. It's so, so easy to Monday morning QB a forecast when you see the results.

Should the SPC have faced backlash for only having a Moderate Risk in place when one of the most deadly tornadoes in modern history touched down in Joplin? I don't think so. They only go by what they're presented with. That's forecasting. It's a forecast, not a crystal ball that says, "X Y and Z will happen."

It's moments like this, when I'm so so happy that I decided to deactivate my Twitter so I can avoid reading so many nonsensical comments from people who say stuff that they wouldn't dare say to a forecaster's face.
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Agreed, 100%. We can disagree with their forecasts and the specifics of their interpretation of the data and I think this is a great place to do that but to act like a CIG 1 vs a CIG 2 would have saved lives is a little silly. Ive lived in Oklahoma my whole life and the local mets do a great job translating the big picture idea and the severity of various threats to the public. Yesterday the messaging was not everybody is going to get storms but if you do it could be a bad one so the point definitely got across.
 
TornadoFan said:
Well it's a good thing that the rest of the dryline didn't unzip down the rest of Oklahoma last night. It could have been so much worse.
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yeah the composite parameters were even more extreme when you got down to the area west of OKC, could've been really really bad if storms were able to go and sustain themselves down there.
 
slenker said:
Interestingly enough, in the KPAC livestream I was watching of the aerial video of damage, much of the comments I saw were "nothing here says EF4" and whatnot (there were a lot of EF5 people too) which was pretty jarring to me, to say the least. Contextuals such as this simply do not come from an EF3 caliber tornado, that's pretty absurd.
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There seems to be an implicit mental condition wherein many intense tornadoes are either an EF3 or an EF5 of Moore or Smithville etc level intensity. Like, nothing in between. Of course, many tornadoes have gotten the EF4 rating but you get my point, hopefully, which is that we seem to act like there is no such thing as a low-end EF5 per se.

I'm not commenting specifically on the Enid tornado.
 
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