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Severe Weather 2023

CheeselandSkies said:
...or Dec. 2021 when a tornado emergency wasn't issued for Mayfield until it was a couple minutes, if that, from town. Although it's unlikely that any individual at home would have taken any action that they hadn't already for the "regular" tornado warning, perhaps with more lead time it might have jarred, say, the management at Mayfield Consumer Products into getting the staff into more adequate shelter.

It also appears some offices don't use the tornado emergency at all, "maxing out" with the PDS warning. On the flip side, we had the two TOREs issued in four days in Arkansas last April, neither of which were actually producing strong tornadoes. Although in at least one of those cases, the office received false/unreliable spotter reports.
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Yeah, I'm not really sure if enough people know what a tornado emergency vis-à-vis a normal tornado warning is for it to have the desired effect. I also don't know how you'd answer that question empirically though.
 
JPWX said:
I'd be interested to know what the criteria is if any for each office is for Tornado Emergencies. I know NWS Memphis didn't issue one for the Smithville, MS tornado during the Super Outbreak which honestly surprised me a little.
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Section 3.3.4.1 of the WFO SEVERE WEATHER PRODUCTS SPECIFICATION outlines the criteria for tornado emergency.
fde453db77bf5d5b396685886535092c.jpg



Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
KevinH said:
People need to know the difference.

Even if people do, a lot of people STILL want to play wait and see
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Hence all the people I know who, when a tornado warning gets issued, proceed to go outside in the middle of an unholy tempest and say "well if it's there I want to see it coming." There are, unfortunately, some things that cannot be fixed.
 
We can't fix those who do not want to respond correctly; no amount of education will change those people. That leaves us with only the ability to change what we can: a better education will help the rest, yes, but far more important is better message accuracy and better ways of ensuring your message is understood.

In my EmComm training one of the most harped-on aspects was to word your messages as simply as possible using terms with the least chance of being misunderstood. To those who are being hit by any tornado- even an EF0- it's a particularly dangerous situation to them as they see it, so they may not grasp the severity of a PDS message. Everyone knows that most tornado warnings are false alarms which does not help them understand a PDS, but everyone understands that an "emergency" is something which requires immediate full attention and probably an immediate response. The general populace is far more likely to understand the simple unambiguity of "emergency" versus the more complex and less clear "PDS".

The use of the phrase PDS needs to be reserved for those who will understated it correctly, and the use of the word emergency used for the rest. Even then it must be recognized that over-use of either is going to reduce it's meaning and impact on the receiver of the message. This is why the "Plainfield syndrome" has done more harm than good in keeping the people safe because they no longer believe warnings without additional confirmation, and rightly so.

Both the NWS response at Plainfield and their response afterward are equally wrong. You can say all you want to but unless somebody is listening you're wasting your efforts in speaking at all, and adding words or phrases isn't going to fix the problem.
 
Sawmaster said:
We can't fix those who do not want to respond correctly; no amount of education will change those people. That leaves us with only the ability to change what we can: a better education will help the rest, yes, but far more important is better message accuracy and better ways of ensuring your message is understood.

In my EmComm training one of the most harped-on aspects was to word your messages as simply as possible using terms with the least chance of being misunderstood. To those who are being hit by any tornado- even an EF0- it's a particularly dangerous situation to them as they see it, so they may not grasp the severity of a PDS message. Everyone knows that most tornado warnings are false alarms which does not help them understand a PDS, but everyone understands that an "emergency" is something which requires immediate full attention and probably an immediate response. The general populace is far more likely to understand the simple unambiguity of "emergency" versus the more complex and less clear "PDS".

The use of the phrase PDS needs to be reserved for those who will understated it correctly, and the use of the word emergency used for the rest. Even then it must be recognized that over-use of either is going to reduce it's meaning and impact on the receiver of the message. This is why the "Plainfield syndrome" has done more harm than good in keeping the people safe because they no longer believe warnings without additional confirmation, and rightly so.

Both the NWS response at Plainfield and their response afterward are equally wrong. You can say all you want to but unless somebody is listening you're wasting your efforts in speaking at all, and adding words or phrases isn't going to fix the problem.
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If you don't mind me asking, what is the Plainfield syndrome? Is that referring to the events in Arkansas regarding the Tor-Es last spring, or something else that I missed - or maybe I'm just misunderstanding. Thanks!
 
UK_EF4 said:
If you don't mind me asking, what is the Plainfield syndrome? Is that referring to the events in Arkansas regarding the Tor-Es last spring, or something else that I missed - or maybe I'm just misunderstanding. Thanks!
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In 1990, a F5 tornado hit Planfield IL. The NWS were well aware that the radar data clearly indicated a tornado, but lacking any visual confirmation they decided that a warning wasn't appropriate and they didn't issue a warning until ~5 minutes after it hit. Until that time, NWS policy wasn't really clear on this, but heavily leaned toward not warning without visual confirmation so as not to scare people into a panic without reason. There was widespread strong criticism of the NWS afterward about this decision, which prompted an executive review.

The result of that was to institute a policy of warning for every possible tornado when there was any credible evidence of it's existence, even if that was only a radar signature. Many people have criticized this as being an over-reaction and have labelled it as "The Plainfield Syndrome", better know perhaps as "crying wolf", but specific to weather warnings only.

Taken from THIS wikipedia article: "As a result of the lack of a warning, many meteorologists today refer to the "Plainfield Syndrome" as the idea that it's better to issue too many warnings and be wrong, than to miss one critical warning, as was the case for the Plainfield Tornado"

This has led to there being a large amount of tornado warnings being issued where there was no tornado existing, and has caused the general population to largely disregard tornado warnings from the NWS in toto unless they find what they feel is other credible evidence to go on.
 
Was not expecting to wake up to THIS...NWS local forecast for tomorrow as of yesterday was 40s and rain (Edit: And still is).

Storm Prediction Center May 31, 2025 1730 UTC Day 2 Convective Outlook

Severe weather, tornado, thunderstorm, fire weather, storm report, tornado watch, severe thunderstorm watch, mesoscale discussion, convective outlook products from the Storm Prediction Center.
www.spc.noaa.gov

MKX not sold per their AFD...DMX skeptical as well:

The HRRR and RAP solutions regarding instability on Monday have been
all the rage on social media since their domains reached that
period. Both are anomalously high on dew point temperatures with
values in the low to mid 50s into central Iowa and both tend to over
mix the boundary layer during stratus events. Other solutions are
more conservative on both temperatures and dew points and do not
overcome the warm wedge aloft. Sounding wind profiles do have
direction shear below 900 mb but whether that shear is acting on
surface based instability certainly is questionable. January
tornadoes have occurred on only one day in Iowa recorded history,
January 24, 1967 when 13 tornadoes occurred over the southeast
portion of the state. That event was followed up by a blizzard
with record snow accumulations over the state, thus a very strong
system. It often takes a historical type system such as Dec 15,
2021 when nearly 80 kts of flow was at 850 mb or below. The
majority of the time, stratus wins which leads to non- events. As
always, will need to monitor trends and will have a great
opportunity to do that over the next 24 hrs as the low matures and
we can get a better handle on how much moisture will reach the
state.
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Sawmaster said:
In 1990, a F5 tornado hit Planfield IL. The NWS were well aware that the radar data clearly indicated a tornado, but lacking any visual confirmation they decided that a warning wasn't appropriate and they didn't issue a warning until ~5 minutes after it hit. Until that time, NWS policy wasn't really clear on this, but heavily leaned toward not warning without visual confirmation so as not to scare people into a panic without reason. There was widespread strong criticism of the NWS afterward about this decision, which prompted an executive review.

The result of that was to institute a policy of warning for every possible tornado when there was any credible evidence of it's existence, even if that was only a radar signature. Many people have criticized this as being an over-reaction and have labelled it as "The Plainfield Syndrome", better know perhaps as "crying wolf", but specific to weather warnings only.

Taken from THIS wikipedia article: "As a result of the lack of a warning, many meteorologists today refer to the "Plainfield Syndrome" as the idea that it's better to issue too many warnings and be wrong, than to miss one critical warning, as was the case for the Plainfield Tornado"

This has led to there being a large amount of tornado warnings being issued where there was no tornado existing, and has caused the general population to largely disregard tornado warnings from the NWS in toto unless they find what they feel is other credible evidence to go on.
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Thanks for the explanation!
 
Sawmaster said:
In 1990, a F5 tornado hit Planfield IL. The NWS were well aware that the radar data clearly indicated a tornado, but lacking any visual confirmation they decided that a warning wasn't appropriate and they didn't issue a warning until ~5 minutes after it hit. Until that time, NWS policy wasn't really clear on this, but heavily leaned toward not warning without visual confirmation so as not to scare people into a panic without reason. There was widespread strong criticism of the NWS afterward about this decision, which prompted an executive review.

The result of that was to institute a policy of warning for every possible tornado when there was any credible evidence of it's existence, even if that was only a radar signature. Many people have criticized this as being an over-reaction and have labelled it as "The Plainfield Syndrome", better know perhaps as "crying wolf", but specific to weather warnings only.

Taken from THIS wikipedia article: "As a result of the lack of a warning, many meteorologists today refer to the "Plainfield Syndrome" as the idea that it's better to issue too many warnings and be wrong, than to miss one critical warning, as was the case for the Plainfield Tornado"

This has led to there being a large amount of tornado warnings being issued where there was no tornado existing, and has caused the general population to largely disregard tornado warnings from the NWS in toto unless they find what they feel is other credible evidence to go on.
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I think the “source” tags now being used in TORs (radar indicated/observed) was a step in the right direction since then, BUT the general public needs to know about the tags and know the difference.

You can lead a horse to water, but can’t make them drink.

I think there is an overall need for a revamp in several aspects of SVR wx (criteria/definition for PDS TOR/TORe, policy for sounding sirens and which tones to use for which hazard, defining an outbreak/outbreak sequence, moving to polygon based warnings instead of entire counties to avoid over warnings (some locations already do this), plugging up radar holes where additional coverage should be just to name a few.

Loosely defined terms and inconsistent policies across the country are going to create problems as time goes on. The NWS (and local govts) can’t do anything about how people choose to react to the info they put out, but they can change what info is shared and how, etc.

2023 (maybe just January alone?) could very well end up being a good “test run” to highlight the need to figure some of these out.
 
Interesting to hear about the "Plainfield syndrome," being from the upper Midwest it's one of the most talked-about tornadoes in weather geek circles around here. I always was under the impression that part of the problem was that with lacking WSR-88D at the time it was hard to be confident about any tornado signature with the very HP supercell, and also poor communication between the NWS Chicago office and the one in Rockford (which existed at the time) as the tornado tracked roughly along the boundary between their jurisdictions.

There are no known photos/video of the Plainfield tornado in progress (there is video of some funnel clouds that preceded it earlier in the supercell's life, when it was somewhat less HP). I'd posit that two very close visual and radar analogs for how it would have appeared are Joplin and the May 2019 Lawrence-Linwood, KS EF4.
 
JPWX said:
Well the 18z GFS has a very active southern jet and pattern through the end of the month with 4 additional storm systems including next week's. Each one of these will have potential for severe weather across you know Dixie Alley. Instability may be an issue but still as we have recently seen lack of instability was handled poorly by modeling.
View attachment 16892View attachment 16891View attachment 16890View attachment 16889
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Have we had January like this before? I'm really worried this is going to repeat during a more potentially volatile month. Can you imagine this happening in Febuary? March? April?
 
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Austin Dawg said:
Have we had January like this before? I'm really worried this is going to repeat during a more potentially volatile month. Can you imagine this in happening in Febuary? March? April?
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Let me do some checking and I'll get back to you.
 
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