Severe Weather Threat 5/25-5/26, 2024

[Jellyroll]

I'm MAD. This was in NWS Fort Worth's CWA. They didn't upgrade the tornado warning for at least half an hour. Shame on them.
And no, I don't care if the general public doesn't understand between 'radar-indicated', 'radar-confirmed' and 'PDS'. If that's true then why issue them to begin with?

I'm mad as well but with my anger directed elsewhere. The "Gov" contracted radars for the NWS in the 80's. These radars were designed in the 70's. The contract was for a certain quantity with a few spares. As of the mid 2000's, no more spares exist. The NWS has done an amazing job updating the hardware and software for these 40-year-old radars but their capacity in terms of coverage and technology has pretty much been exhausted. No matter how talented the folks are at the NWS, in the case of a severe weather outbreaks, they have been hamstrung due to outdated and insufficient technology. Our fine military industrial complex has been cranking out far superior radar technology for 20 years, but sadly these great advances have not been granted by in large to our NWS folks. Not only are the NWS folks hampered by this, but since all the fancy screens and flashy blinkies we look at are from the NWS's feeds, our weather community as a whole is hampered as well. So, Kudos to the NWS folks as well as the spotters and professionals from this community for doing their level best, but if you feel rage at events such as this, send a nastygram to your congressman.

 

[Tomcats Forever!]

70 mph storm winds inbound to me (Louisville)

 

[rushdude]

Children among 7 dead in Texas after deadliest tornado since 2015

Children are among the victims of a tornado in Texas outside the Dallas-Fort Worth area overnight on Saturday, where at least seven were killed. This was the deadliest tornado in state history since 2015.

www.foxweather.com

Man…. Got hit hard

All these poor people - injured and killed - were planning on having a nice holiday weekend. Throwing burgers, steaks, and hot dogs on the grill, fishing, watch the hockey game.. and instead they have to deal with this.

My heart goes out to them

 

[Kds86z]

Looks like may is gonna beat April for tornado numbers. I gotta do research. See when April/may was this much active. Pushing close to 700 total confirmed.

 

[TornadoFan17]

Grandstands at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway have been evacuated due to the lightning threat.

Man today has got to be a logistical nightmare in Indy. I can't imagine trying to communicate and convey an evacuation plan to 200k+ people.

 

[TornadoFan17]

I'm MAD. This was in NWS Fort Worth's CWA. They didn't upgrade the tornado warning for at least half an hour. Shame on them.
And no, I don't care if the general public doesn't understand between 'radar-indicated', 'radar-confirmed' and 'PDS'. If that's true then why issue them to begin with?

You really seem to have some unbridled rage toward the NWS and everything associated with them. It sounds really childish.

I promise you they are doing the best they can with the tools they have.

 

[Tomcats Forever!]

Man today has got to be a logistical nightmare in Indy. I can't imagine trying to communicate and convey an evacuation plan to 200k+ people.

You should have seen the picture of thousands of people sheltering under the grandstands.... The *metal* grandstands

 

[Tempestas Tonitrua]

Wow. I Have a big plate of crow to eat today. Once again, things just went bananas very late. Just horrific what happened.

 

[Tempestas Tonitrua]

You really seem to have some unbridled rage toward the NWS and everything associated with them. It sounds really childish.

I promise you they are doing the best they can with the tools they have.

What? You couldn’t tell that between the posts trying to “talk” directly to the tornado. Where he was asking it to “please stop because the damage it was doing is shameful”? Or the 5000 posts in all caps lol. What about all the ones where he was up in arms over a tornado emergency not being called?

 

[jiharris0220]

You really seem to have some unbridled rage toward the NWS and everything associated with them. It sounds really childish.

I promise you they are doing the best they can with the tools they have.

I can’t stress this enough, people truly don’t realize how blessed we are to have agencies like the NWS, these people are responsible for all of the products weather enthusiasts use to live stream, make updates, and make forecasts.

If it wasn’t for the NWS, dozens to hundreds of people would die from every moderately significant outbreak.

These folks work under countless hours of extreme stress and uncertainty, wondering if they actually did everything right when people still end up dead despite all the warnings.

They do the best they can with the outdated and underfunded technology presented to them, meteorology is one of the hardest jobs on the planet and one of the most shat on too.

I have nothing but upmost respect to the NWS and it’s people despite their flaws, obviously nobody is without them.

 

[tornado examiner]

This is damage near Celina Texas...definitely strong

 

[Liberty4dayz]

So, I'm a lurker mainly. Sometimes post things but anyhoo.....

What's the thought for the Nashville area? Timing? Etc

 

[jiharris0220]

What? You couldn’t tell that between the posts trying to “talk” directly to the tornado. Where he was asking it to “please stop because what it’s doing is shameful”? Or the 5000 posts in all caps lol. What about all the ones where he was up in arms over a tornado emergency not being called?

You couldn’t imagine how much I had to hold my tongue being constantly bombarded with capital letters every 5 seconds. lol

 

[TornadoFan]

 

[Kds86z]

Got expanded southwest

 

[slenker]

I can’t stress this enough, people truly don’t realize how blessed we are to have agencies like the NWS, these people are responsible for all of the products weather enthusiasts use to live stream, make updates, and make forecasts.

If it wasn’t for the NWS, dozens to hundreds of people would die from every moderately significant outbreak.

These folks work under countless hours of extreme stress and uncertainty, wondering if they actually did everything right when people still end up dead despite all the warnings.

They do the best they can with the outdated and underfunded technology presented to them, meteorology is one of the hardest jobs on the planet and one of the most shat on too.

I have nothing but upmost respect to the NWS and it’s people despite their flaws, obviously nobody is without them.

Yea, and in a spring like this one? Of course they’re going to be working as hard as possible. The people working for the NWS are some of the smartest people on the planet, and of course they aren’t perfect, but they’re doing the best they can. For people to get this upset at them, they must be more qualified to work the job than the NWS forecasters, right?

 

[Maxis_s]

You really seem to have some unbridled rage toward the NWS and everything associated with them. It sounds really childish.

I promise you they are doing the best they can with the tools they have.

Despite all my issues with how the NWS operates, I don't have rage towards the entire thing. I can absolutely understand how hard their job is, and they are by far the best in the world at what they do, and second place doesn't come even close. Trust me, as a Canadian, I know how awful our warning systems are, especially compared to the NWS.
However, the office in Fort Worth had reports from storm spotters and EMS for a long time before the warning was confirmed. That's why I was so upset. Sure, the radar was noisy and it was very hard to discern anything, but when you have multiple reports from the ground, it's obvious you should upgrade it. Combined with a tornado emergency being issued over quite literally nothing the day prior, all the controversial inconsistencies with warnings between all the offices, and just being in a bad mood from other stuff, I ended up acting completely irrationally. I'm very sorry for that, still.

What? You couldn’t tell that between the posts trying to “talk” directly to the tornado. Where he was asking it to “please stop because what it’s doing is shameful”? Or the 5000 posts in all caps lol. What about all the ones where he was up in arms over a tornado emergency not being called?

Yeah, me typing in all caps and getting all worked up over this was really, really stupid of me. I get way too obsessed over this stuff; I'm a dumb weenie, probably not much better than the cesspit that is WXTwitter. It's hard for me to contextualize and understand that there's a team of people who are stressed as hell behind all the warnings being issued, especially when all I'm looking at myself is just colorful pixels on a screen.
And I was trying to "talk" to the tornado because I jinxed several times when warnings were issued, so I thought it would be funny to "talk" to the tornado and jinx it into suddenly dissipating, without reading the room or realizing that I was making a complete fool out of myself.

I'm mad as well but with my anger directed elsewhere. The "Gov" contracted radars for the NWS in the 80's. These radars were designed in the 70's. The contract was for a certain quantity with a few spares. As of the mid 2000's, no more spares exist. The NWS has done an amazing job updating the hardware and software for these 40-year-old radars but their capacity in terms of coverage and technology has pretty much been exhausted. No matter how talented the folks are at the NWS, in the case of a severe weather outbreaks, they have been hamstrung due to outdated and insufficient technology. Our fine military industrial complex has been cranking out far superior radar technology for 20 years, but sadly these great advances have not been granted by in large to our NWS folks. Not only are the NWS folks hampered by this, but since all the fancy screens and flashy blinkies we look at are from the NWS's feeds, our weather community as a whole is hampered as well. So, Kudos to the NWS folks as well as the spotters and professionals from this community for doing their level best, but if you feel rage at events such as this, send a nastygram to your congressman.

I agree. I wish I could send a message to some congessman but I'm from Canada, so... that's not happening until I move to the US.
At least OU is trying out the new Horus radar system, so that should hopefully change stuff.
A bit off-topic but, technically speaking, wouldn't it be difficult on the IEM servers to handle so many updates and scans with the new Horus radar, since it updates every few seconds? The scans are already 10mb+ each in file size, and getting possibly tens or hundreds of thousands of GET requests every second for those files has to have some sort of strain, both on the IEM server and radar apps if they begin polling/updating every few seconds instead of every 30 seconds to 1 minute.

I'm likely gonna try and just lurk for the next dew days or weeks rather than constantly talking unless I seriously have some questions or meaningful input to add, and I'm very sorry for completely ruining the quality of this thread.

 

[TH2002]

You couldn’t imagine how much I had to hold my tongue being constantly bombarded with capital letters every 5 seconds. lol

S I G T O R I N B I O

(sorry...)

 

[vanni9283]

EF3?

 

[Jellyroll]

Despite all my issues with how the NWS operates, I don't have rage towards the entire thing. I can absolutely understand how hard their job is, and they are by far the best in the world at what they do, and second place doesn't come even close. Trust me, as a Canadian, I know how awful our warning systems are, especially compared to the NWS.
However, the office in Fort Worth had reports from storm spotters and EMS for a long time before the warning was confirmed. That's why I was so upset. Sure, the radar was noisy and it was very hard to discern anything, but when you have multiple reports from the ground, it's obvious you should upgrade it. Combined with a tornado emergency being issued over quite literally nothing the day prior, all the controversial inconsistencies with warnings between all the offices, and just being in a bad mood from other stuff, I ended up acting completely irrationally. I'm very sorry for that, still.

Yeah, me typing in all caps and getting all worked up over this was really, really stupid of me. I get way too obsessed over this stuff; I'm a dumb weenie, probably not much better than the cesspit that is WXTwitter. It's hard for me to contextualize and understand that there's a team of people who are stressed as hell behind all the warnings being issued, especially when all I'm looking at myself is just colorful pixels on a screen.
And I was trying to "talk" to the tornado because I jinxed several times when warnings were issued, so I thought it would be funny to "talk" to the tornado and jinx it into suddenly dissipating, without reading the room or realizing that I was making a complete fool out of myself.

I agree. I wish I could send a message to some congessman but I'm from Canada, so... that's not happening until I move to the US.
At least OU is trying out the new Horus radar system, so that should hopefully change stuff.
A bit off-topic but, technically speaking, wouldn't it be difficult on the IEM servers to handle so many updates and scans with the new Horus radar, since it updates every few seconds? The scans are already 10mb+ each in file size, and getting possibly tens or hundreds of thousands of GET requests every second for those files has to have some sort of strain, both on the IEM server and radar apps if they begin polling/updating every few seconds instead of every 30 seconds to 1 minute.

I'm likely gonna try and just lurk for the next dew days or weeks rather than constantly talking unless I seriously have some questions or meaningful input to add, and I'm very sorry for completely ruining the quality of this thread.

Your question is a little off topic but folks would be happy to discuss in depth on other forums here. Suffice to say, you're stepping in the answer to your own question. Not only the radars need updating for the network / hardware / processing systems as a whole would need updating. OU has been testing the latest and greatest radar technology for decades but it seems that its only pocket change to the government so they can say "we're trying" "maybe you'll get full funding next year". One radar at OU does not an integrated network make. Just like everything else, substantive change only comes with substantive investment.