When four EF3 tornadoes carved up hundreds of miles of Alabama forest and neighborhoods on March 25, thousands of people ran to their safe places to escape the roiling, wedge-shaped beasts. Five people were killed and dozens more injured in the storms in Alabama. The same system also dropped Georgia’s first EF4 tornado in a…
Rating tornado warnings charts a path to improve forecasts
The United States experiences more tornadoes than any other country, with a season that peaks in spring or summer depending on the region. Tornadoes are often deadly, especially in places where buildings can’t withstand high winds. Accurate advanced warnings can save lives. A study from the University of Washington and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric…
Strange but true: Seattle NWS has issued more tornado warnings in 2020 than Wichita
SEATTLE — Here is another crazy weather statistic to toss into the pile in a year full of them: Our area is leading parts of Kansas in tornado warnings so far this year. WHAT??!? It’s true: The National Weather Service office in Seattle has issued 4 Tornado Warnings so far this year — even stranger,…
Report: One Alabama county leads nation for tornado warnings
2019 was an active year for tornadoes in Alabama, the most active in a while. And it was an active decade, too. It turns out that one Alabama county is No. 1 in the nation when it comes to tornado warnings, according to a report by The Washington Post. But first, a look back at…
Tornado Warnings Don’t Adequately Prepare Mobile Home Residents
Mobile homes are death traps in a tornado. And yet new research shows that residents across the southeastern United States, where mobile homes make up nearly 20% of the housing stock, don’t have the information or resources they need to safely respond to a twister. More than half of mobile home residents don’t know the…
Wyoming becoming tornado alley of the West
WYOMING – Is it global warming or something to do with climate change? Perhaps, but the fact remains tornado warnings in Wyoming are up. Way up. According to the National Weather Service, Wyoming has experienced 51 tornado warnings so far this year. That’s nearly triple the usual for a season. From 2006-2017, the state received…
Three tornadoes in three states, but no warnings. What happened?
One tornado tossed a car like a toy, another reduced buildings to rubble, a third shredded trees to splinters. Three recent tornadoes hit three different states — New York, Oklahoma, and Maryland — yet no tornado warnings were issued before any of the twisters touched down. Do we have a problem? The National Weather Service,…
Miami Springs cleaning up after early morning tornado damages homes, city park
Cleanup is underway in Miami Springs, where a tornado early Monday tore a swath of destruction from Ludlam Drive and Falcon all the way northeastward toward Peavy-Dove Park (across from Miami Springs Senior High School) before exiting into Hialeah. A monster weather system that wreaked havoc on the entire southeastern United States, spawning deadly tornados…
NOAA’s new satellite will finally pull weather forecasting technology out of the 1980s
Two Colorado companies are working together on the first major upgrade to the U.S. government’s weather observation instruments since the 1980s – and that means the forecast on your phone might get more accurate in the years ahead. “It’s pretty much been black and white images of clouds since the 1970s,” said Greg Mandt, National…
Five tornado warnings issued Sunday in East Idaho; one twister might have touched down
The National Weather Service issued multiple tornado warnings, severe thunderstorm warnings and special weather alerts Sunday afternoon and evening concerning several dangerous storms that barreled through East Idaho. The weather service reported at 11 p.m. Sunday that all the warnings had expired and there were no confirmed reports of tornadoes touching down. But a video…