Tuesday's unwarned tornado was no ordinary tornado. Kevin Lighty, Chief Meteorologist at KSPR, put together a great
blog article describing why this tornado was different, and the reason why the radar was unable to detect it, preventing The National Weather Service from issuing a warning. Ted Keller, Chief Meteorologist at KOLR10/Ozarks Fox Weather Labs, also put together a
blog article explaining why this was difficult to detect.
For those out there doubting the system, let me just say this...Steve Runnels, Warning Coordination Meteorologist at the National Weather Service said it best. Last year there were 64 tornadoes in the County Warning Area that the Springfield NWS office is responsible for. This is double the annual norm. The average lead time was 19.5 minutes. 19.5 minutes is a good amount of time to prepare and take shelter, and Doppler Radar plays a big part in that.
Radar works, it just doesn't work to predict all types of tornadoes. This reiterates the importance of SkyWarn and other spotter type groups. Radar can't do it all, but it does a great job. Having ground truth information from storm spotters works in conjunction with radar data and is used by the NWS to provide warnings. This event was at night, so spotting would have been difficult to impossible, depending on the rain. This particular storm was not anticipated to have any severe attributes, so there was not focus put on it.
In the end, this goes to show the importance of paying attention to Watches. A Tornado Watch, which we were under on Tuesday evening, means conditions are favorable for the development of severe thunderstorms capable of producing tornadoes. There's a reason tornado watches are issued, as we found out Tuesday night.
The posted picture courtesy of Daniel Hirsch. 4300 block of S. Glenn.
Severe storms are possible this evening if conditions come together. Large hail, damaging winds and a limited risk for tornadoes exists.
Tuesday's unwarned tornado was no ordinary tornado. Kevin Lighty, Chief Meteorologist at KSPR, put together a great blog article describing why this tornado was different, and the reason why the radar was unable to detect it, preventing The National Weather Service from issuing a warning. Ted Keller, Chief Meteorologist at KOLR10/Ozarks Fox Weather Labs, also put together a blog article explaining why this was difficult to detect.
At approximately 10:50 PM on Tuesday, February 10th, a 200 yard wide EF-1 tornado caused damage in Springfield Initial survey reports show damage occurred just southwest of the intersection of Republic and Scenic, extending to Fremont and Catalpa. Winds were estimated around 100 MPH. Approximately two dozen homes and businesses were impacted, including the collapse of a duplex apartment garage collapse and Commerce bank at Republic and Scenic. No injuries were reported.
accounts. One from someone who lives in the area where it initially touched down. He heard the roar, and the house made a "whistling" sound. He commented to his wife that he wondered if it was a tornado, but they both wrote it off to wind and rain. He was quite surprised today. Additionally, two trained storm spotters, Rich Vogt (KB9YZE) and Rod Kittleman (K0ADI) witnessed the tornado cross in front of them. They assisted with blocking traffic due to debris in the road at National and Sunshine. Their vehicles are the two on the left in this picture I stole from KTTS.
The National Weather Service is calling for strong to severe storms Tuesday night into Wednesday. This includes the risk for:
