Tornado disasters and the fog of war

Days of severe weather came to a boiling point Friday with a deadly tornado outbreak stretching from Missouri to Kentucky. Sunday, more big storms dropped tornadoes in Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas and Colorado. A large area remains at significant risk Monday.

Weather Watch

Storm barrage near peak. A second Level 4 of 5 moderate risk for severe weather in a row is on tap Monday along with a Level 3 of 4 flood threat. The tornado risk focus appears to be central and eastern Oklahoma, including Oklahoma City and Tulsa. It all shifts east Tuesday, with Memphis and Nashville potentially under the gun.

Lightning links

Chicago blanketed in dust storm Friday evening.

‘Too big to fit in your mouth’: sunny spring delivers crop of ‘giant’ UK strawberries.

Tornado disasters and the fog of war

At least 28 people have been confirmed killed from a tornado outbreak on Friday, including several in St. Louis. So far, among many other twisters in the widespread severe event, the St. Louis tornado has been rated an EF3 and another in southern Illinois an EF4.

The cap was a horrible nighttime assault on several towns in southeastern Kentucky. One or more tornadoes struck Somerset and London in the state’s southeast near midnight Friday. The killer Kentucky tornadoes, while not publicly rated at time of publish, are likely of similar strength to the ratings above.

You may have heard that warnings were inadequate, or that DOGE cuts led directly to the roughly 20 tornado deaths in Kentucky alone. In both cases, you’re only hearing part of a slanted story.

Before we start…

Working for the National Weather Service is a stressful and high-stakes job. It was before DOGE came along. It’s already much more so since.

If never-ending shift work doesn’t get you, and the rando calling your office to talk about chemtrails doesn’t either, then you may be rewarded with too much work for too few people. Again, this was in the good old pre-DOGE days.

There are few people more committed to the safety and wellbeing of their fellow Americans.

Nonsensical cuts

Since the Weather Service offers much more than it costs, we shouldn’t be having a discussion about further hobbling it to begin with.

When I first tried to make reason of the cuts to weather balloon launches, then operating hours at local NWS offices, I wondered if perhaps the plan was for places that have comparably tranquil weather to take the primary hits.

This is an idea that might not totally fail in some of the West Coast locations like Sacramento or Pendleton. But in addition to Jackson in Kentucky, offices in Goodland and Cheyenne also faced major severe weather over recent days, a staple of spring and summer in both.

Jackson immediately seemed like a peculiar choice.

The region — at the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains — isn’t home to the worst weather in the country, but it gets its fair share, is particularly susceptible to floods and does see powerful tornadoes with some (maybe increasing) frequency. The state has also been involved in numerous severe weather episodes across recent years.

Gov. Andy Beshear noted it is his 13th weather disaster since taking office at the end of 2019.

It would appear the simplest answer is the correct one. There is probably no science, or even much thought, behind the cuts to the Weather Service.

If there was, the Jackson office would not have been left scrambling to crew the office Friday night in the immediate leadup to a major event. Like these good folks need more stress …

Good warnings, despite underinformed opinions

Even short-handed, forced to use a port-a-potty and treated much worse than you’d hope public servants would be, meteorologists across the Weather Service were able to warn the storms just fine.

Internet weather heads issuing their own alerts might have the idea that they could do it better, but — as often — it is the wrong conclusion.

“The 2 sig tornadoes had lead times of 28 and 40 minutes respectively, pretty damn good for being short staffed, to their credit,” retired NWS meteorologist Ray Wolf pointed out on Bluesky. That’s actually better than average.

There is some uninformed, nitpicky and/or self-serving debate about how the tornado warning was “tagged” in the metadata, and whether it should have been declared a tornado emergency sooner. Misleading at best and disinformation at worst.

It most likely wouldn’t have changed facts on the ground.

“Every tornado warning will trigger [Wireless Emergency Alert],” meteorologist Chris Vagasky noted on Bluesky. “Considerable or Emergency tags aren’t going to do anything additional in the middle of the night to automatically get someone into shelter.”

Nighttime tornadoes that run into population are very bad news, especially when they are powerful.

As much as preparation is preached, including having multiple ways to get warnings and staying weather aware, people do a thing at night called sleep. Destructive and deadly tornadoes in the overnight hours are fairly unusual in Kentucky, although the second deadliest twister on record in the state was one. Nearby locations south also see considerably more frequent nighttime tornadoes.

It’s not hard to imagine how local residents of the region might feel like it’s a smart and obvious calculation, even under a tornado watch, that their specific odds of getting hit by a killer tornado are quite low.

With a storm moving 45 mph, it’s complicated to make the right decisions fast enough, in the dark. Especially when you’re not sure what to do. There are also other factors at play, like age of population and numerous others that are difficult to properly quantify in this lengthy hot take.

Don’t let the administration off the hook

Trump and DOGE are making things worse, and quickly. This is just a small preview of what is to come on the current course.

And that’s not even considering the fact that FEMA is being hollowed out at the same time.

It has me wondering what makes the administration so eager to test nature’s fury against its own people, increasingly unmoored without proper preparation or readiness. One might hope this quick and stern warning of what lies ahead might make Trump’s yes-men and yes-women think more diligently.

The answer is not to continue defunding the weather and disaster management apparatus. Nor is it to hand over critical warning operations to a bunch of moody YouTube bros.

Question the motives of those telling you they can do it better than the experts without offering how and why. Support the real experts.

Please! Call your representatives, as well. Capitol switchboard at (202) 224-3121, or local state offices if needed. Tell them we should be protecting the weather enterprise and embracing the lives it saves, rather than destroying both out of sheer recklessness.

About

Weekday morning newsletter by a journalist/forecaster. Connecting weather and climate change dots while occasionally stirring the pot.

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