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This is what I tried to say the other day that there was some major failure in the forecasting of that event, but of course people took it that I was "bashing" mets, I just thought I was stating a fact…..that being said this article did put it much more eloquently than I can . Hopefully after studies are done on this event it could help warnings in the future. A lot of it I think has to do with wording....for one thing, I DESPISE the word "slight" in spc forecasts, I bet you 90% of people see/hear that and don't understand it
Yeah, not gonna happen. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
I don't think the forecast was off at all. People just have grown to not respect "slight" risk and the term in and off itself downplays the risk. I am guilty of this myself - I didn't even check radarscope before bed. The misses Harlequin mentioned were more in the issuance of near real time warnings which did happen, but I have seen the radar data and can completely understand how they did happen. The storm was a mess of mergers and between the radar distance and terrain sometime the data just wasn't there.IMO the current rating system for severe weather is a total mess and I don't know how they thought adding a new category would be a good thing. In my opinion they need to go with something simple. Severe weather should be defined as convective storms that present threats to life and property. Categories should be simple and clear: on the low end: Possible, mid: Enhanced, and high: Very Likely.This may be a little more controversial but I think the use of the Tornado Watch needs to be reworked. I think all convective threats should be covered under Severe Thunder Storm Watches with specific wording in the the watch mentioning the severe weather modes. Tornado Watches should then been issued closer to the event and be polygon based ahead of storm cells that have a history of tornado warnings and/or rotation. Tornado watches should look like larger Tornado warning polygons but still smaller than the parent watch box. This puts much more weight behind a watch and in this storms case places like Nashville and Cookesville would of had a heads up well ahead of time to at least be paying attention. As it stands now I do not think the Tornado watch has much value at all to the public and this would take some reeducation but I also think it would help alert the public more, especially at night.
Getting down to carving watch boxes down to only portions of a county is most likely something that will not get implemented because that gets too fine of a scale for the SPC. That is why every watch box, regardless if SVR or TOR, is a coordinated effort.
Is it really though? In this case for the TN system, putting a larger polygon around the I-40 corridor once the supercell track is seen seems fairly easy. I am not saying it needs to be as tight as a TOR box, but tighter than the current watch boxes for tornadoes. Tor watches would have much more value if they were working with windows within 2 hours and are issued after storms initiate. The Severe Thunderstorm watch acts as the more general heads up before that. Renaming it may be needed to avoid confusion and there is nothing preventing the normal use of PDS tags when a tstorm watch looks particularly nasty tornado wise. I am really considering making an infographic that better explains what I am trying to say.The watch/warning system hasn't been changed in 30+ years and IMO its old and tired and new ideas are needed even if my solution isn't it.
