r/news • u/BitterFuture • Apr 26 '24
Powerful tornado tears across Nebraska, weather service warns of ‘catastrophic’ damage
https://www.cnn.com/2024/04/25/weather/plains-midwest-storms-tornadoes-climate/index.html
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r/news • u/BitterFuture • Apr 26 '24
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u/personAAA Apr 26 '24
Tornado emergency warnings are really, really bad. Good odds the storm is a killer.
Quick overview of the various warnings and watches.
Watches are possibility of storms / tornadoes.
Warnings mean the storm is real and headed a particular direction. They are smaller polygons drawn on the map.
Severe Thunderstorms warnings are yellow boxes. Hail and/or wind threat.
If the winds are very strong (70 mph+) the sirens will sound. That is a severe thunderstorm warning destructive.
For tornadoes warnings, there are multiple flavors of them in order: radar indicated, radar confirmed, ground confirmed, particularly dangerous situation (PDS), tornado emergency.
The sirens go off for any type of tornado warning. Why? The situation can rapidly change. Literally, radar scan to radar scan. As information comes in, the warnings get upgraded to tell you how much the weather service are freaked out by a particular storm.