Thank You: Fox 4 Kansas City's News Report on the Tornado Warning Issues

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I would like to thank Dave D'Marco and Fox 4 Kansas City for following up on the missed tornado warning in Kansas City and for including me in their coverage. 

There are two comments I would like to make about the NWS's remarks:

Meteorologists at the National Weather Service early Wednesday morning weren’t expecting tornadoes to form as storms moved into the area.

They were told to expect tornadoes by their own tornado forecasters at 10:15. See below:


Next:

But Adolphson [the meteorologist in charge of the Kansas City National Weather Service] said it’s not that simple to detect and there are others factors at play.

“You don’t want to be issuing on every one of those little circulations that you see because you are going to be alerting upwards of a million people in the middle of the night who will not have virtually any impact,” she explained.

You do want to issue a warning if that "little circulation" is joined by lofting debris!! The combination of a circulation plus lofted debris is virtually certain evidence a tornado exists. Congress gave the NWS the money for the dual-polarization radar upgrades for two reasons: flash floods and nighttime tornadoes. 

It is clear the NWS in KC believes its job is to play defense: avoid a false alarm at all costs. That is a recipe for disaster.

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