An Unwarnable Tornado

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The people of Athens, Alabama, were struck by an EF-1 tornado Saturday night with no tornado warning. And, with our current radar network, warning of the tornado was not possible. 

From time to time, I've mentioned there is a small percentage of tornadoes, usually weak, for which an advance tornado warning is not possible. That was the case in Athens.

Radar Data
The tornado touched down at 11:15pm. The radar data from the nearby Huntsville radar is below.

11:12pm

11:15pm

11:17pm
At left, the reflectivity data, the type of radar data you see on television. There are no tornado signatures on any of the three frames. At right is the Doppler wind velocity data. No indication of a tornado at all. 
The town of Athens is underlined. The tornado ended at 11:20pm.

Unfortunately, we could successfully warn of this tornado. The good news is that there were no deaths or injuries. 

Would more radars have allowed a warning to be made? It is possible, but I suspect this tornado spun up so fast that an effective warning would not have been possible even with a more dense network of radars. 

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