Tornado warning
Cleveland Abbe responded by saying "it is certain that if any such arrangement were possible, the Weather Bureau would have done this many years ago" along with "we must remember that the destructive areas of tornadoes, and even of thunderstorms, are so small that the chance of being injured is exceedingly slight" and that "we do not attempt to prevent that which is inevitable".
Weather Bureau surface maps and upper-air charts that failed to note atmospheric instability and moisture content present over Oklahoma that would be suitable for producing thunderstorm activity, erroneously forecasting dry conditions for that night.
[2] Following an inquiry the next day before a tribunal of five generals who traveled to Tinker from Washington, D.C., who ruled that the March 20 tornado was an "act of God ... not forecastable given the present state of the art", base commander Gen. Fred Borum tasked Miller and Fawbush to follow up on the board's suggestion to consider methods of forecasting tornadic thunderstorms.
Fawbush wrote the forecast message that Miller would type and issued it to base operations at 2:50 p.m. as thunderstorms were approaching from North Texas.
Miller and Fawbush would not put out another tornado forecast until March 25, 1949, when they successfully predicted tornadic activity would occur in southeastern Oklahoma.
[2][3] Miller and Fawbush soon would distribute their tornado forecasts to the American Red Cross and Oklahoma Highway Patrol, after giving William Maughan, chief meteorologist at the U.S.
The relative accuracy of the forecasts restarted a debate over their reliability and whether military or civilian agencies should have jurisdiction over the issuance of weather warnings.
The Bureau would develop a network of volunteer storm spotters in the early 1940s during World War II, to provide warning of tornadoes to workers in munitions plants and strategic factories.
Weather Bureau officials were displeased with his move, WKY-TV received numerous telephone calls and letters thanking Volkman for the warning.
[12] Tornado warnings are issued by weather forecasting agencies based on mesocyclone and debris signatures identifiable on Doppler weather radar, and/or ground truth from storm spotters of signs of tornadogenesis (including wall clouds, funnel clouds and low-level mesocyclonic rotation) and of observed tornadoes.
[13] Used in tandem with Doppler weather radar information, eyewitness reports can be very helpful for warning the public of an impending tornado, especially when used for ground truthing.
Local police or fire departments may dispatch crews not assigned to an existing emergency call to travel within a designated area to warn residents to take tornado safety precautions if sirens are disabled due to technical problems or are not present, while automated phone calls may be made to residents for the same purpose in some areas should such disruptions occur.
[19] Warnings for tornadoes and severe thunderstorms are outlined in polygonal shapes for map-based weather hazard products distributed to the main agency, individual forecast office websites and the Storm Prediction Center (including open-source APIs available for free use to public weather websites and mobile apps), based on the storm's projected path as determined by Doppler radar at the time of the warning's issuance.
[20] SPC and NWS products as well as severe weather alert displays used by some television stations, and desktop and mobile radar software typically highlight tornado warnings with a red or purple polygon or filled county/parish/equivalent jurisdiction outline.
[21] In March 2012, as part of its implementation of a multi-tier Impact Based Warning (IBW) system to notify the public and emergency management officials of the severity of specific severe weather phenomena, the NWS Weather Forecast Offices in Wichita and Topeka, Kansas, and Springfield, St. Louis and Kansas City/Pleasant Hill, Missouri, began incorporating categorical tornado and damage threat indicators for visually confirmed and radar-indicated tornadoes that appear at the bottom of the text products for tornado warnings and associated Severe Weather Statements providing updated storm information.
The categorical criteria—which are applicable to all NWS Weather Forecast Offices, primarily those operating within the agency's Central and Southern Region divisions—were introduced to further communicate to the public and prevent complacency of the threat of tornadoes.
[27] The bill would establish a Hazard Risk Communication Office to propose improvements in the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)’s methods for predicting severe weather events and communicating weather alerts to the public—requiring NOAA to coordinate with government and emergency management to optimize collection and sharing of storm survey data, implement high-resolution probabilistic tornado forecast guidance systems, and make recommendations for revisions to the Enhanced Fujita Scale.
[31] In Australia, tornado warnings are issued by regional offices of the Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) based in Melbourne Docklands, Adelaide, Darwin, Perth and Brisbane.
The National Weather Service's use of this advisory began to decline after 1974, although it was still listed on public information materials issued by various media outlets, local NWS offices and other entities for another decade or so.
The preferred response to both the tornado alerts and warnings is to take shelter immediately, so distinguishing them could be seen as splitting hairs, especially since storm prediction methods have improved.
The tornado alert was finally eliminated outright because it was made largely obsolete by the advent of Doppler weather radar, which can detect rotational funnel cloud formations earlier than is typically possible by trained spotters and members of the public.
