(05-21-2013 06:15 PM)BamaScorpio69 Wrote: My counter argument would be you also have time to get out of a potential dangerous and significant weather event such as a tornado with the advances in weather radar technology. Meteorologists predicted several days in advance that area had a high risk potential for tornadoes.
Do you base that on a moderate risk area? A high risk area?
A day 3 moderate risk or a 2 or 1? A day 2 high risk or day 1?
This would require evacuating portions of Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, Iowa, Missouri, Arkansas, Louisiana, Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia, and other states multiple times a year.
When you have tornados hit populated areas it's hard to NOT want to figure something out to help. Especially when people are killed.
Moore has been hit by around 12 tornadoes of which 5 were EF4-EF5 at some point in there path in the last 20 years. It's an incredibly stupid number especially considering that 1% of tornados nationwide are EF4 or EF5.
I've chased on high risk days where Oklahoma City and Tulsa were set to be impacted by multiple large, long lived tornados and there have been none. I been out when none occur in high risk area but further west in the slight risk area. I've seen them occur (see the Ft Worth area last week) in a slight risk scenario.
The primary area of impact Monday was supposed to be between I44 and I40 from I35 west. There was the Newcastle/Moore tornado in that area and that was it. Meanwhile, a large tornado touched down 25 miles north of I44 in NE OK but hit a rural area. Had it hit a populated area it would have caused destruction similar to the Moore tornado. Note the impacted area of the Moore tornado using its max width of 1.3 miles (only that wide for a less than 1/2 a mile) and total track of 17 miles was 22.1 square miles with only a few blocks receiving EF5 damage and less than 7% of that area receiving EF4 damage.
Anyway, my point is that it is hard to predict a hurricanes eyes exact landfall despite its size and longevity more than a few hours out. They take a broad area based on landfall probability's and the storms strength and size to determine evacuation 3 or more days out.
With tornados, we can anticipate a severe weather outbreak 4-5 days out. Within 3 days we know the general area at greatest risk. By day 2 prior to the event we can outline a more specific moderate and high risk area. By day one, we can nail that down a little more.
That moderate or high risk area is sometime the size of a hurricanes evacuation area. The difference is that while we know 90% of the area within a hurricane evacuation zone will be impacted by the hurricane, we can't say what 1% or less of the high risk area will actually be impacted by a large tornado or even damaging hail event until an hour or so before it occurs. If storm initiation hasn't begun, you may have less than 30 minutes notice. There were less than 30 square miles impacted by tornados in Oklahoma on Monday and those areas impacted were 200 miles apart.
Evacuations aren't really plausible for tornados even when there is a wedge on the ground and it appears it will track 100 miles.
We had 4 tornadic cells arrive in the county west of Tulsa on Sunday and Monday. All 4 we're barely more than light rain by the time they reached Tulsa... including the Moore storm. They can spin up and become a mile wide in 5 minutes and become nothing more than a breeze in 5 minutes as well.
I can't wait until our technology allows us to more accurately know where these events are going to occur!
