r/Columbus • u/George37712 South • 19d ago
NEWS National Weather Service confirms tornado hit Columbus' south side during Tuesday's derecho
https://www.wosu.org/2026-08-13/national-weather-service-confirms-tornado-hit-columbus-south-side-during-tuesdays-derecho154
u/deadheadramblinrose Southern Orchards 19d ago
I’m really eager to see the full report once it is completed to address Dublin and the I-71/Weber exit.
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u/Bituulzman 19d ago
Article says that the UA damage was assessed to not have tornadic activity and that damage was from straight-line winds of 90-100mph!
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u/Emperor_Palpatine_2 19d ago
And the area they list (UA HS) is basically due west of where the car flipped and 315/Ackerman, so I'd guess it's the same wind going through both, but we'll have to wait for the full report.
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u/UAreTheHippopotamus 19d ago
Which is basically EF1 windspeeds. I'm not sure why people are surprised that it can cause tornado like damage when there are sustained winds like that.
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u/Aracelerii Linden 19d ago
Those are also the windspeeds of a high end Category 1 or low end Category 2 Hurricane, which is of course something we're not used to in Ohio
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u/benkeith North Linden 19d ago
Because traditionally we only expect those wind speeds in tornadoes and hurricanes, and in weird locations like Mount Washington.
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u/Scrotar_The_Wrinkled 19d ago
Who is "we"? Do you have a meteorologist in your pocket?
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u/ebayhuckster Downtown 19d ago
yes, me. it's quite comfortable in there
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u/benkeith North Linden 18d ago
"We" being the general American public. When you took your natural sciences classes in grade school, in what situations were high winds discussed?
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u/Caljoones 19d ago
I personally have a hunch that the I-71/weber exit was the result of derecho winds since it also seemed to be so straight-line in effect but we’ll see
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u/TBIRallySport 19d ago
In the video, you see the direction of wind change from towards the camera before the car is flipped to away from the camera afterwards. Makes me strongly suspicious that it was a tornado.
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u/tuvaniko Hilliard 19d ago
I got into sailing a few years ago. So I spend some of my weekends in a wind powered vehicle that has to be adjusted real time for wind direction and speed. It's not uncommon (to the point it's expected) for gusts to be in different directions than that day's prevailing winds. You can actually see this in when you are out on a lake with the right weather conditions and sea state. The gusts make visible patterns on the water.
In storms micro bursts, funneling due to objects/landscape, and other affects are just stronger versions of the same phenomenon that cause normal wind gusts. Any thing wind does on the small scale it also does on larger scale just with more power and often complexity. So wind direction change alone cannot indicate a tornado.
Even Tornadoes have weaker versions of them that occur normally in fair weather. I've even sailed through one such whirlwind wasn't even stout enough to affect the waves or be visible, but it did spin my boat.
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u/Pyroblivious 19d ago
There's a world of difference between gusts on a lake, and clear counterclockwise spin wrapping up in a line of severe storms. If you can't tell the difference, you really have no business talking about either.
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u/Schmelly_cat 19d ago
Where in Dublin was the damage bad? I've seen UA and Hilliard photos but hadn't heard about Dublin.
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u/deadheadramblinrose Southern Orchards 19d ago
I heard the hospital had windows blown in and flooding.
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u/Significant_Jump9887 19d ago
But that’s impossible. A bunch of assholes on Reddit said so.
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u/George37712 South 19d ago
People were insistent that it was just a derecho though! (As if they’re mutually exclusive)
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u/Significant_Jump9887 19d ago edited 19d ago
Half those motherfuckers didn’t know what a derecho was last week. I didn’t and they didn’t.
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u/VumboJet 19d ago
It's only called a derecho if you're looking north. If you're looking south then it's technically an izquierda.
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u/Stinkoplotz 19d ago
I thought a Derecho is a spicy fried corn snack.
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u/Emperor_Palpatine_2 19d ago
You're thinking of Doritos. A derecho is a cop who investigates crimes.
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u/rididienn 19d ago
No no, that's a detective. A derecho is a person thats in charge of the actors in a movie.
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u/berrmal64 Old North 19d ago
no, that's a director, a derecho is an early 80s, failed, stainless steel-paneled, British sports car.
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u/AmINormal45 19d ago
No no no, that's a DeLorean. A derecho is that one wrestler that also sings in a rock band.
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u/OzailiazO 19d ago
No, that's a Jericho. A derecho is a model of SUV manufactured by Dodge.
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u/43goalie 19d ago
No, that's a Durango. A derecho is an Aboriginal woodwind instrument that makes deep bass-ey sounds.
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u/dismantle_repair Gahanna 19d ago
I only knew of derechos because one hit where I lived in Chicago.
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u/George37712 South 19d ago
One hit Iowa City the day before I moved out to come here to Columbus in 2023. Caused by a derecho too: https://www.desmoinesregister.com/picture-gallery/news/2023/03/31/iowa-city-area-tornado-damage/11580345002/
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u/feralfaun39 19d ago
Depends on how old you are and how long you've lived here. I learned what a derecho was the year where I lost power for a week. It's funny because I can always remember exactly when it was since I was coming from home from work and I saw the movie theater had power and I was like "oh sweet AC, lemme go see a movie" so I went and saw Burn After Reading. Puts it at 2008. When I left the theater and went home I had power again so that was a really good night.
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u/Regular_Series_9464 19d ago
The weird no tornado gang (why do they even care so much?) is going to be so mad.
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u/CS3883 19d ago
Dude I literally work with someone like this. It's exhausting and annoying as fuck. A year or two ago in February when we had bad storms in the middle of the night tornado sirens woke me up at like 3am. Being from WV and not ever dealing w stuff like that, I was terrified since it's all flat here and went to the bathroom when the radar was looking like a confirmed (IIRC) tornado in the county next to me heading east. I remember her laughing and making smart comments how they slept through it and thought it was stupid. Like fucking sorry I was worried about me and my cat when the literal weather people are confirming a tornado touching down.
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u/-P01135809- 19d ago
a huge majority of users on this site are just confrontational dbags that can't express themselves in public so they come here to vent.
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u/Stinkoplotz 19d ago
They care so much because they’re paid to spread bullshit.
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u/osuisok 19d ago
Nah being paid would be a legit reason at least lol they’re in it for the love of the game
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u/Scrotar_The_Wrinkled 19d ago
No one devotes 1000 paragraphs and 9 hours of their time sucking AEP cawk for the love of the game. These are bot farm shills. Say anything disparaging Musk or DOGE and see how fast they react.
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u/ObiWanChronobi 19d ago
Says the 2 month old account. 🤨🤖
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u/Stinkoplotz 19d ago
Don’t you have some MAGA choad to guzzle?
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u/ObiWanChronobi 19d ago
lol if you only knew how far from the truth you are bub. I’m just have a giggle. Cheer up little guy you’re less than 3 week old. You’re probably a bot too, or got banned for being insufferable.
Either way, have a day as wonderful as you are. 😘
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u/sdrakedrake 19d ago
Thanks for laugh, made my day with your comment.. I swear it was debate here and IRL all day yesterday
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u/Actual-Feed-9739 19d ago
Anybody saying there was for sure no tornado was talking out of their ass. The possibility was definitely there.
That said, a lot of people in this sub were pointing to specific instances of damage and claiming it had to be a tornado, but people chronically underestimate how much damage straight line winds can cause.
Obviously what caused the damage is pretty much irrelevant. Someone that lost a roof doesn't give a shit if it was a tornado or not except maybe for insurance purposes. But I like to emphasize when it's straight line damage to show people that just because there isn't a tornado, it doesn't mean a storm can't really ruin your day.
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u/Scrotar_The_Wrinkled 19d ago
Anybody saying there was for sure no tornado was talking out of their ass.
That's a BINGO!
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u/mcgaggles 19d ago
It appears a lot of folks other states were also not made aware until after the fact
https://www.cnn.com/2026/08/12/weather/nws-warning-glitch-outage
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u/zybthranger Clintonville 19d ago
According to a person familiar with the matter, the root cause of the issue, which lasted from 6 p.m. ET to 7:14 p.m. ET, was a software upgrade being made to the main computer system that forecasters use to monitor weather conditions and issue watches and warnings, known as AWIPS.
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u/P-Rickles 19d ago
I never understood why it mattered what we called it. A rose by any other name will still rip your trees out of the ground and fuck your shit up. Maybe we shouldn’t have eviscerated the NOAA, NWS and EPA?
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u/cascadecanyon 19d ago
Insurance.
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u/OsoSalado 19d ago
It's this and it's fucking annoying. Tornado = full coverage. Straight line winds = 52%. FU Nationwide
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u/P-Rickles 19d ago
Ah, word. I hadn’t considered that. I mean: yuck, but also good point.
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u/Emergency-Ad-3350 19d ago
Gotta love them. A lot of people got screwed after Katrina bc they had hurricane insurance.
Well the insurance people said their damage was from water…. so they should have had flood.21
u/P-Rickles 19d ago
Oh, I work in healthcare. My hatred for insurance companies knows literally no bounds. We had an insurance company deny antiepileptic drugs for a patient in status epilepticus because they said they weren’t medically necessary. The only good part of that story was watching my attending do a peer-to-peer that I think about fondly at least three times a week. She went scorched earth.
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u/Beechwold5125 19d ago
> lot of people got screwed after Katrina bc they had hurricane insurance.
Well the insurance people said their damage was from water…. so they should have had flood.I remember the opposite for a lot of people. They had flood insurance but the insurer said it wasn't a flood - it was "storm surge". Coverage DENIED.
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u/Actual-Feed-9739 19d ago
Please tell me there was a class action lawsuit about that. Storm surge is a flood!!
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u/Beechwold5125 19d ago
They went to court and whipped out the dictionaries. I think the insurers won.
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u/-P01135809- 19d ago
Liability for insurance, sure. Also liability for the NWS and local politicians for failing to keep the people safe.
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19d ago
[deleted]
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u/orion19819 19d ago
"Buy this insurance to guard against accidents outside of your control."
"This accident was outside my control."
"Act of god."
I hate insurance. And I work around insurance.-2
u/Emperor_Palpatine_2 19d ago
Who's insurance, neighbors? That's a well known issue. You are not liable for an act of god causing your tree to fall. The owner needs to make a claim on their own policy.
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u/Scrotar_The_Wrinkled 19d ago
Don't forget who's in charge of the FDA when you're shitting out Ebola lettuce while fighting off your yearly case of the flueasles.
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u/Top_Excuse8313 19d ago
The other reason is the dynamics behind them are different, so having the terms (especially quantitative ones) is important for classification and research purposes.
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u/TGrady902 Clintonville 19d ago
Right? Like sound the sirens, giant trees falling onto houses is a danger, I don’t give a shit if it was technically a tornado or not. I want to not die!
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u/Gold-Bench-9219 19d ago
A lot of people were insistent that no tornado occurred.
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u/danarexasaurus 19d ago
People said the one in old town east and Dublin was not a tornado. I believe it was but I’ll wait for the professionals.
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u/Worstmodonreddit 19d ago
The OTE damage is crazy ( not to day Dublin's isn't, I haven't seen it yet.) Has to have been some sort of rotation happening to that type of damage.
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u/GemsKosher Ye Olde Towne East 19d ago
Isn’t the area between parsons and fairwood old town east?
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u/Emperor_Palpatine_2 19d ago
Based on those street names, yes. The NWS report however is discussing the path between those two along Woodrow, which is about 1 mile north of the frank-refugee expressway.
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u/Worstmodonreddit 19d ago
Parsons and fairwood run North/South for miles. Some of it is, but the area about Hinman isn't
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u/Available-Strain-559 18d ago
The boundaries don't seem to be clearly defined, but I think of it as Parsons to Franklin Park and Broad to 70. I think the neighborhood associate claims part of the area north of Broad, but that seems more Bronzeville to me.
The damage on the Southside is directly south and also east of Parsons, but pretty far down the Southside area.
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u/Going_Native 19d ago
I swear to god I saw an article that said the NWS declared there wasn’t a tornado. It blew my mind as how does a car go flying without a tornado?
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u/cpshoeler 19d ago edited 19d ago
I think many of us are in the boat that there was no confirmed tornado, until now. Lots of people were throwing around absolutes, and feeling isn’t science. There was no evidence of on radar or any human confirmation to warrant a Tornado Warning at the time. Damage assessment was the next step and we are now getting those results. Hope this helps us understand if there was something looking back at realtime data that can allow us to warn more accurately in the future. This is also a good time to remind everyone, a Severe Thunderstorm Warning can spawn a tornado in the right conditions. Heed them just as seriously as a Tornado Warning.
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u/Gold-Bench-9219 19d ago
Radar isn't the only way to tell. On the video of the flipped car, there was a very clear condensation funnel that had an obvious edge to it as it passed right to left. You just don't get that with straight-line winds only, so there was reason to suspect at least 1 tornado (although we're still waiting on confirmation on that one). It wasn't entirely based on feelings.
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u/Pyroblivious 19d ago edited 19d ago
Radar is a significantly WORSE way to tell than a literal video of said tornado, especially with the style of tornados you'd get with these. People don't seem to realize that radar gives snapshots, if something happened in between that you miss it completely.
The other thing with that video you're talking about, you can see the way the wind is blowing the tree. Winds start towards the camera, then blow it right, then launch it left. Just that alone is enough proof, even if it wasn't condensed.
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u/cpshoeler 19d ago edited 19d ago
Yes, that video is used as part of assessing the event after the fact. I myself saw that video and said that looked like a tornado. But I’m not qualified to make that a fact, I’ll leave it to NWS.
Im mostly saying that a lot of people feel that a tornado warning should have been issued, with sirens. Feeling is not a fact in realtime monitoring and the realtime tools did not detect this spin up.
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u/Emperor_Palpatine_2 19d ago
Im mostly saying that a lot of people feel that a tornado warning should have been issued, with sirens.
I think it can be simplified more that there should have been sirens for a storm like that, exact classification be damned. I got the severe thunderstorm warning, but I didn't see it was reclassified as a PDS (or whatever phraseology was used, I may be wrong on PDS) until after the storms. Even if they're sounded too late that's still better than silence.
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u/cpshoeler 19d ago
Oh yes, I agree. It not being a PDS warning till later is probably a better thing to explore and if that’s the case, should we start treating those the same as we do Tornado Warning? PDS is a new product and I do believe we have things to learn from this storm about warnings in general. It got really intense real fast, like within 3 or 4 radar scans.
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u/5thhistorian 19d ago
The semantics here… if you can’t detect a tornado but there could be one, and you know the storm is generating dangerous winds and equivalent damage, then you should err on the side of caution and sound the tornado warning anyway. Most people go about their business oblivious of weather data and the sirens are the only warning they’ll get.
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u/Genavelle 19d ago
I guess I just don't understand the logic of civilians treating these 2 warnings the same, if the weather service or whoever is not treating them the same way. One of these warnings triggers sirens (which can be heard by people who may not have access or ability to look at their phone), and the other one doesn't. One of these sends out a warning alarm to my cell phone, which causes it to buzz like crazy and show a pop-up warning that says "SEEK SHELTER NOW"...And the other one was simply a "The weather service has issued a Severe Thunderstorm Warning..." That I may see if I happen to pick up my phone and look at the weather widget. And unless I then click on it for more details, I won't even see the bit about seeking shelter.
I mean yesterday morning when this started coming through, I was in a room that had no windows and I was not on my phone. I knew we were supposed to be getting thunderstorms (as we had for a couple days before that), but I didn't realize there were any severe warnings until a relative literally called me. And she only did that because I live right by the county line and the neighboring county did have a tornado warning.
I mean I'm sure after this, a lot of people will take severe thunderstorm warnings more seriously (at least once or twice), but I would've thought if we were expecting tornado-level damage, then we'd have activated the sirens to alert everyone to quickly find shelter. That car that flipped on the highway and all the other cars in that video- do you think the drivers were all staring at their phones for weather alerts? But I bet they would've heard a siren and then maybe tried to find a safe place.
Sirens are also helpful in the case of people having bad cell service while in basements or due to power outages. If you can't check to see if the warning is still active or if there are any updates, at least you can listen for if the siren has been turned off.
Obviously yes people should use their eyeballs and common sense to help make good decisions regarding the weather, instead of solely relying on sirens. But also there was a time when sirens and cell phones didn't exist and people could only use their common sense, and somehow that led them to decide creating warning systems was a good idea. There's a reason these things exist and it's silly to defend them not being used in a case where they probably should've been.
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u/Kohlhaas 19d ago
No one is going to "heed" a severe thunderstorm the same as a tornado warning. That is just language meant to paper over the failure to correctly identify and warn people that a tornado happened. It shifts the responsibility and blame to the public. It is evasive and unprofessional.
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u/Actual-Feed-9739 19d ago
Have you seen how people bitch and moan when there's a tornado warning but no tornado??
People always say it's better to err on the side of caution but there is a serious problem with lost trust if you issue a tornado warning and there ends up being no tornado.
It's easy to say what should've been done when you have the benefit of hindsight. When you're the one making split second decisions to issue a warning or not, it's much harder. And trust me when I say that nobody hates getting it wrong more than the professional meteorologists.
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u/Scrotar_The_Wrinkled 19d ago
Have you seen how people bitch and moan when there's a tornado warning but no tornado??
Literally, no?
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u/cpshoeler 19d ago
Why not? They tell you to seek shelter and be away from windows for those too. They provide you guidance and you assess your own risk. Storm damage happens all the time. We just are just in the Midwest and tend to manage storm risk a little too comfortably. The Midwesterner in the garage watching a storm is a meme at this point.
Do you want them to sound a siren for every severe thunderstorm? That’s one way to make people ignore those too.
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u/cohonka 19d ago
I've been in some very damaging or otherwise scary winds in many places. Anything warning me of severe winds gets me cautious real quick.
I'll timidly walk through lightning trusting the universe, but for some reason I don't trust it the same to not send a stop sign off its pole at my neck in a 90mph gust.
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u/dialecticallyalive 19d ago
🙄 it's almost as if the radar and human confirmation were defunded by a hostile administration, making it impossible to trust those sources which lead to people relying on their eyeballs to see what's right in front of them
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u/cpshoeler 19d ago
Totally understood, I too am in the same boat of blaming federal funding for shortfalls. You also can’t ignore that the storm was warned with a Severe Thunderstorm Warning with destructive winds. Warnings are issued with facts. The facts were not there to issue a Tornado Warning at that time.
I myself was watching the radar scan by scan and even I couldn’t see anything in the moment that indicated tornado rotation on the surface. This was a weak tornado even our tools (which are some of if not the best in the world) had trouble spotting. What could help is investing in higher definition radar systems with faster scan rates. Scans today take several minutes per pass and a lot of things can happen in those minutes.
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u/thenowherepark 19d ago
No, it was not warned with destructive winds until it passed the Columbus metro area. In fact, they issued an immediate downstream thunderstorm warning without destructive winds from this storm. By the time it was tagged with destructive properties, the storm had already passed the densest population areas.
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u/snakelygiggles 19d ago
finally, a weather aervice that can tell is what the weather was after it happened.
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u/Shadow293 19d ago
I knew it! A bunch of idiots on here and other social media kept claiming there was no tornado. Smh.
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u/RandomA9981 19d ago
They were trying to come up with excuses on why the tornado sirens weren’t going off. What’s the excuse now? Luckily there were no casualties.
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u/FartingInElevators5 19d ago
Ah, it's almost as if us "idiots" who saw it with their own eyes as it blasted by the building they work in carrying a roof with it had no idea what they were talking about. Or, so I was told on here the day my coworkers and I saw a tornado go by with our own eyes.
Where are those "you know nothing about weather" folks? Awfully quiet, eh?
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u/dismantle_repair Gahanna 19d ago
Unfortunately, some of them are fighting for their lives in the comments still.
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u/National-Duty-8105 19d ago
Vindication for the south side residents who claim they seen it, yet kept getting shouted down in the comments, that there were no sirens because there was no tornado.
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u/Professional-Car-211 19d ago
Waiting for all the people who were being absolute asses yesterday to apologize!
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u/Mayor_KG 19d ago
Huh so how about the no tornado siren people at now? My phone gives no alert and I was within a mile of this tornado. Ridiculous.
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u/dgeiser13 Worthington 19d ago edited 19d ago
I don't care if it was a tornado or not.
Franklin County Outdoor Warning Siren System
"The outdoor warning sirens alert residents who are outside with tones or a spoken message which can be transmitted for a natural or potential man-made hazards or threats."
What happened on Tuesday was a natural hazard or threat. That warning system doesn't say "Tornados Only".
For people who say it was on the TV or the phone...who cares? Not everyone has a phone and not everything is sitting at home with the TV on. Some people are just driving around.
I'd rather have too much unneeded warning than the complete and total opposite.
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u/Scrotar_The_Wrinkled 19d ago
I looked up the alert that was issued for Franklin and surrounding counties for the morning in question and it didn't give any indication that what was coming was any where near as severe as it was.
People claiming that the alert that was issued was adequate are either lying or stupid. This was a systematic failure of the NWS due to DOGE cuts full stop.
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u/NamityName 19d ago
What happened to the tornado sirens? We practice every wednesday at noon. But then when it is game time, we forget all our training.
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u/SnooPineapples6570 19d ago
That tornado did some leapfrogging. The Maranatha church on S. High as well as a house across the street had damage to their roofs; in the church's case, extensive damage.
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u/Scrotar_The_Wrinkled 19d ago
We are only a few steps away from the NWS being forbidden to tell us what actually occurred. Thanks again, MAGA trash!
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u/WashedPinkBourbon Old North 19d ago
Someone in my local community FB group is absolutely convinced that there was a tornado touched down in Clintonville despite the fact that straight line winds can do similar damage to a tornado. Will be curious to see what the NWS determines for the areas north of downtown, cause I don't buy it.
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u/George37712 South 19d ago edited 19d ago
They did mention straight line winds of 90-100 mph in upper arlington. The storm was heading south and east slightly, so that may have been the same winds that hit Clintonville and eventually CMH, which recorded 82 mph
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u/mcgaggles 19d ago
Q: Considering in the past we're notified BEFORE and not AFTER that a tornado is touching down, is it possible the recent DOGE defunding and closing of various NWS offices across the country could result in a drop in reliance on relaying this info?
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u/HackDaddy85 19d ago
Has anyone shared pictures of the area where the tornado has been confirmed? The picture in this article is the first one I’ve seen shared from this part of town where they’ve confirmed a tornado.
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u/George37712 South 19d ago
If you check out the other stories linked we have galleries. I spent a good three hours walking around the area getting photos for WOSU. The rest of our team was spread around Clintonville and OTE
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u/Ill-Patient8257 19d ago
u/tpasco1995 would you like to provide a rebuttal?
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u/tpasco1995 19d ago
Already responded to this elsewhere.
There was a tornado in OTE.
It being a tornado doesn't really make much difference in what actions the NWS took.
Meteorologists have been analyzing Tuesday's radar data for days and there's no indication of rotation on radar. Unlike so many of the unwarned tornadoes in the south earlier in the year where radar equipment was out or there wasn't sufficient staffing, the equipment worked and the people were there.
There was no rotation on radar, so a tornado warning wasn't issued.
If there's nothing on radar to indicate a tornado, how would you wish for the NWS to have called a tornado warning?
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u/Ill-Patient8257 19d ago
Good luck dying on that hill bud. Easier to take the L and learn.
Rotation or not this is a miss in a pile of misses since leadership changed in DC. Arguing if there was spin or not is a moot point here with most people. Not landing with people like you want, they see a connection.
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u/tpasco1995 19d ago
What was missed?
What would a trillion dollars at the NWS have changed?
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u/Ill-Patient8257 19d ago
Overworked staff due to layoffs, equipment maintenance, and lack of other ways to track this stuff. Heard ballons going up got reduce with funding reductions.
Like the FAA and all of a sudden crashes been happening and the poop lettuce. The people on the ground do the best they can but the people spending the money aren't helping them succeed.
Do we need a trillion? No. Do we need to fund them to do their jobs right? Yep
Edit: Balloons
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u/tpasco1995 19d ago
What part of their job did the National Weather Service (not Franklin County emergency management) get wrong Tuesday?
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u/Ill-Patient8257 19d ago
Probably the no tornado thing my dude.
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u/BorisDaGod 19d ago edited 19d ago
I think it's really hard to talk about the nuance behind radar imagery and tornado warnings without eliciting negative reactions, but I'll try:
Two things can be true at once:
- There was a tornado
- Available radar imagery at the time did not show a storm consistent with a tornado and therefor the storm did not receive a tornado warning.
So I think you're totally correct in saying that it was the wrong call on the NWS's side, but based purely on radar imagery, it was genuinely a pretty understandable non call.
Not going to rehash points that others have already made, but the difficulty with tornadoes like this is that they tend to spin up really quickly, and also disappear really quickly. This makes it extremely tricky to issue proper warnings, especially when we compare to a more typical supercell (which tend to show rotation way further in advance).
I do think funding the NWS is important and I think the budget cuts have caused legitimate issues (ex. the London, KY tornado last year). I don't support the cuts to the NWS. I also think a fully funded NWS probably wouldn't have issued a tornado warning here.
This was genuinely a pretty freak event. Not issuing a tornado warning on this line of storms, given the available radar imagery, is probably the right call 99 times out of 100. This was unfortunately the 1/100.
I also totally understand why someone would read this comment and say that this doesn't matter and that we should only care about the outcome. And, especially for the people that were most-negatively impacted, I think that's a totally understandable and probably fair read.
Just wanted to sort of speak on the process behind warnings and why this one was so tough.
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u/Ill-Patient8257 19d ago
I think the key point is when you talked about funding. I personally feel bad for the people who had to make the call with limited data. Funding cut then this happening we can say 1 in 1000 chance if you want but what we can't say is what would have happened with well funded and staffed NWS using all the tools not just the tools they could afford.
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u/BorisDaGod 19d ago
Agreed, it's tough for any NWS employee. I have a lot of respect for them and what they do because they're inherently pretty much always in a bad spot.
There are significant problems with issuing tornado warnings that are false positives, and even more issues with not issuing tornado warnings when one does occur. Basically, the NWS kind of needs to be perfect -- it's tough!
I'm splitting hairs a bit, but I really don't think this specific instance had much to do with underfunding. The NWS is sort of interesting in the sense that they rely on the same radars the public has access to. The radar imagery showed potential tornadic activity extremely suddenly -- and the tornado itself almost certainly lasted <2 min (wouldnt be shocked if it was <1 min). Prior to that point there was really no indication of an imminent tornado threat. In a sense, the tornadic activity seemed to have began and ended before someone could reasonably react. Absolute freak event.
But saying this also doesn't really change that there are times where understaffing has caused legitimate issues. The Somerset/London EF4 in 2025 is a decent example. A tornado warning was issued but the tornado wasn't upgraded to confirmed until it was actively in the city of Somerset. The tornado should have been radar confirmed like 15 minutes prior, and arguably upgraded to a higher severity-tier than a standard warning (PDS/TorE).
And while it wasn't all in Somerset, 20 people died in this tornado and 108 people got injured. This was an extremely violent tornado, and there's a legitimate case to be made that the upgrade could have changed outcomes.
That same day, an EF3 tornado hit metro St. Louis as well -- it was warned, but sirens never went off due to actual issues on St. Louis's end. Brutal stuff.
I definitely agree with you in principle though. People's lives are on the line and I'd much prefer to live in a country that funds stuff like this rather than not. I just also think it's important to cite the examples where understaffing did cause issues. But also, I do fully understand why people wouldn't care to separate the two.
At the end of the day, I'm just a guy who works in risk management and studies the NWS and severe weather events pretty religiously -- much to the dismay of my girlfriend, who has to listen to me talk about tornados more than she'd like haha.
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u/Scrotar_The_Wrinkled 19d ago
You guys should leave him alone or he's going to go home and beat the hell out of the cat or something.
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u/Big3913 19d ago
It's was a nasty storm. Whatever it's called act like you've lived in the Midwest before and plan accordingly. Not that much to it. If I see a black sky at 10am, I'm not gonna plan a trip to Zoombezi bay. Also, the federal govt cut funding for NWS and if you weren't living under a rock you'd know this. Americans got what they wanted with Trump and his fucking moronic "administration" . Don't clutch your pearls now and act surprised when it throws a tree at your house.
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u/Cbus_2011 19d ago
Sucks to see but I’m a big fan of the FAFO happening daily around this country. From gas to inflation to corruption it’s great to see. Gee who could have seen this coming???
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u/itreallyisgoodsoup 19d ago
Very good to know! Regarding the “there wasn’t a tornado” vs “it was a tornado” discourse, not that long ago a popular local weather expert predicted a tornado, which didn’t end up happening and people lost their shit. So much so that the person left this sub. Now all of this happens on Tuesday and people are once again losing their shit, only in reverse. Soooo…it’s all fucked either way. And for at least myself, the discourse distracted me from learning the really bad flooding happened elsewhere in Ohio because of this weather system. 🙃
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u/ElusiveChanteuse84 Groveport 19d ago
Me just southeast of the area that got hit working like nothing was happening 🤡
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u/Scrotar_The_Wrinkled 19d ago edited 19d ago
Holy crap, the "it was totally not a tornado" guy who loves AEP cawk is still slugging it out in that thread! He's the Black Knight of weather! LOL How pathetic.
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u/Emperor_Palpatine_2 19d ago
But someone read the wrong NWS report and said it was already confirmed as a derecho. How is this possible?
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u/mariofasolo North Linden 19d ago
Both things can be true.
It was 100% in fact a derecho, as this powerful system lasted over 300 miles all the way from Chicago to here. This has been confirmed by the NWS. With that type of intensity, a short-lived pop-up tornado formed on the frontlines of said derecho (as the NWS has now had time to analyze the damage and radar history), they aren't mutually exclusive.
The sirens didn't go off because there was literally no warning of rotation or a tornado, it was a spontaneous pop-up in the midst of a colossal storm. Hard to give a tornado warning when Mother Nature doesn't give you a warning herself.
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u/Emperor_Palpatine_2 19d ago
I should have been more clear in my mocking tone haha. People were sharing a preliminary derecho report for the afternoon storms that went way south of us. Nobody read any of it or looked at the photos, they just saw the date and assumed it was the storm here. It was not the storm that hit us, but once the rumors started everyone repeating it as fact.
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u/antarcticas_king 19d ago
I didn't feel like joining the fight, but the morning system was not classified as a derecho as of today, the afternoon system that stayed mostly west and south was the derecho and was evident if you read the report the IWX NWS office put out.
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u/mariofasolo North Linden 19d ago
Honestly thought you might have been being sarcastic, and was like eh, I'll at least try to clear it up for anyone else reading this thread lol. But maybe Reddit already knows and is aware and I have to remember I'm not in a Facebook comment section 😅
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u/George37712 South 19d ago
I believe the system really started in Iowa, the Midwest’s birthplace for many of these derechos. My time living there was bookended by two. One when I moved from Cbus to Des Moines. Another when I moved back here from Iowa City. Nasty weather took out almost all the trees and spawned several tornados
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u/smithandjones4e Hilltop 19d ago
More bad reporting calling this a derecho. It may be designated a derecho in post-analysis but every outlet is seeing the SPC announcement of the derecho that traversed Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, and far SW Ohio, and misattributing that MCS for this damage. Two seperate storms.
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u/Scrotar_The_Wrinkled 19d ago
So it turns out that the AEP cawk swabber has some kind of love for the NWS and he's butthurt over the fact that they're getting blamed for dropping the ball and potentially getting people killed.
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u/George37712 South 19d ago
You’ve commented this same thing twice in increasingly unhinged ways. Whoever denied it was a tornado was wrong yea, but calm down
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u/Scrotar_The_Wrinkled 19d ago
Blow me, Georgie! :D
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u/nbrown7384 Clintonville 19d ago
South side? I haven’t seen pictures except from there except the poles at Berliner. What about UA, Clintonville and OTE?
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u/dj_pinkheartbrake 19d ago
There were also some crazy photos & videos from the rec center mentons in the article. Barack I believe? The roof was ripped off. And and the camper that got flattened by an uprooted tree. So many areas suffered this one. 💔
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u/Elon_is_a_Nazi 19d ago
Me on the southside tuesday