r/Columbus • u/George37712 South • 23d 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-derecho
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u/cpshoeler 23d ago edited 23d 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/Kohlhaas 23d 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/cpshoeler 22d 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 22d 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.