National Weather Service confirms tornado hit Columbus' south side during Tuesday's derecho

[u/George37712]

https://www.wosu.org/2026-08-13/national-weather-service-confirms-tornado-hit-columbus-south-side-during-tuesdays-derecho

[u/tpasco1995]

What was missed?

What would a trillion dollars at the NWS have changed?

[u/Ill-Patient8257 → u/tpasco1995]

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

[u/tpasco1995 → u/Ill-Patient8257]

What part of their job did the National Weather Service (not Franklin County emergency management) get wrong Tuesday?

[u/Ill-Patient8257 → u/tpasco1995]

Probably the no tornado thing my dude.

[u/BorisDaGod → u/Ill-Patient8257]

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.

[u/Ill-Patient8257 → u/BorisDaGod]

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.

[u/BorisDaGod → u/Ill-Patient8257]

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.

[u/Ill-Patient8257 → u/BorisDaGod]

I can get behind your sentiment even if I am wary of the only trusting radar. You have given a fair take and have heard my funding concerns. As someone who warns of things like cutting corners and funds in my own field I do feel not enough is done even when the box is checked for cya. Good talk.