New Technology Allows Better Extreme Weather Forecasts

After the deafening roar of a thunderstorm, an eerie silence descends. Then theblackened sky over Joplin, Mo., releases the tentacles of an enormous, screaming multiple-vortex tornado. Winds exceeding 200 miles per hour tear a devastating path three quarters of a mile wide for six miles through the town, destroying schools, a hospital, businesses and homes and claiming roughly 160 lives.

Nearly 20 minutes before the twister struck on the Sunday evening of May 22, 2011, government forecasters had issued a warning. A tornado watch had been in effect for hours and a severe weather outlook for days. The warnings had come sooner than they typically do, but apparently not soon enough. Although emergency officials were on high alert, many local residents were not.

The Joplin tornado was only one of many twister tragedies in the spring of 2011. A month earlier a record-breaking swarm of tornadoes devastated parts of the South, killing more than 300 people. April was the busiest month ever recorded, with about 750 tornadoes.

At 550 fatalities, 2011 was the fourth-deadliest tornado year in U.S. history. The stormy year was also costly. Fourteen extreme weather and climate events in 2011—from the Joplin tornado to hurricane flooding and blizzards—each caused more than $1 billion in damages. The intensity continued early in 2012; on March 2, twisters killed more than 40 people across 11 Midwestern and Southern states.

Tools for forecasting extreme weather have advanced in recent decades, but researchers and engineers at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration are working to enhance radars, satellites and supercomputers to further lengthen warning times for tornadoes and thunderstorms and to better determine hurricane intensity and forecast floods. If the efforts succeed, a decade from now residents will get an hour’s warning about a severe tornado, for example, giving them plenty of time to absorb the news, gather family and take shelter.

The Power of Radar
Meteorologist doug forsyth is heading up efforts to improve radar, which plays a role in forecasting most weather. Forsyth, who is chief of the Radar Research and Development division at NOAA’s National Severe Storms Laboratory in Norman, Okla., is most concerned about improving warning times for tornadoes because deadly twisters form quickly and radar is the forecaster’s primary tool for sensing a nascent tornado.

Radar works by sending out radio waves that reflect off particles in the atmosphere, such as raindrops or ice or even insects and dust. By measuring the strength of the waves that return to the radar and how long the round-trip takes, forecasters can see the location and intensity of precipitation. The Doppler radar currently used by the National Weather Service also measures the frequency change in returning waves, which provides the direction and speed at which the precipitation is moving. This key information allows forecasters to see rotation occurring inside thunderstorms before tornadoes form.