The National Weather Service, again, has serious communications issues. Local NWS offices are having to resort to messages like these: The NWS has had 13   30-minute delays on the Weather Wire (the pipeline for tornado, flash flood and other urgent warnings) this afternoon. *Update*  The delays reached 30 minutes at one point!   [8:49pm] [resume original text] The issues with this agency are overwhelming and, as far as I can tell, there is little urgency to fix them. Instead, they are talking about what they will do with AI in 2-5 years. 

A pair of obviously false tornado warnings were issued by the National Weather Service (NWS) yesterday afternoon near Baltimore. I'd like to explain what went wrong and how it might be repaired going forward. The first issue Monday was the Sterling NWS radar was being operated at 4-minute intervals. Four minutes is too infrequent when tornadoes are an issue. It should have been operated at 80- or 120-second intervals.  First Tornado Warning Here is the earlier tornado warning at 4:14pm EDT: The "radar indicated rotation" was allegedly over Randallstown (underlined). The radar displays Central Time. This first warning is represented by the northern (upper on the image) red polygon. There is no  radar echo at all over Randallstown (left image). A tornado is not possible when there is no echo in a situation like this. The line of thunderstorms had pushed a gust front ahead of the line. On the right, the Doppler wind display indicates the wind is blowing from west to east but...

Light hatching = wind gusts stronger than 75 mph possible into this evening. The thick hatching is a forecast of wind gusts above 85 mph between now and 1pm.  If you live in the hatched area and it is safe to do so, please put your car and lawn furniture inside. There is a great deal of lightning with these storms and it is a higher than average threat. 

 

....to the people or organizations that licensed eleven  of my images in the past week. It is much appreciated! When you have a moment, stop by the gallery and take a look. 

Heavy to excessive rain forecast from Colorado/Nebraska to the Appalachians this week. The rain is neededed in the western part of the area but the forecast 3 to 5 inches east of the Mississippi may lead to flooding.