Inadequate Warning of the Kankakee Tornado

NBC Chicago

Undoubtedly Wednesday morning, you will be hearing about the tornado which struck the Kankakee, Illinois, area (south of Chicago) around 6:25pm. The damage is considerable. Chicago's WGN-TV says, "Kankakee County was severely damaged." There is report of two people killed by this tornado across the border in Lake Village, Indiana. 

After the poorly warned tornadoes in southwest Michigan Friday, one would think the NWS would have made it a point to have its radars operating on optimum settings and then jump on any supercell thunderstorm with tornado characteristics. It appears this did not happen in Kankakee. 

Below is what I posted on Twitter/X at 6:04pm. I do not use the term "tornado warning" as I believe it should be reserved for the National Weather Service (NWS) which is the official warning source. 

Unfortunately, we did not hear from the NWS regarding the tornado threat for quite a while. While a severe thunderstorm warning for "softball hail" for Kankakee was issued at 6:09pm -- which indicated the NWS was monitoring the radar -- the official tornado warning for Kankakee wasn't issued until 6:16pm -- a full twelve minutes later. 

As we don't yet know the exact time the tornado began (we will likely find out tomorrow when the NWS does its damage survey), we don't know whether the NWS's warning was issued before or after. Regardless, it is almost inexcusable that the tornado warning was so late. 

Above is the radar at 6:11pm, five minutes before the NWS issued its tornado warning for Kankakee. 

• There had already been a tornado near Pontiac. 
• There was a classic "hook echo" which was growing more impressive with each radar image*.
• There was rotation in association with the hook

All of that means a tornado warning should have been out. Given that they were monitoring the radar, I have to ask whether the radar interpretation and storm warning training is adequate? 

Another problem: the radar was set to 3-minute image intervals. *Given the level of tornado risk forecast by its own Storm Prediction Center, the radar should have been operating at 80-second intervals. The whole purpose of the NWS's radar network is to detect and warn of dangerous storms. When there is the level of risk we had Tuesday evening, the radar should have been run at 80-sec. so tornadoes could have been detected more quickly. This is a recurring issue across the entire United States. 

Unfortunately, unlike Great Britain and others, we do not have an agency like the National Transportation Safety Board which investigates natural disasters. There is a just-introduced bill to create a Disaster Review Board. Here's an explanation of how the Board would work. We need it desperately. 

I will update this article during the day Wednesday when more information becomes available.