The Dangerously Bad Tornado Warnings in Arizona Today

We have written, over and over, about the National Weather Service's increasing inability to issue timely and accurate tornado warnings for the United States. This morning's hapless effort illustrates why we need a National Disaster Review Board and why we need a change of emphasis and maybe leadership at NWS/NOAA. 

The news media says this is a confirmed tornado in central Arizona. There are other reports of a tornado(es) touching down but they are unconfirmed. 

Here is a rundown of this mess, all times local Arizona time (MST):

• 7:03a, I tweeted a forecast of tornadoes in central Arizona and a link to the blog post below. 
• 7:23a, I sent a note to the NWS offices in Flagstaff and Phoenix requesting, given the tornado threat, they put their radars into a tornado mode with more frequent updates. They did not. Four minute intervals is too infrequent when tornadoes threaten. I continued to send warning info to my Twitter/X followers. The rotation became became very impressive at 7:34.

• 7:38a, I warned the Dewey-Humboldt/Prescott Valley area that a tornado was forming (below). There was nothing about tornadoes from the NWS (no red polygon)

• It wasn't until 7:49a, 11 minutes later, that the NWS finally issued a tornado warning for the storm. 

The problem is that, by the time the tornado warning was finally issued, the rotation was rapidly breaking up. Below is the Doppler radar 1 minute after the warning was issued. The time at upper right is Central Daylight.

So, when the threat was high, there was no NWS warning. When the threat had lowered, a warning was issued. 

But, there was a second example.

The same supercell thunderstorm continued to move northeast toward Flagstaff. At 9 am, I used my version of a preliminary tornado warning. 

At 11:03a, there was tremendous rotation SW of Flagstaff! No NWS tornado warning!

I then issued my own version of a tornado warning advising people to take safety measures. The NWS still did not have a tornado warning out!

Finally, at 9:09a, the NWS issued their tornado warning. Note the warning polygon is mis-located in that the rotation path (pink lines) tracks out of the polygon. My warning area did not have a large "false alarm area" to the west of Flagstaff. 

Storm chaser Reed Timmer published a photo of the tornado on Twitter/X while the storm was in the Flagstaff area. 

Former NWS meteorologist Alan Gerard made this comment on this Substack a little while ago:

...[regarding] the NWS warnings — no doubt, there has to be accountability there too. I haven’t been following AZ too closely today, but I will just say you are not the only person I have heard from about the [poor] performance. 

This is absolutely unacceptable. While I know of no injuries today (thank goodness!), people have been killed in these bad warning situations. Future unnecessary deaths will unquestionably  continue to be in the future unless major changes are made!