You don't want to be issuing [a tornado warning] on every one of those little circulations...because you are going to be alerting upwards of a million people in the middle of the night.            -- Julie Adolphson, meteorologist-in-charge, National Weather Service, Kansas City   In 2010, when my book Warnings: The True Story of How Science Tamed the Weather was published, the United States had an excellent tornado warning system. Near the end of the book I wrote: From that inauspicious beginning involving spare World War II leftovers, we have developed an effective and highly cost-effective systems that saves lives and dollars, nearly every week. Here's to the first fifty years of storm warnings. May the next fifty be just as rewarding.  Unfortunately, things have deteriorated in ways I never would have imagined in 2010. Joplin Tornado. Photo by the Basehunters. The next year the Joplin Tornado occurred. It was, by far, the worst disa...

NWS's Warning For This Tornado Was Inadequate The date of May 20 is one of the infamous in tornado history . Unfortunately, we are going to have to add another tornado to the list -- the one that occurred this afternoon in Gaylord, Michigan.  8:25pm Friday Update: At 11am pm Saturday, there are two fatalities, 44 injuries and one person missing according to the Detroit News. While the damage reports are just starting to come in, the storm appears to have been EF-2 to EF-3 intensity as a rough estimate. I have not seen a report as to injuries . Note: NWS rated the storm EF-3 intensity -- a "strong" tornado.  Photos: Michigan State Patrol except for screen capture which is The Weather Channel's This morning's blog post included National Weather Service's (NWS) Storm Prediction Center's forecast of a "significant" (my term) tornado risk for northern Lower Michigan.  Unfortunately, the forecast and warning quality went downhill from there.  A severe ...