New tornado warning system in the works could give people more time to take shelter

Researchers are developing tools that could deliver severe weather warnings in a new way, offering more lead time when tornadoes and other violent storms threaten.

Residents would also find out quicker when it is safe to leave the basement.

The new warning system – called Threats in Motion– is at least five years away.

Still, meteorologists want residents to start thinking now about warnings and how to respond. This week is severe weather awareness week in Kansas, designed to remind residents of the dangers of tornadoes, hail, strong winds and floods.

A statewide tornado drill is planned for 10 a.m. Tuesday when emergency managers will sound sirens and test other alert systems, and Wichita public school students will head to the nearest shelter.

Last year, 89 tornadoes were reported in Kansas during 26 days, ranging from as early as April 17 to as late as Sept. 27. In all, 16 people were injured during the tornadoes.

This year, AccuWeather predicts tornadoes could start as early as mid-March.

“Once the cold snap lifts out in the central Plains and lower Midwest by mid-March, things could get unstable quickly and we could have another active area there,” Paul Pastelok, lead long-range meteorologist for AccuWeather, said in issuing the forecast.

Better tornado warnings

The end game behind the new warning system is to have the warnings move with storms, said Kodi Berry, a researcher with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Severe Storms Laboratory in Norman, Okla.

The warnings will extend out in front of severe weather, such as a tornado, in much the same way a headlight’s beam projects ahead of a moving vehicle. As the storm moves, the warning area, called a polygon, moves with it.

The new warnings would create more time for residents and businesses to react than in the current system, which creates a stationary polygon for each warning issued.

That means a business just outside of a warning polygon could potentially have much less lead time than one inside the polygon just a few miles away, Berry said. A warning polygon in continuous motion would provide consistent lead times throughout the threat.

“It also creates the potential for people to know they’re in the clear earlier, instead of wondering if the warning is still valid and you’re trying to figure out if you’re clear to get out of your storm shelter or place of shelter,” Berry said.

Threats in Motion is probably five years from full implementation, Berry said. To get there, new technologies need to be developed and existing ones need to be used in new ways.

Meteorologists and emergency managers are being shuttled down to the laboratory in Oklahoma to run through simulations and offer feedback on what works well and what doesn’t.

KAKE meteorologist Cat Taylor went down to Oklahoma for a week last fall and used the Threats in Motion technology in simulations, during which she had to convey warnings to an imaginary viewing audience.

“I was a guinea pig,” Taylor said with a laugh.

She came away impressed with Threats in Motion, calling it “so intuitive.”

“It’s going to be a very easy sell to the public,” Taylor said.

They’ll be able to understand how it works pretty quickly, she said. Most of the obstacles delaying implementation have to do with the coding vendors will have to do for the software.

Meteorologists and emergency managers from around the country continue to travel to Norman to test and tweak the product, which is part of the Forecasting a Continuum of Environmental Threats program, or FACETs.

Berry, who is leading the FACETs program, said the research is designed to help fine-tune algorithms needed to produce the constantly shifting warning polygons.

“As we know, storms evolve,” Berry said. “They speed up, they slow down, they turn right” and the polygons need to be able to adapt to those changes as they’re happening.

The work also includes social science research, gauging the consistency of the warnings versus their accuracy – and how people respond to them.

Isolating the danger

National Weather Service branches in Kansas figure to be early recipients of the Threats in Motion technology, given the Sunflower State’s place in the heart of Tornado Alley.

Over the past 30 years, Kansas has averaged 89 tornadoes a year, second only to Texas in the United States.

“I would think we would be in the area where testing is desired,” said Ken Cook, meteorologist-in-charge of the Wichita branch of the weather service, in an email response to questions.

Cook said he doesn’t know how soon that could be, though.

Among the questions researchers are still trying to answer are how much of the mobile warning platform will be automated and how much will rely on input and decisions by forecasters covering the storms involved, Berry said.

There’s also the challenge of how to seamlessly transfer responsibility for the moving polygons from one weather service branch to another. That process now differs depending on the offices involved – and the situation.

Stationary warning polygons now only extend to the boundaries of a branch’s coverage responsibilities. New warnings have to be issued when a storm moves into another branch’s coverage zone.

Researchers also are working to combine multiple warning products into one platform, Berry said. For instance, software that tracked flooding and flash flooding threats was separate from warning generation software.

“All of that is being put under one software umbrella now,” Berry said.

Butler County Emergency Management Director Keri Korthals calls the moving polygon concept “intriguing.”

“Definitely in a tornadic situation, but also in a very high-end severe storm,” Korthals said in an e-mail response to questions. “One of our big concerns and challenges is trying to isolate who is in danger, who may be in danger next, and who is no longer in danger… and making sure the right (most up-to-date) information is getting to the correct people.

“A polygon that actively moves with the threat could help us better visualize who is in danger at any given moment in the storm’s life.”

This story was originally published March 2, 2020 at 5:01 AM.