KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Severe thunderstorm season has begun, which means violent and dangerous weather can quickly replace an otherwise quiet spring day.
Last May, a half-mile wedge tornado roared across the plains near Salina, Kansas. The tornado mostly occurred over open country, but it’s only a matter of time before another monster storm will occur in the Kansas City metro area, forcing people to spring into action.
When the skies begin to darken with those ominous looking clouds, 41 Action News will be following any severe weather carefully in Storm Tracker, paying close attention to any system that could threaten the area.
Storm Tracker is well-equipped to track the fast-changing and dangerous weather that spring storms can bring. A high-tech, high-resolution radar display rapidly updates with special tools that can be used to pinpoint hail and even debris lofted by tornadoes.
It also gives a pinpoint location in reference to the storms that the 41 Action News weather team monitors.
A professional weather station measures relative wind speed, humidity, pressure and even rainfall. Three cameras in Storm Tracker, including one on the roof that pans 360 degrees, give a clear view of the sky.
But even with all of this high-tech equipment, it can be dangerous to chase storms without the two most important tools there are: knowledge and experience. Anyone chasing storms must understand the structure and behavior of storms and have the skills and experience needed to track them without endangering themselves or others.
Storm chasing is inherently dangerous, but having a trained set of eyes on a storm is very helpful to the warning process. It allows us to confirm what a radar is indicating and sometimes recognize signs of dangerous weather before it's registered on radar, giving our weather team and the National Weather Service a good indication of what’s happening outside.
Andy Bailey, warning coordination meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Pleasant Hill, Missouri, recognizes the high value of storm spotters.
"If the environment is showing it but the radar isn't, and we get a spotter report, we will issue the warning,” Bailey said. “We take those spotter reports every bit as seriously as we take the data from our radar. We really don't know for sure what’s going on in a storm until we have eyes on those storms telling us exactly what’s going on at ground level.”
Weather radar can be a helpful tool, but it’s also an imperfect one. Damaging hail and tornadoes often develop in-between radar scans, and sometimes they’re not seen at all.
Even the very best radar image is about three to four minutes old, because it takes time to complete a sweep and for the image to be viewed. By that time, a storm can be miles away, or it could have intensified.
A well-trained spotter or chaser can fill those gaps with lifesaving information. They can provide not only ground truth, but also pinpoint the exact location on what is happening at the ground.
The powerful tornado that leveled most of Greensburg, Kansas, in 2007 was a prime example of spotters providing this information. Storm chasers confirmed a massive and violent tornado heading for the town more than 30 minutes before it hit.
The 1.7-mile wide monster destroyed 95 percent of the town and severely damaged the rest. Eleven people lost their lives. But many experts say hundreds more would have died if it weren't for the urgent and timely reports sent from spotters and chasers.
Bailey recalls a similar day in 2009 when severe thunderstorms threatened the town of Kirksville, Missouri. Spotters positioned in Trenton were closely watching the storm. National Weather Service radar was not showing tornadic activity at the time, but the spotters were seeing something much more alarming.
"We started to get reports of funnel clouds, which allowed us to issue that tornado warning,” Bailey said. ”The tornado touched down, went right through Kirksville (and) did quite a bit of damage. They got the lead time in Kirksville because of those spotter reports that were received early on.”
Spotter reports have been used for nearly a century, and they are still just as crucial now to helping warn the public. When storms do threaten our area, we will be out spotting and live streaming to inform and motivate people in the path of dangerous weather to seek shelter.
If you are interested in becoming a spotter for the National Weather Service, visit its website.
