<img src="http://www.joplinglobeonline.com/images/zope/extra.gif" border=0> ‘A monster lurking’ <font color="#ff0000">w/ NWS service assessment, slide show and chief meteorologist interview </font>

By Wally Kennedy

wkennedy@joplinglobe.com

The National Weather Service could have done a better job warning the public about the May 10, 2008, tornado that killed 21 people in Northeast Oklahoma and Southwest Missouri.

That was a finding by a team of weather experts who visited the area 10 days after the tornado struck to evaluate the performance of the National Weather Service (NWS) forecast offices in Springfield and Tulsa, Okla.

The report by the six-member team, released earlier this month, gives the public a detailed look at what those weather forecast offices did right and wrong that day, and the factors that might have influenced the death toll.

Bill Davis, chief meteorologist at the NWS station in Springfield, in a recent interview, said, “This service assessment is important to us because it shows us where we can improve. It can help us do a better job of saving lives when the next tornado hits. That’s why we do them.

“When you lose that many people, you need to take a second look at what happened,’’ he said. “Every event has its own personality, and this one was no different.’’

Lead time

The weather office in Tulsa issued a tornado warning with a mean lead time of 14 minutes, according to the report. The Springfield office issued a tornado warning with a mean lead time of 24 minutes. The national goal for a tornado warning lead time is 11 minutes. The area was placed under a tornado watch six hours before the tornado touched down.

Gary Szatkowski, leader of the assessment team, in a telephone interview on Wednesday, said, “A tornado warning is one of the most serious things a weather service office does. The goal is to give people as much lead time as possible. With this tornado, there was quite a bit of lead time.’’

Despite the lead time, the team said there were problems that affected the outcome, including:

n There was no significant communication between the Tulsa office and the Springfield office during the critical period when the tornado moved out of Tulsa’s radar area and into Springfield’s radar area.

n “Limited communication between Tulsa and Springfield resulted in two tornado warnings — in effect at the same time — depicting a tornado in two different locations, moving in two different directions and speeds, with two different sets of communities potentially impacted.’’

n The Springfield weather office did not conduct briefings with emergency-management personnel before the event. The criterion for the Springfield office to hold a conference call is moderate certainty of life-threatening weather. The staff in Springfield did not feel that threshold had been met.

The Tulsa office provided emergency-management personnel with Web-based, prerecorded briefings.

Driving away

The report suggests the circumstances that day favored the town of Picher, Okla., where six people died, when compared with a sparsely populated area of Newton County, where 14 people died — even though the people of Picher had less time to react.

“The people in Picher, because of the flatness of the terrain, could see this tornado coming. They made a visual confirmation of the warning and got out of its way,’’ said Davis. “The sirens were going off there, too.

“When the tornado crossed over into Newton County, it was stronger and shrouded in rain. They could not see the tornado coming because of the terrain. There were no sirens to warn them.’’

The report confirms that between 75 and 125 vehicles raced out of Picher in the 10 minutes before the tornado hit.

“Had those people stayed, they would be dead,’’ said Davis, noting that National Weather Service policy recommends that people stay out of vehicles when a tornado is approaching. It’s safer to get in a ditch than to get into a car.

“That’s still our policy. But at Picher, they did the right thing, though some of the people who were killed at Picher were in vehicles,’’ Davis said.

The report shows that nine of the fatalities — 43 percent — occurred in automobiles. Three of those were in Picher. With regard to the other fatalities, 11 of them — 52 percent — occurred in manufactured or mobile homes. One fatality occurred in a frame house. The tornado damaged or destroyed 160 houses in Picher.

A key factor in what happened that day was the way in which the storm moved and the way it appeared to those who saw it. Most Midwest tornadoes follow a path that carries them in a northeasterly direction. This tornado was a rare right-turning tornado; it moved to the southeast.

The tornado looked more like a classic tornado — a funnel cloud extending to the ground — when it struck Picher. When the tornado entered Newton County, it was wider, more powerful and concealed by rain. The team found that “these preconceived notions about what a tornado should look like and the path it was expected to take adversely influenced preparedness actions.’’

Joplin spared

Bill Lant, with Lant’s Country Feed Store, at Iris Road and Missouri Highway 43 in Newton County, has a photograph of the tornado hanging on the wall of his new feed store. The old store was blown away.

“The photo was taken with a cell phone by a man who lives on Bethel Road two miles west of our store. It shows just a big white cloud,’’ he said. “No one had any idea that a monster was lurking behind it. It was hidden by hail and rain.

“A woman and man were on our parking lot changing a tire. She told me she looked down the road, saw the cloud and saw a mobile home literally explode,’’ he said.

The death toll could have been much higher had the tornado not been a right-turning storm.

“When we saw the tornado appear on radar near Welch (Okla.), our first thought was that this tornado’s location would put it on a direct path for Joplin if it tracked to the northeast, which is what most tornadoes do,’’ Davis said. “It would have — had it not been a right-turning tornado.’’

Information flow

At 11 a.m. the day of the tornado, the Storm Prediction Center and the weather forecast offices in Tulsa and Springfield held a conference call to discuss the type of severe-weather watch to be issued. A tornado watch was agreed to on the call, but some forecasters felt there was not enough time in the call to discuss the type of watch to be issued, the team found.

Those in the conference call had to choose between a severe thunderstorm watch and a tornado watch. What they knew at the time was that severe weather in the form of hail and strong winds was expected in the late morning and that there was an increasing potential for tornadoes in the afternoon.

That scenario is what happened. There were severe thunderstorms in the morning followed by a three-hour lull until the tornado struck. The morning thunderstorms created the impression to the public that the worst was over when, in fact, the worst was yet to come, the team found.

The supercell that created the tornado straddled the Kansas-Oklahoma border northwest of Welch. Radar indication by both Springfield and Tulsa led to the issuance of two tornado warnings affecting different counties. The team found that better coordination was needed between the offices when the warnings were issued.

“A severe-weather event does not pay attention to the geographic boundaries of our weather forecast offices,’’ Szatkowski said. “There were opportunities there for more information to flow between the two offices that were missed.

“More enhanced communications could have been beneficial, especially with the detection that it was a right-turning tornado early on. Despite that, the offices did a great job during a challenging event.’’

The Springfield office issued a tornado warning at 5:14 p.m. for Cherokee County, Kan. The Tulsa office issued a tornado warning at 5:26 p.m. for Craig and Ottawa counties in Oklahoma, after it became apparent the tornado was right-turning and would not affect Kansas. The warning from the Tulsa office occurred six minutes after the tornado touchdown had been confirmed near Welch, giving the people of Picher 14 minutes in which to react.

While that was happening, the Tulsa and Springfield weather offices were managing 18 tornadoes and more than 100 severe thunderstorm reports in their respective service areas.

“They were swamped, especially in Tulsa, when the tornado touched down at Welch,’’ Szatkowski said. “No one knew that tornado would turn out to be the worst one of them all.’’

The monster

The tornado on May 10, 2008, reached a peak intensity of EF4 when it entered Newton County, meaning it had wind speeds of 208 to 260 mph. It was on the ground for 98 minutes. It had a path length of 77 miles. It killed 21 people and caused $61 million in damage.

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