Wildfire smoke continues to result in poor air quality from the Upper Midwest into the Northeast. Multiple days of hot, dry and windy conditions are expected to bring fire weather concerns for portions of the Four Corners region into the central Great Basin and Rockies. Heavy rainfall and a flash flooding threat continues in the Southeast. Severe thunderstorms continue across the Northern Plains Read More >
Biggest takeaway:
This is a rare event, but one that needs to be planned for given its catastrophic potential. Any plan will likely revolve around near instant notification of all people with a canned, prepared statement of what can be done to take cover very quickly. This plan should be able to link to your Tornado Warning plan (the "threat" listed just above this one) to enhance actions (hopefully) already taken from the NWS tornado warning that likely was already issued.
Warning/Trigger for Plan:
Either:
A) NWS Tornado Warning mentioning “CONFIRMED” tornado.
B) Sighted tornado from your location
Advance Notice/Time to Activate & Accomplish Your Planned Response:
Plan on 0-2 minutes of advance warning
Allow options that there may be as much as 10 mins if a NWS Tornado Warning contains confirmation of a tornado [uncommon].
Frequency:
Rare, but a high end threat that needs to have a plan to allow proper response.
How Accurate Warnings?
If a tornado is confirmed in a warning, or you see one - the threat is there. It will just be a matter of if it will hit your exact location. Race to do what you can.