Report: National Weather Service Testing Catastrophic Tornado Warnings

Posted on April 4, 2012

The very large, powerful and destructive tornadoes over the past several years are leading to the National Weather Service creating more ominous storm warnings for some of the more deadly tornadic storm systems. Time reports that the NWS will test storm warnings that include words like "catastrophic" and "unsurvivable."

This is an example of one of the ominous warnings:

THIS IS AN EXTREMELY DANGEROUS TORNADO WITH COMPLETE DEVASTATION LIKELY. ... SEEK SHELTER NOW! ...MOBILE HOMES AND OUTBUILDINGS WILL OFFER NO SHELTER FROM THIS TORNADO - ABANDON THEM IMMEDIATELY.

Here are a couple other examples:

MASS DEVASTATION IS HIGHLY LIKELY, MAKING THE AREA UNRECOGNIZABLE TO SURVIVORS

COMPLETE DESTRUCTION OF ENTIRE NEIGHBORHOODS IS LIKELY

Reuters reports that the Naitonal Weather Service believes these warnings may help in situations where tornado-weary residents have become desensitised to regular tornado warnings.

WEATHER
TORNADOES