NOAA PROVIDES CRITICAL LEAD TIME FOR SOUTHEAST TORNADOES
This entry was posted on 3/2/2007 9:08 PM and is filed under Severe Weather News.
March 2, 2007 — Tornadoes that tore across the Southeast on Thursday struck after significant advance warning from the NOAA National Weather Service. Preliminary Tornado Warning lead times—the amount of time between the issuance of a Tornado Warning and the touchdown of a tornado—ranged from 12 minutes to 55 minutes, providing critical time for the emergency message to sound NOAA Weather Radio, commercial radio and television and tornado sirens. For Enterprise, Ala., the preliminary tornado lead time was 18 minutes. (Click NOAA image for larger view of the storm-based Tornado Warning—peach-colored polygon—issued for Alabama's Coffee County, including Enterprise, at 12:47 p.m. CT on Thursday by the NOAA National Weather Service displayed the projected tornado path with greater specificity over the typical county-based warnings. Please credit “NOAA.”)
New storm-based warnings, introduced by the NOAA National Weather Service in January (to be fully operational nationwide in October), helped to better pinpoint the path of yesterday’s tornadoes resulting in a reduction in the area warned, as compared to the previous county-based warning method. The Tornado Warning that included Enterprise, Ala., included a 71 percent reduction in areas that did not need the warning.
