The NWS team interviewed about 100 people, including residents, emergency responders and city officials, and also examined warning and forecast services before the powerful tornado cut through the southwest Missouri city of about 50,000 residents and reduced much of Joplin's southern half to ruins. The NWS assessment should illustrate the need for those resources, Stammer said. He said the city has applied for federal funding 10,000 weather radios for Joplin households and for 4,000 in-place shelters for Joplin residents. promoted weather radios and shelter in place," he said. Keith Stammer, Jasper County emergency manager, said Joplin is a "weather-ready community" and supported the NOAA assessment. NOAA also said the agency wanted more collaboration between what it calls the "weather enterprise," which includes the weather service, media and emergency management, in order to make warning systems consistently better at conveying the seriousness of a threat. The report said the weather service was considering developing other forms of notifications including GPS-based communications involving text messages, smart phone apps and upgrades to the Emergency Alert System and NOAA Weather Radio. The warnings should have said "something along the lines of `This is a very large and dangerous tornado and don't mess around,' basically." "Once there became an awareness that something big was going on, we wanted the severe weather statements and warnings to project a heightened sense of urgency," he said. Instead, the tornado warnings issued were the "basic template," Wagenmaker said. After the intensity of the storm was clear, the resulting warnings weren't worded strongly enough "to accurately portray that immediate action was necessary to save lives." Joplin tornado aftermath 28 photos The report also said the National Weather Service was overall well-prepared and "performed in an exemplary manner" and that the combined efforts from the weather service, emergency management and the public "saved many lives."īut there were also lessons to be learned, including beefing up the wording in tornado warnings, the report said.
So it's really hard to make that assessment." Joplin twister decimation from the ground 31 photos "It was a very large tornado, so there were certainly a number of people who did all the right things, took shelter in the best available place, but still found themselves in situations that weren't survivable.
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“We will only sound the alarm for baseball-sized hail or larger, or 80mph winds or greater,” Bailey said.īailey hopes the new information helps people decide how to prepare and shelter from a storm."It's really hard to tell how many people that perished in the tornado did not take shelter," Wagenmaker said during a conference call. Beginning later this summer, the NWS will also begin pushing those emergency alerts for the highest threat category of severe thunderstorms. “I feel allows us to do lot better job communicating what we’re expecting for impacts and risk, not only to partners like Gary and his team, but also to make it easier for the general public to understand as well,” said Andy Bailey, the warning coordinator meteorologist for the National Weather Services’ Pleasant Hill, Missouri, location.įor about the past five years, the NWS has sent notifications directly to people’s cellphone for tornado and flash flood warnings using the same wireless emergency alert system law enforcement utilizes for Amber Alerts. Now the government agency uses “ impact based warnings,” which basically place tornado and severe thunderstorm warnings in particular categories using “tags” to better highlight the risk a particular warning poses. “The NWS should explore evolving the warning system to better support effective decision making," the report stated. In a report the National Weather Service compiled after the Joplin tornado, it determined meteorologists accurately predicted the tornado, but the agency’s warnings weren’t actionable, or easy for the public to use. Lessons learned from the tornado which destroyed much of Joplin, Missouri, in 2011 continue to impact the way we receive weather warnings today.
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