Greensburg Got a 39 Minute Warning

Weather geeks like me will appreciate this. The technology involved with modern weather forecasting has advanced so much that the residents of Greensburg, KS received their first tornado warning 39 minutes before the storm hit.

In a statement, the National Weather Service said that "forecasters in Dodge City were able to issue a Tornado Warning 39 minutes before the 1.7 mile wide wedge tornado hit the town." That was updated with a "tornado emergency" message 10-12 minutes beforehand that urged Greensburg residents to get to shelter immediately.

A step above the typical tornado warning, which simply means a twister has been spotted or is likely to develop, a tornado emergency is used when an extremely dangerous storm is headed directly for a populated area, meteorologist Jennifer Ritterling said.

One was last issued in 1999 when an F-5 tornado struck the Oklahoma City area, killing 36 people. Ritterling said the typical lead time for a tornado is 10 to 18 minutes but the storm’s extreme size made it simpler to spot and predict its movements.

“The strong and violent ones are easier to detect than the smaller tornadoes,” she said. “We try not to cry wolf and send out false alarms for things that aren’t rotating. You have to put that extra wording in when it appears people are in danger.”

Mike Umscheid, a meteorologist at Dodge City, issued the lifesaving warning Friday night. In his online blog, Umscheid said he initially thought the storm would miss Greensburg to the southeast. But then, he said, the storm began turning more to the north with each pass of the radar.

“I didn’t even really give it thought ... the ‘tornado emergency for Greensburg’ ... it was like instinct — just did it,” he wrote on the blog.

Thirty-nine minutes is a huge amount of time for people to plan their escape, and thankfully, most of the homes in the area had basements where people could get below ground level. In the Oklahoma tornado in 1999 very few people had basements and had to ride the storm out in inside closets and bathrooms, both of which contributed to the death toll. There were also thousands of people on the road in 1999 and some of them were killed while driving their cars or trying to hide under bridges. That didn't seem to happen in the more sparsely populated area in Kansas.

Doppler radar is allowing forecasters to pick up rotation in storms well before tornadoes begin to drop down and start tearing stuff up, and for those that live in tornado country, that's a Godsend and a lifesaver.