IEM Daily Feature
Tuesday, 28 March 2017
Tuesday, 28 March 2017
Wind and Hail Tags
Posted: 28 Mar 2017 05:33 AM
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0.5inch and 50mph thresholds are typically for forecasted values less than those levels.
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This is Severe Weather Awareness Week in Iowa, which features a different aspect of
severe weather each day. On Monday, the focus was Severe Thunderstorms and the
primary product the National Weather Service issues to alert of these storms is the Severe
Thunderstorm Warning. These warnings contain tags identifying the magnitude of threats
associated with the storm. The featured chart looks at the combination of wind speed and
hail size tags included in warnings issued by forecast offices with Iowa coverage. The most
common combination is of one inch hail and 60 MPH winds, which are the minimum
thresholds for severe storms (strictly speaking, only one of the two is necessary and the
wind threshold is 58 MPH). Thankfully for us, the frequencies of storms predicted to have
giant hail and/or hurricane force winds (75+ mph) are rather small. One of the reasons
these tags exist are to provide the NWS with an additional information point to alert the
public to when these extreme severe thunderstorm events are predicted.
Voting:
Good = 7
Bad = 0
Tags: warnings
Voting:
Good = 7
Bad = 0
Tags: warnings