<story><title>Low-frequency sound can reveal that a tornado is on its way</title><url>https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20231212-the-sound-that-warns-a-tornado-is-coming</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>dylan604</author><text>&amp;quot;They rarely have much warning, but it is often enough to save lives.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;I really wish this trope would go away. If you live in an area prone to tornadoes and you &amp;quot;have no warning&amp;quot;, then you&amp;#x27;re just not paying attention. We know tornadoes exist. We know where they tend to frequently occur. The local weather stations in those areas are pretty damn good with warnings. We know days ahead of time that the conditions will be right for potential activity. We can now see potential tornadoes before they are formed. We can track their paths with neighborhood cross street precision.&lt;p&gt;Nevermind the fact that there&amp;#x27;s a pretty good indicator when the sky turns dark and the weather changes. Thunder and lightning and wind are essentially the knocking on the door. It&amp;#x27;s not like it&amp;#x27;s a sunny day and a tornado just pops out of the sky to say hello.&lt;p&gt;To say no warning just means they are not paying attention. I don&amp;#x27;t know what the tornado activity is like where the BBC is from, but it is woefully out of date.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jasonwatkinspdx</author><text>Growing up in Kansas and having stood on a roof watching a tornado go through the other side of town, as well as walking through the aftermath of the 91 andover tornado (&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.youtube.com&amp;#x2F;watch?v=s_D4TyZxHO0&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.youtube.com&amp;#x2F;watch?v=s_D4TyZxHO0&lt;/a&gt;) that went less than a mile past my friends house, I strongly disagree.&lt;p&gt;We get severe storm warnings, but there&amp;#x27;s so many storms in tornado alley to be honest people get fatigue over them and mostly ignore other than maybe changing plans for a bbq. We in no way have some days ahead warning that this severe thunderstorm, out of the several dozen each season, is going to be one that launches a tornado vs a variety of over outcomes.&lt;p&gt;As far as knowing when a tornado actually forms, yes we can see some indications of rotation or a funnel &amp;quot;hook&amp;quot; on radar but they&amp;#x27;re also ambiguous with many, many false positives. The most reliable way to know a tornado has formed remains eye witnesses calling it in. We have basically no ability to do something like even a 15 minute warning confident there will actually be a tornado forming.&lt;p&gt;Please don&amp;#x27;t blame people for &amp;quot;not paying attention&amp;quot; for something that is not even remotely as clear cut as you&amp;#x27;re portraying.</text></comment>
<story><title>Low-frequency sound can reveal that a tornado is on its way</title><url>https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20231212-the-sound-that-warns-a-tornado-is-coming</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>dylan604</author><text>&amp;quot;They rarely have much warning, but it is often enough to save lives.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;I really wish this trope would go away. If you live in an area prone to tornadoes and you &amp;quot;have no warning&amp;quot;, then you&amp;#x27;re just not paying attention. We know tornadoes exist. We know where they tend to frequently occur. The local weather stations in those areas are pretty damn good with warnings. We know days ahead of time that the conditions will be right for potential activity. We can now see potential tornadoes before they are formed. We can track their paths with neighborhood cross street precision.&lt;p&gt;Nevermind the fact that there&amp;#x27;s a pretty good indicator when the sky turns dark and the weather changes. Thunder and lightning and wind are essentially the knocking on the door. It&amp;#x27;s not like it&amp;#x27;s a sunny day and a tornado just pops out of the sky to say hello.&lt;p&gt;To say no warning just means they are not paying attention. I don&amp;#x27;t know what the tornado activity is like where the BBC is from, but it is woefully out of date.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>tkahnoski</author><text>Watches are common, indicators are common, warnings tend to be very last minute.&lt;p&gt;I consider myself a very weather aware person living near the edge of tornado alley in Dallas, I get all the alerts, generally keep a strong watch on radar development and storm arrival times (hail is just as much as a concern as tornadoes).&lt;p&gt;In general if there is a detection of a rotation or a strong hail core on radar, emergency sirens will go on near the affected area. Sometimes it just happens too fast, so if there is another method like the article sounds to detect a strong potential a tornado is forming it will absolutely reduce casualties.&lt;p&gt;As an example I lived through in October 2019. There was one hour between a Tornado Watch being issued and when the EF2&amp;#x2F;EF3 hit the ground.  Watches generally last a long time and cover a large area so they aren&amp;#x27;t particularly helpful to me other than to indicate to &amp;#x27;check the radar on the regular&amp;#x27;.&lt;p&gt;Because I was already glued to my phone I saw the warning right away, I was able to text friends that lived a few minutes from the tornado touchdown point that there was a  tornado right next to them.  Their sirens hadn&amp;#x27;t gone off yet, by the time they had taken shelter they heard the sirens and the wind kicking up right after. They got off light on damage compared to the rest of their neighborhood but I can&amp;#x27;t imagine someone out walking their dog or running an errand and then only having 1 or 2 minutes to find shelter. I&amp;#x27;m still amazed this thing didn&amp;#x27;t cause more injuries particularly in the early minutes when the news crews and meteorologist were playing catch up.
&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Tornado_outbreak_of_October_20%E2%80%9322,_2019#North_Dallas%E2%80%93Richardson,_Texas&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Tornado_outbreak_of_October_20...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;Maybe this tech would have helped give a clearer indicator versus the usual approach of waiting to see something on radar or manually spotting it.  Or maybe some storms will just form too fast to have any useful indicators.</text></comment>