Rep. Bart Gordon and Mayor Tommy Bragg discuss tornado preparedness before a congressional roundtable in Murfreesboro Monday morning. TMP/Michelle Willard
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In light of the Good Friday Tornado, Rep. Bart Gordon (D-Murfreesboro) called on local government officials and weather experts to find out what the federal government can do to save lives in a weather emergency.
Gordon was joined by Lincoln Davis (D-Byrdstown) as representatives of the House Science and Technology Committee, which Gordon chairs and Davis is a member. The committee will begin hearings June 11 on what technology can do to improve weather-warning systems and possibly save lives.
“We are looking for better ways to detect tornadoes and reduce false alarms,” Gordon said.
Experts at the roundtable discussed emerging technology, such as Phased Array Radar and Warn-On Forecasts, which would enable meteorologists to provide more accurate forecasts more quickly, and improve lead time and reduce false alarms. Currently, the national warning time average for tornadoes is 14 minutes, but 73 percent of tornado warnings are false alarms.
Tennessee, as a whole has seen several deadly tornadoes in the past few years, including the EF-4 that hit Rutherford County in April, the Super Tuesday Tornado and several that have decimated the Jackson area.
“Tennessee has led the nation in tornado fatalities for the last 10 years,” Davis said.
Murfreesboro was chosen as the venue after the devastating Good Friday Tornado, which killed two, injured 40, destroyed 140 homes, damaged 28 businesses and damaged 845 homes.
Murfreesboro Mayor Tommy Bragg was joined by Ken Weidner for Sumner County’s Emergency Management Agency, Keith Scruggs from Macon County’s EMA and Percy Phifer from Warren County’s EMA.
Bragg suggested merging prediction and reaction technologies to form a more perfect method of warning residents of impending severe weather sooner.
National Weather Service representative Larry Vannozzi said in the past 20 years warning time has almost tripled from 5 minutes to 14 minutes for an impending tornado, but the same technology has also increased the number of false alarms.
Fox 17’s Chief Meteorologist Arch Kennedy agreed, saying as the number of false alarms has grown, so has complacency among the public.
“It’s partly TV’s fault,” he said.
The biggest development in predicting and spotting tornadoes before they from has been Doppler radar.
Doppler radar came online in the mid-1990s, Channel 2’s Chief Meteorologist Davis Nolen explained, adding the radar system is great, but has it’s limitations.
He said the picture is only updated every 6 minutes and can only detect rotation at 3,000 feet above ground level. This has led to more tornado watches and warnings.
Kennedy likened it to “crying wolf.”
Vannozzi said new radars are in the works, like adapting the military’s phased-array radar, which uses hundreds of radar beams at multiple levels simultaneously to paint a picture from the ground to the clouds within a minute.
“No matter how much technology we put out there, unless people hear our warnings, we can’t save lives,” he said.
Others suggested keeping the public informed and educated is key to saving lives in a tornado, improving the weather radio network to be more specific and adding weather observation stations across the state.
Michelle Willard can be contacted at 615-869-0816 or mwillard@murfreesboropost.com. |
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