Alert archive / North Carolina

Weather alerts in North Carolina, 2019

5,453 weather alerts in 2019, from the National Weather Service and the Storm Prediction Center. An alert counts here when it covered any part of the state, so the counties below add up to more than the state.

Weather alerts by county

Each county as a circle sized by its count in 2019. Tap one for its archive.

Alerts
5,453
Warnings
1,493
Watches
130
Advisories
1,012
Busiest month
August1,051 alerts
Busiest day
April 19, 2019221 alerts

Over time

By month

Warning verification

How often warnings here had a storm report inside them, and how much warning the reports had.

41 of 158 tornado warnings covering North Carolina in 2019 had a tornado report inside them; 55 of 71 tornado reports fell inside a warning, on average 15 minutes after it went out.

North Carolina, 2019

WarningsWith a reportFalse alarm ratioReportsInside a warningMean lead time
Tornado warnings1584174%7177%15 min
Severe thunderstorm warnings71048931%1,35979%22 min
Flash flood warnings885142%17183%93 min

Each office's whole area, 2019

WarningsWith a reportFalse alarm ratioReportsInside a warningMean lead time
NWS Blacksburg, VA: tornado warnings45198%450%32 min
NWS Blacksburg, VA: severe thunderstorm warnings29921927%79168%25 min
NWS Blacksburg, VA: flash flood warnings351460%5248%70 min
NWS Greenville-Spartanburg, SC: tornado warnings230100%40%
NWS Greenville-Spartanburg, SC: severe thunderstorm warnings27918135%44273%17 min
NWS Greenville-Spartanburg, SC: flash flood warnings302033%6879%100 min
NWS Morristown, TN: tornado warnings50100%30%
NWS Morristown, TN: severe thunderstorm warnings12610120%23974%20 min
NWS Morristown, TN: flash flood warnings241250%3751%36 min
NWS Newport/Morehead City, NC: tornado warnings281064%12100%21 min
NWS Newport/Morehead City, NC: severe thunderstorm warnings945739%14488%24 min
NWS Newport/Morehead City, NC: flash flood warnings7357%4100%189 min
NWS Wilmington, NC: tornado warnings492157%3291%15 min
NWS Wilmington, NC: severe thunderstorm warnings914254%11086%20 min
NWS Wilmington, NC: flash flood warnings12925%1593%93 min
NWS Raleigh, NC: tornado warnings511276%2471%11 min
NWS Raleigh, NC: severe thunderstorm warnings25219224%67681%21 min
NWS Raleigh, NC: flash flood warnings292128%7989%75 min
NWS Wakefield, VA: tornado warnings591575%2882%13 min
NWS Wakefield, VA: severe thunderstorm warnings32723728%50986%20 min
NWS Wakefield, VA: flash flood warnings181328%3382%92 min

An office's figures cover every county it serves, including across state lines.

Verified by the Iowa Environmental Mesonet's Cow, which matches each storm-based warning with the local storm reports inside its polygon while it was in force, within 15 km of its edge: a tornado warning counts as verified on a tornado report, a severe thunderstorm warning on hail of 1 inch or more, a gust of 58 mph or more, or wind damage, a flash flood warning on a flash flood report. The false alarm ratio is the share of warnings with no such report; "inside a warning" is the probability of detection, the share of reports that fell inside one; lead time runs from the warning's issue to each report inside it, counting zero for a report that came first. A warning with no report is not proof nothing happened: reports come from spotters, the public and damage surveys, and are thin where few people live.

The alerts

5,453 alerts are too many to list on one page. Narrow it to a product above, to a month in the chart, or to a county.

By product

Every kind of product issued here, grouped by hazard. Each opens the same place narrowed to that product.

By county

Every county with at least one alert. A county page lists each alert that covered it.

60 more counties

The busiest days

Days with the most alerts issued, by UTC date.

Nearby

Alerts in force nowTornadoes on recordThe radar archive20182020

Sources

National Weather Service watches, warnings, advisories and statements from the Iowa Environmental Mesonet's VTEC archive, which reconstructs tornado, severe thunderstorm, flash flood and marine warnings back to 1986 from the NWS text archive. Storm Prediction Center watches and mesoscale discussions from SPC's archive through the Mesonet. County centers from the US Census Bureau. Warning verification from the Mesonet's Cow. Rebuilt daily.