Alert archive / South Carolina

Weather alerts in South Carolina, 2012

3,051 weather alerts in 2012, 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 2012. Tap one for its archive.

Alerts
3,051
Warnings
945
Watches
75
Advisories
556
Busiest month
July795 alerts
Busiest day
July 10, 201285 alerts

Over time

By month

Warning verification

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

6 of 31 tornado warnings covering South Carolina in 2012 had a tornado report inside them; 7 of 13 tornado reports fell inside a warning, on average 4 minutes after it went out.

South Carolina, 2012

WarningsWith a reportFalse alarm ratioReportsInside a warningMean lead time
Tornado warnings31681%1354%4 min
Severe thunderstorm warnings75255726%1,04786%23 min
Flash flood warnings281932%7087%92 min

Each office's whole area, 2012

WarningsWith a reportFalse alarm ratioReportsInside a warningMean lead time
NWS Charleston, SC: tornado warnings18289%743%1 min
NWS Charleston, SC: severe thunderstorm warnings25318128%44483%25 min
NWS Charleston, SC: flash flood warnings11645%3187%144 min
NWS Greenville-Spartanburg, SC: tornado warnings150100%10%
NWS Greenville-Spartanburg, SC: severe thunderstorm warnings58141029%72289%23 min
NWS Greenville-Spartanburg, SC: flash flood warnings331942%4779%46 min
NWS Columbia, SC: tornado warnings9367%560%4 min
NWS Columbia, SC: severe thunderstorm warnings24618326%39686%22 min
NWS Columbia, SC: flash flood warnings141214%3990%46 min
NWS Wilmington, NC: tornado warnings11191%1100%9 min
NWS Wilmington, NC: severe thunderstorm warnings16210336%26482%25 min
NWS Wilmington, NC: flash flood warnings110%3100%57 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

3,051 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.

6 more counties

The busiest days

Days with the most alerts issued, by UTC date.

Nearby

Alerts in force nowTornadoes on recordThe radar archive20112013

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.