Tornado watch vs. tornado warning
What each product means, who issues it, every level from a marginal risk to a tornado emergency, the taco analogy, how the system was built since the first forecast in 1948, and how good the warnings actually are.
Blog
Long-form articles on severe weather and how it is observed, forecast and recorded. Each one is written from primary sources, cited in full, and illustrated with the data itself: the warning texts as transmitted, the tornado database as published, and the radar as recorded.
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Tornado Alley: where it is and how it has moved
The term's origin, why it has no official border, what 76 years of records show about the shift toward the Mississippi valley and the Southeast, why Dixie Alley is deadlier, and what the science projects next.
For individual storms documented scan by scan, see the tornado profiles. To retrieve the radar for any date, use the archive search.