Analyzing the Predictability of Violent Tornadoes

Violent tornadoes are among the most destructive natural disasters that occur on Earth. Generally, the possibility of such tornadoes can be predicted, but they have occurred in areas where modeling indicated that they would not. For each violent tornado since 2006, we noted environmental conditions, frontal positions, and SPC Convective Outlook and HREF forecast performance. We found that the HREF performance is worse in the cold season than in the warm season. The FV3 delivered the highest subjective performance (based on a qualitative assessment of convective mode and updraft helicity swaths) for cold-season violent tornadoes, while the 3-km NAM exhibited the worst overall performance. Additionally, the HREF updraft helicity swaths were typically too far north.