Relationships between Convective Mode and Tornado Warning Probability of Detection and Lead Time

Tornado warning statistics were computed for 2669 tornado events across the continental United States from 2003-2004 using a tornado event database maintained by the Storm Prediction Center. This database includes the convective mode for each tornado event. The probability of detection and median lead time results were stratified into six convective modes: discrete storm, cells in cluster, cells in line, quasi-linear convective system, bow echo and storm cluster. The results showed that probability of detection and median lead time were significantly lower for linear storm modes than for cellular modes.