May 23 - July 29
Determining Tornadic Near-Misses via Oklahoma and Kentucky Mesonet Observations
Tyson Stewart (Western Kentucky University), Dr. Brad Illston (OCS/Mesonet & OU/SoM) and Megan Schargorodski, KCC & KYMN
What is already known:
- The definition of a near-miss has been previously defined but struggles when applied to individual disasters.
- The definition and communication of near misses is important when communicating meteorological risks and hazards to a community.
- State mesonet stations offer the potential to observe and analyze distant tornadoes using accurate and consistent instrumentation.
What this study adds:
- The tornadic signature pattern can be detected by mesonet stations up to one kilometer away from any given tornado.
- Terrain features can potentially influence and impede tornadic proximity detections.
- Using the observed trends in tornadic observations, tornadic vicinity (and by extension near-misses) can be modeled.
Abstract:
Determining a definition of a near-miss is a frequent frustration in regard to natural disasters. While previous definitions of a near-miss seek to define it as any event that has a significant chance of causing significant property damage or casualties but did not due to chance, this framing of a near-miss fails when analyzing individual disasters and the footprint they leave within a community. This is especially prevalent with tornadic storms, as relatively small distances can be the difference between a direct hit or a miss when compared to larger, synoptic scale systems. By analyzing both direct and distant tornado encounters via mesonet station observation data, a rough figure of tornadic vicinity can be determined. Doing so results in tornadic signatures being present for all observations within one kilometer of a confirmed tornado, indicating a tornadic vicinity of one kilometer beyond the diameter of the damaging winds of a tornado. This vicinity range can be applied to generate a rough post-tornado model of what communities were particularly at risk enough to be deemed a near-miss encounter.