Overnight, tornadoes hit over a stretch of 250 miles in the Mid-West states that included Kentucky, Illinois, Arkansas, Missouri, Mississippi, and Tennessee. The devastation was overwhelming.
Governor Beshear reported that 70 or more people are feared dead in Kentucky alone. High fatalities from places that got hit included a candle factory in Kentucky, an Amazon warehouse in Illinois and a nursing home in Arkansas. Tragic indeed.
Hearing the news gave me chill and the question of why couldn’t we predict the tornadoes now-a-day with all the radars, satellites, and other sensors? With computer modeling and big data analytics, surely we have this figured out. Right?
As it turns out, that is far from the truth. Fourteen minutes is the best average advance warning we can get in spite of over a century of tornado watches. The cause of the tornadoes is too dynamic and unpredictable. Fourteen minutes is barely enough time to take cover, let alone evacuation.
Do you think we can better forecast natural disasters in the future? Or the Mother Nature is too unpredictable?
Running with Buddha 
I think they had tornado warnings for that area the day before. But I imagine if you live in that area you hear those warnings often.
So many variables in weather forecasting. I wonder if we will ever have much more warning time.
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Yes Andy, most people would hesitate to leave their homes behind unless the threat is imminent. As you said, many variables in weather forecasting makes it difficult to predict. That’s why I keep on thinking when that day will happen given we have decoded the DNA. Thanks for your comment.
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