After many days of Severe Weather, we can hopefully make it come to an end tomorrow. But, let’s look back at watches, and bad judgement by the Storm Prediction Center and/or National Weather Service.
To start, let’s look back to May 1st. A Tornado Watch was issued a 3PM, along with Severe Thunderstorm Watch at 5PM, both for NW Iowa, Damaging Winds, Large Hail, and Tornadoes forecasted to be likely. We looked back at the file for that day — absolutely NO warnings were issued for Iowa. Squat, none. The need for a Tornado Watch? Answer that yourself.
May 2nd A flash flood watch was issued for North Central Iowa and Northwest; no warnings or rain there whatsoever. A Severe Thunderstorm Watch was also issued; only 4 severe warnings that night though.
May 3rd was one of the more organized days, having a Tornado Watch issued and many tornado warnings and severe thunderstorm warnings issued. A Flash Flood Watch was also issued for Southern Iowa, NWS Des Moines sent out a couple warnings that night.
May 4th North Central Iowa had a storm developing that issued a few Tornado Warnings and Severe thunderstorm warnings. A Severe Thunderstorm Watch was issued for a large portion of Iowa; which was another mistake by the SPC. The Northwestern and North Central portion of the state got hit hard, whereas a Watch was in effect to the Northeast and East central part of the state. A Flash Flood Watch was as well issued, however no warnings were issued either.
May 5th, there were 4 severe thunderstorm watches issued, along with one tornado watch. Know what? Absolutely no warnings what so ever. Yes, a few damaging wind and large hail reports, but there were zilch warnings.
May 6th: A Severe Thunderstorm Watch was issued until 5AM for a good portion of the state, however no warnings were issued. Storms later developed and roughly 10 warnings were issued. A Severe Thunderstorm Watch was then issued until 1PM and 5PM, however storms began to weaken.
Overall, the Storm Prediction Center and the National Weather Service was not really organized. I’m not saying they were horrible during the “Iowa Severe Weather Marathon”, but it was not there best week. They have been getting worse and worse, and I hope someone does something about it.