Boone County’s tornado warning system commendable | From the Roundtable

The Good Friday tornadoes that passed through St. Louis with, incredibly, no reported deaths reminds us of how far we have come watching and warning the public about the advance of these storms.
The Greater St. Louis area has been especially vulnerable to this form of cyclonic activity that’s unique to America. The storm that plowed through Bridgeton and Lambert International Airport was another one for the record books.
I’ve been leafing through a booklet of photographs showing the damage wrought by a tornado that crossed St. Louis late in the afternoon on May 27, 1896, that killed 255. There were no watches or warnings. Anything built out of wood was blown away. Brick and masonry construction fared somewhat better, but no structure was immune. Even a chunk on the west end of the substantially built Eads Bridge was torn off. The tornado was rated F4 on the Fujita scale.
A tornado followed a similar path through St. Louis on Sept. 29, 1927, and also was rated an F4. More substantial building construction is credited with reducing the death toll to 79. Another tornado rated F4 crossed the city in the middle of the night on Feb. 10, 1959, but both rudimentary radar and broadcast media were available to watch and warn the public, and 21 people were killed. With more sophisticated monitoring and warning systems in place, even fewer lives were lost during a freakish F4 mid-winter tornado on the afternoon of Jan. 24, 1967.
Until Nov. 9, 1998, the history of tornado activity in Greater Columbia included a series of F2-scale events, mostly outside the city limits; the most deadly storm was an F4 tornado that killed 20 on June 5, 1917. Then came the wake-up call. On Nov. 9, 1998, a tornado splintered dozens of homes in the Southridge subdivision and raised questions about the adequacy of existing monitoring and warning systems.
When Navy technicians observed rudimentary weather disturbances on radar screens during World War II, little did they know that this secret tool of warfare would become a major lifesaver for weather prediction during peace time.
Frustrated by the inability to warn the public of huge killer hurricanes that wracked the eastern seaboard in 1938 and 1944, the chief meteorologist for the New York Weather Bureau (as the National Weather Service was known at the time) pleaded for radar equipment. Benjamin Parry’s successful plea proved invaluable a few years later when a string of strong hurricanes — by then carrying such women’s names as Carol, Diane and Edna — made their way up the coast; the advance watches and warnings undoubtedly saved many lives.
At the same time, equal attention was paid to the Great Plains, where a network of linked radar facilities was in place by the mid-1950s to monitor the development and advance of tornado activity. The Weather Bureau office at Columbia’s old airport (now Cosmo Park) was equipped with radar. For many years, the meteorologist on duty broadcast daily over KFRU, oftentimes during severe weather, and interpreted what appeared on radar and where the storms were.
Still, we felt vulnerable. Offices were closed and consolidated, and the National Weather Service disappeared from our area. A network of sophisticated next-generation radar sets (NEXRAD) using powerful WSR-88 Doppler equipment went into service. But there was a huge flaw as far as Columbia was concerned.
This was borne out by my own experience as a radio station owner in Arkansas on April 22, 1996, when a tornado — unannounced — pounced on the Fort Smith-Van Buren area and left considerable damage in its wake.
The area was watched over, so to speak, by the Tulsa NEXRAD installation 100 miles away. But, as was the case with Columbia more than two years later, radar, as powerful and sophisticated as it is, was blind to the low-level tornado activity because it dropped below its horizon of view. Columbia is some 100 miles from NEXRAD sites at Pleasant Hill southeast of Kansas City and Weldon Spring west of St. Louis. Storm activity below 7,000 feet above the ground simply is not detectable on radar that far out.
After considerable lobbying, the National Weather Service installed NEXRAD at the Fort Smith airport. Because that was not to be the case in central Missouri, private capital stepped up to install and utilize powerful storm-tracking radar sets within a few years.
KRCG-TV-13 and the Premier Marketing Group of radio stations were first, followed by another sophisticated system installed a few years later at KOMU-TV-8. Cumulus Radio, Premier Marketing’s successor, has since discontinued its participation with KRCG. Numerous additional tools via the Internet, including direct access to various National Weather Service sites, provide up-to-the-minute coverage for anyone. The views of what the NWS NEXRAD weather radar site is seeing from Pleasant Hill are instantly accessible on iPhones, for example.
Columbia-Boone County should be strongly commended for staying on top of all storm tracking and warning procedures. Warning sirens dot the city and county. A network of trained weather spotters and storm chasers coordinate their activities via a dedicated 2-meter “ham” radio network. National Weather Service radio station KWA-55 at 162.55 mc offers continuous weather forecasts, including alerts to inexpensive weather receivers. Meteorologists abound among area TV stations.
Still, there’s more ground to cover. Questions remain about why the sirens sounded in Columbia shortly after 5 p.m. on Good Friday when the possibility of tornado activity appeared in southern Boone County. While appreciating caution and prudence, data from the Pleasant Hill, Weldon Spring and Springfield NEXRAD sites clearly showed that the storm was well outside the city and, tracking the storm’s history, was clearly moving away from the area. Nevertheless, the sirens wailed and left many confused as to why they were on.
If one button does indeed start all of the sirens across Boone County, maybe the next step would be to devise a way to address each siren individually as the need to warn specific areas arises.
This brings up the imaginable — and entirely doable — ultimate storm watch and warning system via ubiquitous portable devices such as the iPhone. Warnings posted through each cell site are sent out when storms bear down on areas served by those sites.
Imagine how much safer you would feel being on the highway in the middle of nowhere, facing unknown weather conditions and being warned in advance via your cell phone that treacherous weather is ahead of you.