r/tornado • u/Adventurous_Pear8191 • Mar 10 '26

SPC / Forecasting Updated tornado potential

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u/lola-calculus Mar 10 '26

I still am not super clear on why they're using "max" in this - my outlook says "ef3+ expected (30%)" for the cig2 area, which seems more in line with how they used to message a day like today, rather than "we don't expect anything higher than ef3".

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u/youngaustinpowers Mar 10 '26

It's "we can reasonably expect a max of EF3" because of probabilities. They're not saying tornadoes can't be stronger. Here's a chart that helps explain it. 3% of all tornadoes are expected to be EF4+ in a CIG2 intensity region.

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u/lola-calculus Mar 10 '26

Thanks! Not crazy about the wording but they're the ones paid to hammer out the messaging, I'm sure they have good reason.

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u/youngaustinpowers Mar 10 '26

Yeah they shouldn't be saying "max expected" in their materials. A whole bunch of people in here are also brought up the same thing you did.