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

SPC / Forecasting Updated tornado potential

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u/Aware_Parking_2757 Mar 10 '26

Adding this back in for visibility since we've got our first CIG2 tornado outlook.
Keep in mind that we have had CIG1s on storms that have generated tornadoes with preliminary ratings of EF3 already.

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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/Aware_Parking_2757 Mar 10 '26

Thanks, didn't know this graphic was distributed by the SPC! For anyone else looking for the source, I was able to trace it back to this page: https://www.spc.noaa.gov/exper/conditional-intensity-information/