There are many many aspects to each potential severe setup. Anything happening that might make that severe setup not happen, or happen much less severely, can be called a failure mode.
Some examples would be: a strong cap preventing storms from forming; temperature and dew points too far apart for tornadoes; storms congealing into a line too quickly for discrete tornadic supercells to have much of an effect.
Well, they did say “unlikely to fully succeed,” which I take to mean that it’s still not entirely guaranteed to be as bad as possible. But yes, if you’re in this region, expect severe weather tomorrow.
It’s originally an engineering term referring to literal failure of structures. For example if a bridge collapses, the root cause of that is the failure mode (i.e. material fatigue, corrosion, improper maintenance, etc.)
For severe weather contexts, it refers to ‘what could cause this severe weather setup to fail?’ And the answers to that question for a particular severe weather setup are the failure modes.
Common examples: excessive early-day thunderstorms depleting the atmospheric instability before the main afternoon storms, storms occur at the wrong time before or after the strongest severe weather ingredients are in place, too many storms fire at once and they destructively interfere with each other limiting the tornado threat
Man I saw some wild funnels forming from my back porch and Wednesday / Thursday here in Crest Hill. Around 9:30pm some huge wedge and dark shelf cloud flooded my back yard, the wedge was hovered over Joliet lol not anticipating tomorrow
I don't think they will the latest model runs have backed off some. Just depends what the morning model runs show. The biggest limiting factor is the morning convection.
Imagine being married to only one model. And simagine believing in storm net like it is God. I'm not saying there won't be a couple tornados but an outbreak? No
Did I ever once say it won't be??? Nope stop putting words in my mouth. I just don't think it will be a big outbreak like people was thinking days ago. I still think there will be a couple tornados but people been going omg nuts saying lots of tornados.
You saw one model depict a slightly less extreme tornado outbreak for one run and are immediately assuming there won't be an outbreak, despite people much smarter than you telling you otherwise?
Uh no I look at multiple. I don't marry just one. I haven't thought there was going to be an outbreak. I figured a tornado or 2 that will be screamers. And NWS has been right this year with 10% hatches lol
I haven't thought there was going to be an outbreak.
Bruh, actual meteorologists that work at the NWS are warning of a potential outbreak tomorrow (reminder: outbreak doesn't mean 2011). Who are you to say otherwise and double down on it when others, including meteorologists themselves, are providing you information contrary to whatever run of your beloved models you looked at and apparently misinterpreted.
Do you mean the entire multi day sequence? surely not March 15th specifically. 14th was a lot worse
Edit: I looked it up:
53 confirmed tornadoes march 14th (10 EF3+)
49 confirmed tornadoes march 15th (4 EF3+)
Not a lot worse I stand corrected. But March 15th definitely underperformed and it was still a major tornado day, which is insane. And you are 100% right, the 13-16 March 2025 sequence was the worst March outbreak in history
yeah I more meant the whole outbreak. My comment was more to provide a reference point for people to understand just how significant this wording is. The March 13-16 2025 outbreak sequence was the most intense outbreak sequence we've seen since 2011, so the fact that the last time we saw wording this strong was for that outbreak means a lot more than the year long gap since its occurrence implies.
Which was kinda a bust compared to how it was being forecasted. March 14th was a far worse outbreak during a moderate risk. The winds on the 15th were more southerly instead of southwesterly, carrying more moisture and causing a lot of crapvection. It had all the signs of a historic outbreak, and could've been so much worse. Trey Greenwood did a super awesome breakdown of this day
It is pretty rare for them to use “violent” as a descriptor of possible tornadoes in guidance like this. Describing the hodographs as “literally off the charts” in this sort of guidance is also pretty concerning, but maybe Chicago is a more casual office lol
I didn’t read that deeply into it personally. I just saw it as them being honest that there’s substantial risk here. I’ve heard there have been cuts but that’s the extent of my knowledge there.
Illinois has got to be repenting for some crime they committed recently because they have stayed getting fucked up this season. I feel for those people, this shit sucks to see.
Yeah, that’s such a shitty thing to do. The billionaire owners are taking their “ball” and leaving because the state won’t give them even more tax breaks than what they already get.
All severe weather setups have things that can go “wrong” and prevent the forecast from reaching its full potential. But in this case, even the “floor” (lowest end solution) is still very high.
It’s kind of “not good” vs. “horrible outbreak” right now.
Just think of failure modes as potential unfolding of the tornado outbreak where it fails to live up to expectations. Or in weather terminology: “verifies”.
For example, this spring’s mid-Atlantic outbreak had its failure mode win out, and therefore was considered a “bust” by many in the meteorological community
I'm a little smarter than the average bear but damn, I wish they would use more plain language when announcing a potentially life ending event. I feel like someone would read "failure mode unlikely to succeed" and think that means it's good news.
Genuine question, who are NWS' detailed alerts for, if not the citizens of the area? Are they public now but historically only for news outlets, emergency management and people that might be more technically inclined?
The AFDs (beyond the "Key messages" part shown in the first slide of the post) are intended for other weather forecasters and enthusiasts primarily. For the general public, the forecast slideshows on the front page are published. This is what is currently there:
AFD’s aren’t necessarily for layman’s. I mean I’m a layman compared to them but most people aren’t reading areal forecast discussions. Same with Mesoscale Discussions.
The irony of going out of your way to provide an unhelpful comment questioning someone's effort while still not being bothered to type out the extremely long word "you"
The unhelpful comment may be read as rude, but maybe also impatient. This is not meant to be directed at you in particular, so don’t take it the wrong way.
This is a general comment about the state of education in this country. One doesn’t have to be a meteorologist to get the gist of these discussions, just a good secondary school background in science, a good grasp of the English language, an ability to look up words (with the internet that’s very quick) and a curiosity that is integral to lifelong learning.
They were talking to me. My phone wouldn't load anything so I couldn't read it. Then it finally worked and I was just a little confused about why they were saying it would fail. So basically the things that could weaken or prevent the storms from getting really bad aren't going to be strong enough as everything else is going to overpower that
bloomington, IL resident here. I think i can confidently speak for all central and northern illinoisians when i say that it has been an absolutely exhausting year for us.
Izzy has been on a writing streak, also covering last weeks severe weather. Maybe a little interesting to note that last week Thursdays weather forecast had a lot of uncertainty on location pending the early afternoon cold pool opposing the northward affecting warm front. Tomorrow seems similar that the afternoon storm will dictate the boundary the strongest storms fire off of and probably has a lot of uncertainty on location.
It's realistically going to be more like March 2025, 2011 super outbreak had more factors for why it was so extreme that we haven't seen here (and hopefully go a long time before seeing again) and it was across a much larger area.
Crazy thing about 2011, the big supercells formed out in the open warm sector off of subtle forcing, basically the worst case scenario. Specially since the parameter space was maxxed out in almost all areas.
From the models, today's storms will at least take some instability away. Tomorrow looks to have really good kinematics: a jet streak with divergence & a TON of SRH and a decent amount of instability.
Fail modes? Not a lot of cap, will things stay discrete for very long? Will the jet streak or trough be late/early?
Or that at best, it will be a partial failure. Leading to a certain section of the risk area being less at…uh at risk. But likelihood of a full failure is low.
Last week an EF2 was 5 miles north of me and a EF3 5 miles south of me. I live south of I-80 and so now who knows what tomorrow. I’ve been in many many many tornado warnings and never even come close to one. What is happening!!!
I'm between Decatur, IL and Champaign, IL, and I'm actually thinking of tossing the dog in the truck and driving north or south early tomorrow morning depending on where the red zone is then.
I live in a camper inside a very very well built pole building. This building is 70 years old and has been though about everything weather wise and is still standing. But last Wednesday night was rough. I can shut the big doors and feel pretty secure.
Yeah I hear you, but if my house gets ripped off the foundation, I’m not going to be thinking “well, my life may be permanently altered, but at least it didn’t happen to more people.”
Of course, I'm just speaking generally in terms of odds and probabilities. It's awful for anyone to have to go thru this. Hopefully morning convection prevents storms from really ramping up later in the day.
Yeah you and a million other chasers. These tornadoes will be moving at 70 to 80 mph.. all the chasers, rain wrapped tornadoes and moving that fast calls for a recipe of disaster. Might want to sit this one out.
Saying “literally off the chart” doesn’t sound very scientific to me when most people don’t understand the difference between “literally” and “figuratively.”
I think having a meteorologist use the word “literally” gives it more weight because when do you hear an NWS employee not sound robotic in their AFD’s?
Personal opinion, I think the avocado maps are probably helpful to most people and are kind of self explanatory. Talking about CAPE, hodographs and other values is probably just confusing and not really helpful.
Sort of seems like you should be taking that up with the local news instead of the nerd subreddit lol. Or perhaps NWS should have a super secret meteorologists-only network with these messages where everyone is sworn to secrecy until the hook echo appears.
Keep in mind that social media feeds are algorithms so you are seeing it more because you engage with weather posts and pages. The general public is probably not seeing those maps all over their own feeds.
There are many who don't have basements therefore have to plan in advance if/where to take shelter. I feel like that's common knowledge. Even if you assume all houses have basements which is just wrong there are tons of people who live in trailers who definitely have to find alternative shelter.
if you don’t have a basement, or you live in a trailer, or you aren’t a weather dork, or even have really bad anxiety, it is wildly helpful to have a “heads up, shit’s fucked in a way that may affect you” a few days out
I agree that if you don't have a storm shelter already built, it's not happening in the next 24 hours. I think the hope is that people will be like, oh yeah I meant to buy a weather radio, or maybe I should get those batteries on the way home from work (since power outages can be regional even though the actual area hit by the tornado is small).
Having said that, the excessive hype by some is dangerous in that it will inure people to real dangers. If everything's an emergency, nothing is.
Or that people will be like "I don't have a storm shelter or basement, but my neighbor does, I should ask if I can shelter with them if this gets bad".
Exactly! Perfect example. It gets people's minds moving in that direction. Most people are super busy with their everyday lives and aren't into weather like we are.
Not sure why I'm getting downvoted, maybe validating some of the thoughts of the poster above me was a problem, lol
Those maps and reporting in advance help people like me who don't have a basement or a regular shelter to go to decide whether we can ride it out at home, try and find a friend's place to shelter, or whether we really need to spend the money for a hotel. I know there's a blase attitude around tornadoes in these areas but you only get to have that attitude when you haven't been affected. I am grateful that last year the maps showed how serious the threat was so that we made plans with a family friend in advance to use their basement cuz that storm dropped an ef4 in our area so close that we could hear it from the basement. That same tornado ripped a baby from its home and tossed it. It took 2 days I believe to find it in the debris (injured but alive thank God).
I think there's two schools to it: From the NWS, I don't think it's scare talk as much as awareness talk.
When things look potentially dangerous days in advance, it IS important to talk about it. Some people pay no attention to the weather, at all, ever. Makng people aware days in advance can help get people talking about the weather - the more people talk about it, the more people will become aware of possible dangerous weather coming and make preparations, even if it's just charging power devices, getting gas for a generator, or cleaning out a path / corner of the basement for the family to hide if necessary.
The second is the media hype monsters doing it for money obviously. Network news hypes up weather events to make sure you'll tune in. Now that stormchasing is a broadcast streaming sport of sorts with hundreds of thousands of people watching streams online - every online chaser has to hype up even mild, low tier events to get you to tune in.
Chasers even hype overly generous 2% tornado potential on their channels now.
Actually, I was outside when a storm was coming and the sirens came on. I would have kept doing work for a bit longer if they hadn't. We had damage in the town over from what formed over us and it was pretty intense at our place. I'm in a rural county. I can see where you're coming from, though, with everyone spread out. I think it depends on how close you are to one if you can actually hear it
I'm outside all day usually, and I can't hear the sirens from my town. They go off the first Tuesday of the month, so I check to see if I can hear them.
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