Tracking Tornadoes

THE DAILY FED

Tracking Tornadoes

In Tornado Alley, people don't just talk about the weather, they do something about it.

A few years ago, the National Weather Service decided it was time to upgrade to next-generation radars (or "nexrads") that are more powerful and accurate than their predecessors. In doing so, the NWS planned to allocate the nexrads more equitably than the old radars had been, which meant closing some facilities in the better-covered eastern half of the United States.

But when officials in Tennessee and northern Alabama discovered that their tornado-prone area of 1 million people was slated to lose NWS facilities in Chattanooga and Huntsville, they complained. Closing the two sites would have left a 150-mile wide region relatively uncovered-a region that's "prime country for significant tornado activity," according to Jack Hales, the senior storm forecaster at the NWS's Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Okla.

After several years of cajoling by elected officials, the NWS decided that the Tennessee-Alabama region needed nexrads too. So workers are constructing a 100-foot nexrad tower in tiny Hytop, Alabama, five miles from the Tennessee border, that should be operational by early summer. Locations in Arkansas and Indiana are also getting new nexrads.

That would be shortly after the annual tornado peak-and if anybody doubted that every day is precious, evidence became bountiful on Jan. 24. That day-at a time when severe storms are not expected-tornadoes struck in at least six places in Tennessee and Alabama, killing at least one motorist.