The Xtreme Weather Discord alerted over 100,000 people today about the rare severe weather event that took place today in Wisconsin & Illinois. Here’s how we did it.
Storm Prediction Center issues MRGL Risk
Around 11:30 AM EST, the Storm Prediction Center (SPC) issued a Marginal (MRGL) Risk for severe weather with a 2% risk for tornadoes, 5% risk for damaging winds, and 5% for hail. We didn’t pay much attention to it because it’s pretty common to see MRGL risks, even in February. (okay, maybe not in the midwest.) The point is: it was a very small risk, or so we thought…
Starting LIVE Coverage on TikTok
Around 5:45PM EST, I decided to go LIVE on TikTok since I saw a lot of tornado & severe thunderstorm warnings were popping up. I didn’t think much of it though; maybe one or two weak tornadoes, nothing crazy, but I was wrong. An abnormal amount of warnings popped up around 6:10 PM EST over in south-central Wisconsin. It first started out as a severe thunderstorm warning, then a tornado warning was issued, then before I knew it, it was on the ground.
Providing Coverage of the Tornado
Around 6:30 PM, 2 tornado warnings (one radar indicated, one observed) were issued inside of the severe thunderstorm warning, and things were really starting to get intense with 2 areas of rotation. I continued to track it and warn the stream to take cover if in the polygon, and then, it happened. At 6:50 PM EST, the particularly dangerous situation (PDS) tornado warning was issued. XWD reacted promptly, activating a temporary instance of Severe Coverage Mode (SCM) to prioritize coverage of the event just 10 minutes after it was issued. We provided radar coverage, as well as getting photos and videos of the tornado. The PDS warning lasted for over 20 minutes and took advantage of the environment it was in very well. I warned the stream about the particularly dangerous warning and followed the tornado until it ended up lifting off the ground at around 7:20PM EST.
Summary
All in all, this was a completely unexpected event and something that will go down in 2024 weather history. Not only did we have a PDS tornado warning in a MRGL risk which is rare in itself, this also happened in February which adds to the insanity of it. My LIVE coverage on TikTok lasted around 2 hours & 30 minutes and boasted a total of over 100,000 views. We are really glad we can provide the coverage we can to keep you weather aware, whenever.
