Radar and early warning systems often early a 10 minute warning in advance of a tornado entering an area. However, they do not catch every tornado. Tornadoes are scary enough as it is. Can you imagine what it would be like to encounter a tornado with no warning? By the time you realize a tornado is upon you, it would already start ripping apart your roof. These surprise tornadoes can be deadly.
You will be happy if the worst of it is needing to call a roofing company to fix up your roof. In this video, you will learn more about these undetectable tornadoes.
The main way tornadoes are detected is through Doppler radar. Doppler radar works by shooting invisible lasers at storms to detect for reflectance from things such as rain or hail. This is why you can visibly see storms on radar. However, they can’t detect tornadoes which are pillars of wind. Instead, they identify velocity couplets and hooks in the radar to indicate where a tornado should be. This works well for large tornadoes. However, these indicators may not necessarily appear for smaller tornadoes. During a cold front, a line of strong storms may produce QLCS tornadoes. These small tornadoes often go undetected by radar and can cause destruction to unsuspecting towns.
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