re: Winter storms shouldn't be named....

I hate it, too. Its corrupt, and they're in the bed with insurance companies. Homeowners sometimes suffer higher deductibles for 'named storms'


Guess what?

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developing their own severe weather indicies such as "TOR:CON".

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I'll stop you right there. The TORCON isn't a calculation, but a metric used by Dr. Forbes on what he thinks the chances of a tornado are, and he's spot on. When it comes to severe weather forecasting, very few are better than him. He studied under Dr. Fujita, and was on the ground with him during the 1974 super outbreak. He developed the idea that hook echos form the stongest tornadoes, and helped develop the EF scale to replace the Fujita scale, created by his mentor.

Fun fact: Dr. Fujita lived in Kokura, Japan in 1945, which was the first target for both the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs, but was passed over both times due to weather conditions.

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I'm sure insurance companies have something to do with storms getting "named". Lots of these homeowner policies have "named storm deductibles" where they get to jack up the deductible percentage. The more storms that are named, the less they have to come out of pocket to cover their policy holders.

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Correct.

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I'm sure insurance companies have something to do with storms getting "named". Lots of these homeowner policies have "named storm deductibles" where they get to jack up the deductible percentage. The more storms that are named, the less they have to come out of pocket to cover their policy holders.

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On the coasts you are correct, but in the Midwest it is just wind/hail deductibles. Strength of storm is irrelevant if there was any wind or hail damage at all it applies.

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I'll stop you right there. The TORCON isn't a calculation, but a metric used by Dr. Forbes on what he thinks the chances of a tornado are, and he's spot on. When it comes to severe weather forecasting, very few are better than him. He studied under Dr. Fujita, and was on the ground with him during the 1974 super outbreak. He developed the idea that hook echos form the stongest tornadoes, and helped develop the EF scale to replace the Fujita scale, created by his mentor. Fun fact: Dr. Fujita lived in Kokura, Japan in 1945, which was the first target for both the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs, but was passed over both times due to weather conditions.

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I'm not doubting the science behind it or doubting Dr. Forbes, but I feel that the development of TORCON came partially out of The Weather Channel being a hype machine. Scientific or not, it still causes confusion with the public because The Weather Channel is the only one that uses it. I can't tell you how many times I have seen people ask a local meteorologist what the TORCON values are for any given severe weather event, but no one else other than The Weather Channel follows them. So you end with the weather channel saying one thing and other weather info outlets saying something else.

fricking Yankees need to feel special since they rarely get hurricanes.

Even got their little hurricane upgraded to a "super Storm"