What a HORRIBLE forecast by meteorologists – especially myself. Not only were we spectacularly wrong – we communicated poorly. It became apparent last night that some of our initial expectations would prove fallacious. I'd like to address what went wrong with our forecast:

What's a "wedge" tornado? And how rare are "megawedge" tornadoes? There is no technical definition of a "wedge." Storm chasers consider wedge tornadoes to be those that appear wider than they are tall. (For the tornado's height, they use the distance from the ground to the cloud base – AKA the "lifting condensation level". True tornado circulations extend up to 30,000 or 40,000 feet into the storm, so no tornadoes are *actually* wider than they are tall. We just can only see the part of the tornado that hangs down from the cloud base.) The tornado you see below occurred in Harlan, Iowa on April 26, 2024. It's the biggest I have ever seen. It was 1.1 miles wide, and had winds estimated by mobile Doppler radar up to 224 mph! Only 1 or 2 in 1,000 tornadoes grows larger than a mile wide – at least according to National Weather Service survey data. Realistically, that number might be significantly higher when counting inflow winds and ill-defined edges of the tornadic circulation, especially in rain-wrapped environments. (Where does the "tornado" end and the wind "around" the tornado begin?) MEGAWEDGE tornadoes are informally considered anything wider than 1.5 miles in diameter. The National Weather Service has only "officially" logged 30 megawedge tornadoes out of the 84,000+ in their database. The BIGGEST tornado on record occurred in El Reno, Oklahoma on May 31, 2013. It was 2.6 miles across! That said, researchers found evidence that the Mulhall, Okla. tornado on May 3, 1999 had a peak "core circulation" about 4.3 miles wide. In other words, that's the diameter of the 96 mph or greater winds.

Such a powerful and sobering image from the Oklahoma Panhandle; this fire is heading toward Highway 270: