Welcome to Weathered Questions, where we answer the questions on your radar.
Welcome into Weathered Questions, the podcast where we answer the meteorology questions on your radar.
My name is meteorologist Jan Ryherd, joined by my friend and co-host, Kai O'Mara.
And hey, we have another fun show stacked up for you here as we enter season six.
kind of crazy how we have gotten here already, but it's been a good time.
And we've got new and even more fun, exciting things happening behind the scenes.
Guy, what have you been up to?
Yeah, well, I couldn't believe it.
I pulled up.
So there's no hiding this fact that you, you are the organizer of this thing.
You make the spreadsheets and I think you have a genuine joy in doing so.
And when I opened up the rundown, I saw 6.1 and I went, oh my gosh, season six, here we come.
We've made it I'll tell you though summer is is over from a summer break standpoint Certainly not from a temperature standpoint this week.
Oh my gosh, but No, we're starting sports.
We are starting school.
I've got a high schooler now The whole morning routine has changed the whole morning routine has changed and for years and years the girls would get on the bus at the same time Now it's different and it's gonna be different the next three years positives
One gets on the bus earlier than the other one gets out of bed, which means the chances of a fight in the morning are nearly zero.
It's
good.
And, and the, they have the bathroom all to themselves
with their getting ready.
I mean, what more could you want?
The bad news is it's, it's, I kind of call it no man's land from a working standpoint.
Like if you're trying to get something done, when one of them's got to get up at six, you got breakfast on the table.
All right, we're going to get to the bus at seven 10.
We're going to walk the dog.
Can we get a little work done?
Probably not.
Other one gets up at seven 30.
It's just.
So now I just, you know, fold towels, do dishes, all those home chores.
Just kind of
reorienting, yeah, reorienting the dad
mode stuff.
And it gets all done.
And then, you know, it's nothing but focus for the rest of the day after that.
So that's pretty good.
You know, I was reflecting this week.
I think it's kind of funny, like, you know, I don't have any kids and I'm not going to school myself, obviously, but it is funny how the start of the school year really just kind of resets you, no matter what, just.
a new start all around and you just kind of refocus on, all right, what are my priorities?
And yeah, rescheduling and stuff, it is kind of funny.
Yep, for those who commute, by the way, you've noticed the increase in traffic, I'm sure.
And the bus stops and stops and goes and there's just a whole lot of stuff that comes with it.
Like the morning commute now really has some beef to it.
You know, it's not, it's not some little side dish anymore.
Like it's the whole thing.
All the way through Thanksgiving break now, pretty much is how that's gonna be.
Oh,
yeah.
And going along with back to school, you've had a fun little side project you've been working on trying to help a little bit with some of that weather education.
You want to throw a little promo in there?
Yeah, sure.
So I had started a website several years ago just based off of a recommendation from a friend and that took off pretty nice and I revamped it and renamed it.
And so the goal of the website is for classroom education.
And it's not so much geared towards K-3 or K-2.
This website is going to be a little above that, but especially geared towards late elementary, middle school, high school.
A whole bunch of weather units on there.
The website is called cedarvalleyweather.com.
And we actually have a podcast page on there that I whipped up.
And it's, I think, a little bit better than the other page we had.
And it makes it very clear and obvious how to submit your question.
instead of having to remember the email that we say every week, there's just a submit button now.
You just type what you want and you hit go.
And that's about it.
And there's been some really good feedback on the site.
My hope is that anybody who reads it comes away learning something.
There's a unit on winter weather, there's a unit on climate change, there's a big long unit on derechoes.
And every one of them trying to find the right figures.
A lot of the stuff is based from the NWS.
So it's open domain kind of graphical things.
And I had a few animations that I made myself.
So it's fun.
It's fun.
Go on there.
Browse it.
See what you think.
Leave some feedback.
Shoot me an email.
Let me know what you think.
So it's very, very cool.
It's an
excellent resource.
the same premise of our podcast together here that it's meant to be educational.
It's meant to help people understand the weather and what's going on around them.
And maybe you do come away with a couple other questions or you're still not understanding something.
And hey, perfect thing that we have the link to ask a question here.
on weathered questions right there and keep it really easy.
And we already got one here just a day or two ago.
Danny wrote in, and he asks, after the Greenfield Tornado, which if you're not in Iowa, a very well-known tornado just a couple of years ago, the Greenfield Tornado and mobile radar was showing EF5 winds.
Has there been any change to labeling tornadoes with wind speed captured by mobile radars, or is it still by damage sustained?
Do we expect any changes in the future?
So thanks for writing in, Danny, and I'll let you take the first stab at that one, Kai.
Okay, so the National Weather Service is the official entity in the United States that rates tornadoes.
And we always wait for the survey before we start talking about how long they were, how wide they were, what their strength might be.
Sometimes I've seen people on television before try and jump the gun on this.
A lot of times that just doesn't pay, but whatever.
If they want to take a shot at it, they can try to.
But at the end of the day, the National Weather Service, they survey these tornadoes based on the damage they cause.
And the damage that they cause is assumed to be from a normally maintained, built-to-code type of situation, like a garage or like a house.
And the reason why those stipulations are in there, how many times have you been driving in a rural area and you see a barn that's just completely rotted out?
Okay, you know that wind is gonna blow that down much more than a well-constructed barn.
Same story with homes.
Older homes might not be built as
as strictly as the newer homes are with different codes that were in place, you know, 100 years ago, things like that, if there were any, you know, way back then.
But the bottom line is, as we continue to get new measurements, I have heard, I can't confirm, but I've heard we're going to start adding some enhancements to this.
I don't know if this is one of them.
I don't know.
So that's kind of where I leave that, but I can tell you that the Greenfield tornado also hit a wind turbine and it actually broke a blade off and carried it.
A quick Google search shows that that's, you know, on the order of tons of weight, not just breaking off, but carried.
And so you think about what they call the Doppler on wheels.
And one of the Dow's units was out there and it did measure like really big win and there was a lot of controversy out there in central Iowa like why isn't this a five?
Well, the protocol is you rate on what you see in terms of damage and that's that's the rule right now So that's that's about the best way I can answer that one Jan is
and into
that the policy right now
Exactly and into that point Dow's
Doppler on wheels, right?
That's what that stands for.
Those are mobile radar units, as you noted.
And sometimes those are at a storm, right?
The bigger storms, the bigger setups, a lot of research entities will try to get those out for those.
But a lot of times, in fact, more often than not, they are not in the space of the tornado because there's so many tornadoes and only so many DAOs units.
And so I think it's also important to note
It's going to be really hard to have something change when it's not going to be able to be a blanket statement across the board, right?
We have the NOAA radars everywhere.
We are able to send out national weather service survey teams to every site.
Yes, it does take time.
That's why storm surveys take time, why it takes time to get those ratings.
But we are able to do that.
Whereas we can't retroactively send a DAO's unit out after a storm's already happened.
And if it wasn't there in the first place, then well, we don't have that data.
So it would be really hard to start kind of piecemealing those rating systems together
based
on, well, if it's here for this one, we can do this, but if
it's
not, then we have to do this.
And then you get, you know, just jointed ratings and you can't, you're comparing apples to oranges and it just doesn't really work.
So just to kind of reiterate what Kai said there,
At this point, we don't have the resources to be able to do that.
And so I wouldn't envision that's happening anytime soon.
Not to say it would never happen, but it would take a large investment and a lot more work in order to make that a capability.
Well, and also a standard too.
Because let's say the Dow's wasn't there, and we didn't know.
And we didn't have that measured wind speed.
then we'd rate it as it was and there'd never be a controversy.
Well, the next one that comes through that doesn't have a DAO on it, the one thing that the Weather Service does do is they rate consistently.
And to have a good tornado database, you do need to have a consistent policy in place.
You know, you can love or hate how they do it.
The most frustrating thing, and I can tell you just based on experience, it is frustrating.
If you have an EF5 and a cornfield, you will get no rating on that tornado.
it'll be called an EF unknown.
And that means the tornado happened, but a damage indicator was not checked off the box.
So if it tears up a bunch of corn, okay, then it tore up a bunch of corn, you know, straight line winds will do that too, well below EF5 strength.
So it's tough to tell at that point what your wind speeds are now.
If it were to have demolished a well built, well constructed house and threw it off its slab, that's something different.
Now we can actually attribute something to it.
So there are many EF unknowns that are in the database, and it's exactly what it says.
We don't know.
So now that being said, if we do have a DAO's unit on a tornado, I wouldn't mind in the future if the policy was, let's put an asterisk by that one.
Because by the way, we also caught a measurement this strong.
And a lot of times when they get to a four and five rating, they will bring other weather service minds in and have a little conference to make sure they're rating them right.
And if that's happening and we use the tools of the trade, put an asterisk there and say, hey, based on damage, this is a four, but the Dow has measured 300.
So we're going to go officially with a five and here's why.
Yeah.
And maybe try that.
I don't know.
But the changing of the EF scale or enhancing that Jan is way beyond our pay grade.
Oh,
100%.
Way beyond.
And that's a great partnership between engineering and meteorology, too, by the way.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So they're working on it.
They'll figure it out.
But, Danny, I hope that answers your question.
Kind of a long answer to your question.
But, you know, there's so many unknowns in meteorology to begin with.
And with how much wind causes exactly how much damage is, that's why there's a range.
It's always a range.
So it's complicated.
But at the same time, hopefully you understand those caveats we had to throw on there as well.
Yeah, so thanks for writing in, Danny.
Like I said, hopefully they answered it.
But if not, hey, feel free to add on to that question and let us know what else we can dive into for you.
There you go.
All right, we're going to move on to a follow up here from an episode back in season five.
This is back from season five, I'm sorry, episode five eight.
And we're talking about precipitation.
It's just a quick follow up.
How can it rain below 32?
And then a second question, how can it snow above 32?
Jan, which one you want to take?
Whatever you take, I'll do the
opposite.
OK.
Yeah, so how can we get precipitation, basically, in the wrong temperature, right?
I'll start with the first one, rain.
How can it rain below 32?
Well, your temperature is
Being taken official temperature measurements are at two meters.
That's just the industry standard So two meters above the ground surface is where that temperature is so if that temperature there is 32 the temperature that two meters under and or the entirety of the atmosphere over that two meters
is not necessarily 32.
In fact, it is not 32.
It is guaranteed different in other places
through
that same column of air.
And so the simplest form, honestly, for both of these is that it's a different temperature where the precipitation is happening.
So for rain, again, how can it rain?
still be liquid precipitation below that 32, you can have a cooler or a warmer, sorry, warmer layer of air right below that, that it can melt very quickly, or just that it doesn't have enough time to re-freeze if it is only that two meter, that height, I guess.
The
snow one is a little bit more fun to dive into.
Well, and the thing is is when it's when it's above 32 at the surface, most of the atmosphere is probably below freezing above you.
And kind of like if you take an ice cube out of the freezer and throw it in your backyard, it doesn't melt instantly.
In the atmosphere, it does work on it.
Now, snow doesn't fall fast.
It kind of floats down.
But an old rule of thumb for me is as long as we are at freezing about a mile up, some of those snowflakes will probably make it to the ground, even at.
freezing if you're about a mile up.
I'd kind of like it to be more like 27, 28 a mile up so they can totally, totally survive the journey.
But I've seen it happen.
I've seen snow at 40 before.
It can absolutely happen.
If that warm layer down near the ground is shallow, as long as it's not deep, if it's a really shallow layer that's coming in and chances are you don't have much snowpack there, then yeah, it can snow and the bottom line is that if the snowflakes don't have time to melt, you're good to go.
But I can almost guarantee you, if you were to launch a weather balloon, what it would be is warm very near the ground and then below freezing the rest of the way.
Because if there was another warm layer above that, now we're talking something different, which wasn't even part of the question.
It'd be sleet at that point.
So that warm layer down near the ground is very shallow, probably on the order of a few hundred feet, maybe a thousand feet.
Not enough to melt the snowflakes, but I can guarantee it's a wet snow.
It's a wet packing snowman snow, if you have that going on.
Most common in our area for that would be April and, dare I say, early May.
I've had to cover two May snowstorms in my career.
It's too many.
Yeah, right.
But Northern Iowa,
it can happen in May.
One of them was 2013.
Yes, it was.
I
remember that one.
Yes, it was.
The Pella Tulip Festival that year got snowed over.
Those pictures were amazing when that
happened.
A little anecdote here that will take us on a tangent 100%.
And we'll try not to get too, again, we try to keep this pretty plain Jane, pretty easy to digest.
So we'll try not to get too sciency on you.
But I remember in college, a time it was like, I want to say 52 degrees outside.
It was probably April.
Because again, we were in class, so it couldn't have been too far into May.
But I remember, Kai, you'll know Dr. Gallus, we looked outside, we were in class with him, looked out the window, and he's like, it's wet bulbing.
Yep, that sounds like him.
So that is a time where it was snowing.
Again, it was like 52 degrees outside, snowing.
Essentially, what's going on there, again, without getting too scientific on you, basically, as the precipitation was coming down, the air is so dry that it cools, evaporative cooling.
We've talked about that before, where as precipitation occurs and it evaporates, it is a cooling process.
Essentially, what was going on is that the air near the ground was cooling so quickly that some of the snow was not melting by the time it got to the ground, even though it was 52 degrees.
It
was really
cool.
Yeah.
Oh, yeah.
Oh, yeah.
It can happen.
It can absolutely happen.
But that's good science behind it.
And it's usually those transition times when something weird happens, almost always.
Yep.
So there's a fun little anecdote for another time where it can snow.
Above 32.
All
right, let's travel back real quick to some tornado stuff.
If you were listening closely, Kai dropped in a little hint for you.
So today's question, multiple choice.
An EF5 tornado is categorized by what estimated wind speed?
Is it winds over 100, 200, 300, or 400 miles per hour?
An EF5 tornado is categorized by estimated wind speeds of over 100, 200, 300, or 400 miles per hour.
Ponder that one for a second.
We'll give you a little bit of time to think, and Kai, I'll be back with the answer in just a few.
All right, so all these speeds are fast.
Minimums 100.
And we've got 200, 300, and 400.
And I will tell you that the old F scale, the EF, or I'm sorry, the F5 was higher than what it is now.
But it's B over 200 miles an hour.
And at really that point, you're looking at complete destruction of about anything.
And that's where it gets so difficult to measure anything because measuring equipment typically doesn't survive that.
And a lot of times EF5s, you have some really weird things going on.
You have, you know, a vehicle wrapped around another one or something really bizarre.
And it's just, it's just a display of monstrous physics when you have winds that strong.
So if you guessed B, you are correct, over 200 miles an hour.
Last EF5 we had an eye was Parkersburg, May 25th of 2008.
So long time, but you don't want to see those come through.
Yep, and to your point about the number kind of being dropped, the wind speed number going down in that new iteration of the EF scale, again, there's just, yes, an old F may have been a lower EF, but there's just no point to it because one, we're getting, we have so few of them that there isn't a need.
at this point, you know, some people ask, will there ever be an EF6?
You know, at this point,
no reason.
We just
we
don't have a way to measure it.
We don't have anything to discern a five versus what could be a six because it's complete destruction.
And there's just not a need.
There's so few of them to start with.
Right.
So,
yeah, kind of a two for there.
It is.
Oh, yeah.
All right.
Next question.
Or is it true that hurricanes and tornadoes are getting stronger?
Hmm loaded question.
It is a loaded question.
I
I don't think we have enough data to say and The reason why is I think it depends on where they go and what they hit If you have a cat five spiraling out in the Atlantic, that's a record strength.
It doesn't hit anybody Okay
It may have been pretty strong and we measured what we could but okay.
If you have a tornado that comes into a non-populated area versus a populated area versus nobody living out there, the sample size is pretty low and I also think we have to be very cognizant in the tornado world that we have so much better technology now to detect them than we did 30 years ago.
So the count of tornadoes is no doubt increasing but I
I wonder if that's more attributed to our increase in technology versus us actually getting more because I bet we missed a lot more 30 years ago.
We let it go.
I think that's a
really good point.
And we just called it straight line wind because we didn't know any better and we didn't have the technology to prove it.
And now we do.
We have different radar products that we can look at to help us out.
And you've got drones now.
It used to cost an arm and a leg to get a private plane to go fly over these tornado paths or copters.
you get to sell a $100 drone.
You can go drone the thing.
And you can see more scouring and paths and really awesome stuff from the air.
And there's some great research being done by some National Weather Service meteorologists that you and I both know that are going retroactively with satellite data.
Yeah.
And so maybe you do those storm surveys on the ones that somebody calls in and says, hey, I think I had some tornado damage and they go out and check.
But retroactively,
A week, two weeks, a month, a year later, National Weather Service meteorologists can go back and look through satellite data because we have satellites going around all the time capturing what
is
going on and how the ground cover is changing on Earth that can go back and find, again, those scour marks and find, hey, we missed this.
Again, probably an EFU, right, an unknown because we can't go back and check the damage.
But we can at least say there was a tornado here because we can see the spiraling scour marks.
Yeah.
And so I think it's inconclusive.
I don't think we can say with certainty if they are.
It just it depends on who gets it when they get it.
And if you look back in history, you know, you still have that was a great Labor Day hurricane in the 1930s.
You know, one of the worst ones, the strongest ones that came through.
So, I mean, it's tough to say.
I think it's hard to say that they're getting stronger, but we're detecting tornadoes more.
I can tell you that with some pretty high confidence.
All right.
Finally, as we close, let's open up our minds and then we're going to allow them to close again.
Hurricane Names and Dolly Parton.
Coincidence?
Conspiracy.
Jan?
Yeah, so this is very timely right now.
If you're, you know, listening to the podcast on time, you know, we lost Dolly Parton this past week.
If you're listening later on still, you can kind of know where we are in time with that.
And there's a lot of conversation this week around a storm that came out, I think it was the day after, if
I remember
right, that the next name on the list was Dolly.
And there was some questions of, was this planned?
Did something happen?
And so we're here to just debunk the maybe myth or conspiracy that hurricane aims are planned well in advance.
And this is a entire coincidence.
Actually, I have to pull up the numbers again to confirm that I'm giving you the right numbers.
Back in 1979,
is when our current list kind of came about.
Obviously they've had some adjustments and stuff since his names are retired out and so
new ones
are added in.
But there is a whole list, six different lists actually that we rotate between every six years.
So- Right, unless there's a retirement, exactly right.
Exactly.
So this is entire coincidence.
that this happened.
And, you know, I can tell you right now that next year, the D name is going to be Danny.
We'll bring that back from earlier this episode.
What a coincidence that is.
That's kind of fun.
Right.
And then and then Danielle and then Don and then Debbie and then Dexter.
And then we'll be right back to Dolly again, because I don't think Dolly is going to be retired this year.
No, no, I especially since it dissipated.
Exactly came and it went So so yeah the world meteorological organization oversees some of that and it's what it is is some of the names people have asked Why is it named like that?
Why is it pronounced that way?
No reason is that these cyclones hit all across the world and they try and bring in some diversity from Worldwide names and they also alternate male and female as well So just a couple of tidbits for you and it just so happened that that's what it was
There was no, you know, magic radar, nothing like that.
It was just, it just happened.
That was, that was all it was.
And people released that list clear back when that, when it came out, you know, beginning of the season, when they, when they were sharing names and making them all, here's your name list for 2026.
And it just happened to be.
So now you know,
now we know, right?
Alrighty.
Well, that brings us to it.
End of another.
Episode and before I forget to remind everyone because I know I will We have no episode next week.
It is Labor Day and we are we are Getting a break from
labor taking
taking a break that week and realizing that by taking Monday off Yeah, Tuesday through Friday become harder because work doesn't disappear.
It just piles on to different days.
So no episode next week, but
It brings us to an end here of our first episode of season six Cedar Valley weather you can jump on there and you can submit your question You can also just go straight to your favorite email app on your phone and whatever is on your mind weathered questions at gmail.com We can also get your question that way Don't forget to subscribe wherever you get your podcast as well that way when we drop a new episode You've got it and of course leaving reviews and feedback for us is awesome.
Let's us know how we're doing how we can improve
and it gets the word out to your friends and family.
So until next time, thanks for listening and stay safe.
