Tornado Emergency

A tornado emergency is an enhanced version of a tornado warning, which is used by the National Weather Service (NWS) in the United States during significant tornado occurrences in highly populated areas. Although it is not a new warning type from the NWS, issued instead within a severe weather statement (or in rare cases, in the initial tornado warning), a tornado emergency generally means that significant, widespread damage is expected to occur and a high likelihood of numerous fatalities is expected with a large, strong to violent tornado.

These enhanced warnings are intended to convey the urgency of the weather situation to the general public, who are advised to take safety precautions immediately if they are in or near the projected path of a large tornado or its accompanying thunderstorm; tornado emergencies are usually identified following the preceding storm summary in the tornado warning product, which itself will denote visual or radar confirmation of "a large and extremely dangerous [or destructive] tornado" that is ongoing; precautionary action statements in the product also recommend that people in the storm's path find shelter in a underground shelter or safe room to protect themselves from the storm, if available. It should be noted that while many tornadoes observed to be at or larger than ¼-mile in width have been documented to have produced catastrophic damage falling under the "strong" or "violent" categories (EF2-EF5) of the Enhanced Fujita Scale, there have been instances in which tornadoes of this have resulted in very few to no fatalities;.

The term was first used during the May 3, 1999 tornado outbreak that spawned an F5 tornado which struck the municipalities of Bridge Creek and Moore, located just south of Oklahoma City, followed by southern and eastern parts of the city itself, Del City, and Midwest City. On that day, between 5:30 and 6:30 p.m., David Andra, the Science and Operations Officer at the National Weather Service Weather Forecast Office in Norman watched as the large, destructive tornado approached Oklahoma City. This led to the issuance of the first tornado emergency, which in this instance was released as a standalone weather statement issued separately from the original tornado warning.

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