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Severe Severe Threat March 15-16 2026

superjames1992 said:
Yeah, but back in the day they didn't cancel school for the threat of severe thunderstorms, period.

The thing with schools is a lot of parents work jobs where they can't easily stay home for the day and watch their kids, so it complicates some parents' lives a lot when kids miss school, especially when it's not necessary. For people with flexible schedules or the ability to work from home, it may not be a big deal to miss school for nothing (which happens so many times now), but not everyone is like that.

I don't think we ever missed school for a true "non-event" back when I was in school (which was not very long ago!), so it's just bizarre to me. Maybe I'm just jealous of all the fake snow days I could've gotten.
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I am one of those parents, and since January this is the third Monday our kids have had off. On top of the snow days (5 total) this has been over a full work week of days with the kids at home. Both my wife and I work jobs that require us to be in meetings or on calls through the day and these cancellations absolutely wreck our work day. It puts immense pressure on working parents and though I get the abundance of caution, of the 6 weather days we’ve had this year there have really only been 2 that were justified in the actual outcome. At least snow days you can prep for, today caught us totally off guard. I don’t blame the schools but this is a total miss by meteorologists
 
superjames1992 said:
Yeah, but back in the day they didn't cancel school for the threat of severe thunderstorms, period.

The thing with schools is a lot of parents work jobs where they can't easily stay home for the day and watch their kids, so it complicates some parents' lives a lot when kids miss school, especially when it's not necessary. For people with flexible schedules or the ability to work from home, it may not be a big deal to miss school for nothing (which happens so many times now), but not everyone is like that.

I don't think we ever missed school for a true "non-event" back when I was in school (which was not very long ago!), so it's just bizarre to me. Maybe I'm just jealous of all the fake snow days I could've gotten.
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My school would actually take and teach about severe weather and storms on days like today to preach the importance of understanding what to look out for, watch vs warning, etc. Heck, it's why I love weather now.
 
superjames1992 said:
Yeah, but back in the day they didn't cancel school for the threat of severe thunderstorms, period.

The thing with schools is a lot of parents work jobs where they can't easily stay home for the day and watch their kids, so it complicates some parents' lives a lot when kids miss school, especially when it's not necessary. For people with flexible schedules or the ability to work from home, it may not be a big deal to miss school for nothing (which happens so many times now), but not everyone is like that.

I don't think we ever missed school for a true "non-event" back when I was in school (which was not very long ago!), so it's just bizarre to me. Maybe I'm just jealous of all the fake snow days I could've gotten.
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I graduated high school in 92. I remember getting dismissed early at least once in high school because of the threat of severe weather.
 
BrickTamland said:
I graduated high school in 92. I remember getting dismissed early at least once in high school because of the threat of severe weather.
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We had several early dismissals I can remember but since this was progged to come through around noon that wasn’t an option. Once again, I don’t blame schools, level 4 events are rare and should be respected, but that puts much more scrutiny on forecasters when they call for an event like this and it doesn’t pan out. Level 4/5 days are reserved for exceptional events and even some of the “busts” still produced significant severe weather. This legitimately produced almost nothing in the entire RAH warning area
 
I have so many questions about this event I don't know where to even begin. Just had a big severe warned complex roll through and while the rain was heavy, there wasn't so much as a gust of wind and I counted one rumble of thunder. Heaviest returns right over us too. In fact, there hasn't been anything resembling more than a light breeze all day. ILM was discussing possible wind advisories 24 hours ago.

It's been a recurring theme going back easily 5 years now. Heavy radar returns but ground truth not verifying. Is it possible the radars aren't calibrated properly? It certainly SEEMS like something changed around that 2020-2021 period but I don't have any evidence beyond what I've seen with my own eyes. It's not just in my neck of the woods either. This has happened all over NC and SC and probably beyond.

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JHS said:

Storm Prediction Center Today's Storm Reports

Severe weather, tornado, thunderstorm, fire weather, storm report, tornado watch, severe thunderstorm watch, mesoscale discussion, convective outlook products from the Storm Prediction Center.
www.spc.noaa.gov

This says a LOT here.
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Haha I don’t think theres a single report not even a wind report in the entire RAH area!
 
NorthHillsWx said:
We had several early dismissals I can remember but since this was progged to come through around noon that wasn’t an option. Once again, I don’t blame schools, level 4 events are rare and should be respected, but that puts much more scrutiny on forecasters when they call for an event like this and it doesn’t pan out. Level 4/5 days are reserved for exceptional events and even some of the “busts” still produced significant severe weather. This legitimately produced almost nothing in the entire RAH warning area
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This makes forecasting discussions even more interesting for me. These busts showing that they can still occur despite great advancements must be humbling to the great met. profession.
 
BrickTamland said:
I graduated high school in 92. I remember getting dismissed early at least once in high school because of the threat of severe weather.
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I graduated way back in 1983 and I was only dismissed once because of severe weather. It was in April of 1975 and Wake County had multiple tornado warnings that day so classes were dismissed at 1:00 PM if I remember correctly.
 
So I’m not a parent or married for that matter but I don’t think it was a bad decision in closing school! I don’t think any parent should have been caught off guard with this decision because the forecast never really changed until late last night after the decisions had already been made! Did it end up being a bust YES DEFINITELY WAS but that in our case was a good thing and I’m grateful that decisions were made with the forecast that were available to them at the time


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BrickTamland said:
I graduated high school in 92. I remember getting dismissed early at least once in high school because of the threat of severe weather.
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I graduated in 2010 and I never remember it happening. Granted, I mostly lived in the Triad which gets somewhat less severe weather than the Triangle, on average. We may have gotten an early dismissal around Hurricane Isabel (which was elementary school for me, I think), although I might be making that up.

Of course, maybe it happened once, I'm not 100% sure. Regardless, an early dismissal is very different than just canceling the entire school day. I've noticed that is one thing you hardly ever see nowadays. Two-hour delays, early dismissals, etc. When I was in school, we got a lot of two-hour delays and some early dismissals; now, those seem to largely be a thing of the past for some reason. They just close.
 
Another big forecast bust by the SPC, as a Trump supporter, not bringing politics into but am, he has defunded NOAA, models are horrible and didnt pick up on it until midnight last night but no change was made to the forecast and SPC outlooks, they should have changed the outlook and looked like a fool instead of canceling schools for a rain storm
 
We almost always need some sun here to provide the spark for severe storms. Is it difficult to tell how long the rain and clouds will stick around and limit instability? I thought that was pretty basic forecasting. Maybe the local mets feel they have to go with whatever the SPC says instead of disagreeing with them in cases like this.
 
ryanardo said:
Another big forecast bust by the SPC, as a Trump supporter, not bringing politics into but am, he has defunded NOAA, models are horrible and didnt pick up on it until midnight last night but no change was made to the forecast and SPC outlooks, they should have changed the outlook and looked like a fool instead of canceling schools for a rain storm
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Dummy Feeling Dumb GIF
 
Do appreciate Mets coming out and calling it a bust and that their forecasts were wrong. As I’ve thought about this some more, with my 2 and 4 year olds destroying my house, I think Mets, NWS, and SPC could REALLY have done a better job vocalizing potential fail modes for today. A level 4 risk is high confidence, but there were ample warning signs it would not materialize and I can’t for the life of me find more than one or two met posts explaining them. I don’t believe level 4 should ever have been issued especially yesterday but there certainly could’ve been better discussion about ways we could have avoided severe weather too
 
Btownheel said:
I will say, the frontal passage just now wasn’t overhyped. I’d guess gusts close to 60 and sideways rain bands with likely a 10+ degree temp drop in 90 seconds.

Rest of the day was a bust but that got our attention.


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It’s funny there isn’t even a watch beforehand when everyone’s coming back from work vs the all day tornado watch earlier that resulted in nothing
 
NorthHillsWx said:
Do appreciate Mets coming out and calling it a bust and that their forecasts were wrong. As I’ve thought about this some more, with my 2 and 4 year olds destroying my house, I think Mets, NWS, and SPC could REALLY have done a better job vocalizing potential fail modes for today. A level 4 risk is high confidence, but there were ample warning signs it would not materialize and I can’t for the life of me find more than one or two met posts explaining them. I don’t believe level 4 should ever have been issued especially yesterday but there certainly could’ve been better discussion about ways we could have avoided severe weather too
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The mets who come out and say the busted forecast is actually a good thing because we avoided the bad impacts are always amusing. It misses the point so badly it could almost be considered gaslighting…
 
ryanardo said:
Another big forecast bust by the SPC, as a Trump supporter, not bringing politics into but am, he has defunded NOAA, models are horrible and didnt pick up on it until midnight last night but no change was made to the forecast and SPC outlooks, they should have changed the outlook and looked like a fool instead of canceling schools for a rain storm
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i don't think any funding lapses/issues contributed to this. good ole fashioned nothing burger
Downeastnc said:
Props for saying this, however I still think at the point the models started to show this was a bust it was to late to put the genie back in the bottle.

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totally agree with this; mod yesterday was crossing the rubicon
Engeo said:
The mets who come out and say the busted forecast is actually a good thing because we avoided the bad impacts are always amusing. It misses the point so badly it could almost be considered gaslighting…
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i think they miss that a forecast like this genuinely spikes people's anxiety moreso than other events, and now that school closes it can create a logistics issue. 'actually it's GOOD we sucked here' is a tough bridge to sell
 
Ross said:
i don't think any funding lapses/issues contributed to this. good ole fashioned nothing burger

totally agree with this; mod yesterday was crossing the rubicon

i think they miss that a forecast like this genuinely spikes people's anxiety moreso than other events, and now that school closes it can create a logistics issue. 'actually it's GOOD we sucked here' is a tough bridge to sell
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Isn’t his explanation still too much living and dying by the models instead of getting back to good ol’ poor synoptics that were pointing to failure modes far earlier than last night? Jim Tang was pointing out how when the jet streak core is displaced so far to the northeast, the risk area ends up getting cluttered and overworked. This makes sense to me. No fresh feed from the jet streak. Early storms don’t spell overworking necessarily (look how many rounds of tornadoes Alabama got in their famous outbreak). The underlying problem was the placement of the energy players, and that was shown days ago. Why didn’t forecasters rely more on synoptic insights for this one?
 
Ross said:
i don't think any funding lapses/issues contributed to this. good ole fashioned nothing burger

totally agree with this; mod yesterday was crossing the rubicon

i think they miss that a forecast like this genuinely spikes people's anxiety moreso than other events, and now that school closes it can create a logistics issue. 'actually it's GOOD we sucked here' is a tough bridge to sell
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He is 100% correct, just seems it happens more and more, as i follow modeling and all he was preciously correct, but it was too late to change it due to cancellations, especially at KCAE which is where i live, wish more would come out and say what he said instead of hiding behind the bushes, weather is very unpredictable and we act like we know what is going to happen, when in reality we are just as accurate as we were in the 60's, when you look out the window and make your own prediction which is what i did this morning after modeling changed overnight. Love following yall more to come but might just wake up and look out the window next time.
 
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