The National Weather Service will soon be upgrading warnings issued for severe thunderstorms. The actual warnings won’t change but the damage terminology will be enhanced in order to help depict which storms are more dangerous than others. Severe thunderstorms will be assigned one of three threat-level categories. Only the two most severe categories will be tagged, with updated language and damage impacts ranging from ‘considerable’ to ‘destructive.’ The categorization will depend on the size of the hail and/or the strength of the damaging winds.
Thunderstorms capable of ‘considerable’ damage can produce 1.75 inch diameter hail (golf ball-sized) or larger and/or winds of at least 70 mph.
Thunderstorms capable of ‘destructive’ damage can produce hail of 2.75 (baseball-sized) or larger and/or winds of at least 80 mph.
Look for the new language in severe thunderstorm warnings starting around May 1st.
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