New warning added for severe weather season as National Weather Services manages cuts

New alerts will be issued for especially destructive thunderstorms this severe weather season, including outdoor siren activations.

But forecasting the storms could prove to be more challenging with cuts to the National Weather Service.

The city of Sioux Falls now will activate its outdoor sirens when the National Weather Service issues a “destructive severe thunderstorm warning.” The designation is the highest of three categories added in recent years by the NWS to thunderstorms to differentiate their severity.

It’s used for thunderstorms that have at least 80 mph winds or hail of at least 2.75-inch diameter, or baseball size.

When that warning is issued, a wireless emergency alert, or WEA, also will be sent to cellphones and other mobile devices in the impacted area that are set to receive them.

That aligns with the approach already used during a tornado warning.

“There will be no real change for what the public should do,” said Regan Smith, the city’s emergency manager.

“If you’re outdoors when the warning sirens activate, seek shelter immediately; stay there until the threat is passed. These storms are rare but pose significant danger, and we want people to respond accordingly.”

It’s important to set your cellphone to receive alerts because sirens might not be heard indoors, he added.

“We also recommend people purchase a NOAA weather radio and tune into local weather and resources.”

Minnehaha County also plans to activate its sirens through Metro Communications when a destructive severe thunderstorm warning is issued, said Jason Gearman with county emergency management.

Forecasting the storms will require relying on less data, though.

Federal cuts to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the parent agency of the National Weather Service, have resulted in jobs being eliminated as well as employees opting for retirement.

Weather balloon launches have been suspended in Rapid City and Omaha and reduced from two a day to one in Aberdeen. Balloons aren’t launched in Sioux Falls but do help the forecasters here, said Todd Heitkamp, meteorologist-in-charge at the National Weather Service in Sioux Falls.

“The data is sent into our computer models each and every day, so the more data we have the more accurate the forecast will be,” he said.

The balloons give a profile of the atmosphere that can be “critical for us, honestly, to get a better idea of how they’re going to form later in the day when it comes to severe weather,” he said.

The National Weather Service will use available aircraft data, “but there’s nothing like having a good upper-air balloon to give us a nice profile of what’s taking place,” Heitkamp said. “Hopefully, it’s only going to be a short-term change.”

The National Weather Service in South Dakota also recently decided to cancel its annual storm spotter training because of lack of staffing, he said.

“We really need to place the resources where they belong,” Heitkamp said. “Our mission is to issue those protective lifesaving warnings and watches.”

Destructive severe thunderstorm warnings are rare, he added.

“The number of times we see storms in excess of 80 miles per hour is just as often as a tornado, so I don’t think it will cause an increase in activation or false alarms,” he said, pointing to the derecho a few years ago as an example of when such a warning would be warranted.

“The sirens didn’t go off, and now they would be to let people know they have to take shelter,” he said.

The city has 82 outdoor warning sirens and adds one or two annually in growing areas of the city, Smith said.