The NWS does distinguish between warnings for radar-indicated tornadoes and for confirmed tornadoes on the ground (usually confirmed by spotters), but you have to read the warning text to tell (you'll see phrasing like "particularly dangerous situation" and "confirmed tornado" in the warning when they're working based on something that's been visually seen versus radar indicated). For an example of what this looks like, see the Text Data tab here [1]; this warning (from last night in Nashville) was originally issued for a radar-indicated tornado, which was subsequently observed on the ground and the warning was updated accordingly in Update 1.

But you should take any tornado warning seriously. Yes, they come more frequently than they used to, but that's because we didn't have any advance warning before-- if you wait to get to your safe place until a tornado's been confirmed on the ground, you might not be able to get to safety in time. Or you might not get to safety at all; just because someone hasn't seen a tornado and reported it to the NWS doesn't mean it's not on the ground and deadly.

That's why you have to read into the text to see this distinction: the actions you should take if you're in the path of a PDS (observed) tornado warning and the actions you should take if you're in the path of a radar-indicated tornado warning are the same.

[1] https://mesonet.agron.iastate.edu/vtec/#2021-O-NEW-KOHX-TO-W...

Excellent information; thank you. Communicating all this to the public is a significant challenge. You can't ask people to take shelter more often, and you also can't ask them to read more detailed reports. Compliance rate saves lives, for better or worse.

Also worth noting that “more frequently” for any given location is likely somewhere on the order of 1-2 warnings per year maximum.

The general public can’t grasp the distinction between watches and warnings, and your solution is to divide warnings into subcategories?

I suspect the confusion is the specific but uncommon word choice. Perhaps if they were called something like "tornado likely" and "active tornado", respectively, it would be more widely understood.

Now, that’s a reasonable solution. My only concern is that people won’t take “tornado likely” seriously. But I guess, based on OP, people don’t take “tornado warning” seriously, either.

My proposed solution is to continue to reserve the word warning for its old use, to keep people safe by preventing the cry-wolf effect and to introduce an intermediate term to appease the people who want to ring the alarm more often and communicate with locals who want more information.

I agree that the older, simpler watch and warning system was better, if that's what you're saying.

We agree that the existing watch/warning system as it stands is highly effective. Sure, there are more warnings than there used to be, but that is largely based on the fact that the radar data available to make warning decisions is much more reliable than it used to be. There are potentially more warnings issued that don’t verify, but they’re also based on data that is much likelier to verify. (As opposed to relying solely on spotters to make warning decisions.)

Adding complications to the existing watch/warning system just seems unnecessary. What people don’t grasp is that a tornado warning may not verify for their exact location, while it may (unfortunately) verify for a location two miles away. The fact that some warnings don’t verify doesn’t mean we should change our warning system. What we have in place remains highly accurate. It might be better if people understood how to interpret radar data and to evaluate warnings based on that.

Yes, the bottom line is we have to hope for more sophisticated interaction with weather alerts over time. Events like this weekend's tornado could have that silver lining as the timeline becomes more widely known as it currently appears to have involved tornado(s) that moved too quickly once on the ground for lives to be saved. I'm not optimistic given the careless behavior I've observed living in tornado-prevalent areas--but this was a bad one.