Why it's so hard to predict tornadoes

The ingredients for Tornado Alley (Wikipedia map by Dan Craggs)

Tornadoes are notoriously difficult to predict and people often get warnings only minutes in advance, especially those in rural areas who tend to be less-covered by weather radars.

"As of 2011, the average lead time for tornado warnings was just around 13 minutes. But as The Washington Post has reported, lead times have been getting worse in recent years, dropping to 8.4 minutes between 2012 and 2020. Some people have even less warning," Brian Resnik reports for Vox. When tornado warnings do come, an actual twister may not follow. The vast majority of tornado warnings issued by the National Weather Service prove to be false alarms; in some years, the false alarm rate can be as high as 70 to 80 percent. Tornado forecasting hasn’t improved much since the 2011 tornado disaster in Joplin, Missouri, killed 162 people."

One big problem is that tornadoes are harder for scientists to observe than other natural phenomena such as hurricanes: They're so short-lived and often so violent that it's difficult to gather data about them. They may disperse before scientists can drop instruments in the area, and tornadoes often destroy scientific equipment. Click here for an in-depth explainer (including a video) of how tornadoes form and why it's so difficult to predict them.