‘Tornadoes hit too fast to predict’
METEOROLOGISTS say predicting tornadoes is difficult and New Zealand does not have the technology to do it.
A tornado ripped through Papatoetoe and Wiri on Saturday morning, damaging 1200 homes, 60 of which are uninhabitable.
A worker at a container freight hub in Wiri died in the high winds and two others were injured.
MetService had issued a thunderstorm warning for the area but in response to questions about why it did not forecast a tornado it said it does not have a warning system such as the United States does.
NIWA meteorologist Richard Turner said predicting such events were challenging.
“Our technology in terms of our numerical weather forecasts are getting better, but then there’s the real practical challenge of putting out warnings when tornadoes are actually occurring.
“In New Zealand they’re very short-lived so by the time you get them out often the event has passed.”
He said such technology could be developed in time.
“I think there’s possibilities that with better computers, faster processes and the ability to resolve more detail in thunderstorms that we might get better at identifying which ones might be potentially more able to produce a tornado and what sort of intensity they would be.
“That’s probably still a few years away, but that’s probably where the science is taking us.”
He said a lot of tornado activity went unreported because it happened in remote areas.
“So that’s really quite difficult when you’re wanting to develop forecasting techniques from numerical weather predictions or the like, you need to have really good data to backup your learning.”