High temperatures in the 90s to 100s and warm overnight temperatures will continue across parts of the Interior Northwest, central California, and the Great Basin. Thunderstorms and heavy rain may produce scattered flash flooding across much of the Southern Rockies into the Southwest, particularly over sensitive burn scars in New Mexico, and across the Southeast into the Carolinas. Read More >
The 1993 “Storm of the Century“ Images on this page can be magnified (enlarged) by left clicking on them, and resized back to original size with a second click.
What was it like to Work the Event? Charlie Paxton was the forecaster on duty during the day on Friday March 12, 1993 and came back that evening to issue warnings for the event. He recalls working the storm that night: “When I arrived, the office satellite imagery showed the squall line racing east at 70 mph! Our team issued 26 warnings and lead time ranged from 30 minutes to over two hours! I upgraded wording in all of the warnings to indicate winds of over 90 mph! Standard warnings usually indicate wind gusts over 55 mph. Of the 6 tornadoes in our area...lead times were all over 20 minutes with the longest lead time of 48 minutes. Remember, we were using the old WSR-57 Radar. We didn’t have Doppler. We had a processor attached to the radar called RADAP and I had written software to make calculations on the severity of cells and that really helped.“ “We used an XT PC to send products through our main communication system called AFOS. We communicated with the Melbourne WSR-88D operator who helped identify tornadic circulations within range of their radar. We used the NAWAS line to communicate with the county Emergency Operations Centers. We also received a number of reports from the local media. We had an 800 number available to the public. Our phone didn’t stop ringing. People were shocked at the intensity of the storm and provided us with many accounts of damage.” |