A tornado outbreak near Kansas City, Kansas, on Monday night came as a surprise.At least three injuries were reported after at least five tornadoes developed in areas southwest of the city. Several homes were damaged, trees were downed and recreational vehicles were overturned.But in its Monday afternoon outlook, the National Weather Service’s Storm Prediction Center, which forecasts severe thunderstorms and tornadoes, did not anticipate a tornado threat for the Kansas City area. The disconnect has prompted concerns among some outside meteorologists that ongoing changes to staffing and weather balloon releases at the agency might be leaving forecasters in the dark about threats.AdvertisementAdvertisementMany forecasting offices in the Great Plains did not launch weather balloons at 7 a.m. Monday, as they have for decades, and instead they released the balloons at noon — a change that several meteorologists think was made because of staffing issues.“We are missing data at the normal times,” said Chris Vagasky, a meteorologist and research manager at the Wisconsin Environmental Mesonet, a statewide network of weather monitoring stations. He added that the staggered balloon launches Monday left a “big area over the southern Plains in the central United States without that weather balloon data, which might have caused the models to not forecast the day’s activity as well as it could have.”The strongest tornado in the Kansas City area Monday was rated EF2, according to the enhanced Fujita scale, which rates tornadoes by wind speed and destruction. That tornado’s wind speeds reached about 125 mph, according to preliminary damage reports.Lightning flashes as a thunderstorm passes in the distance in Lenexa, Kan., on Monday. (Charlie Riedel / AP)(Charlie Riedel)Forecast models did not show the threat of tornadoes until the risk was on the doorstep. The weather service issued watches at about 6:35 p.m., about half an hour before the first tornado. Local forecasting offices in Topeka, Kansas, and Kansas City, Missouri, sent out several warnings later. (A tornado watch means conditions are ripe for tornadoes to form; a tornado warning means a twister has been …
