Meteorologists have to be able to be self-reflective and open to constructive criticism after weather events with serious societal impacts
"My bottom line is this: given the fact that the actual coverage and intensity of tornadoes verified at an enhanced to moderate outlook level and that there was no watch of any kind (severe thunderstorm or tornado) for an event in which 2 killer tornadoes and 2 EF2+ tornadoes occurred, I think it is more than reasonable for core partners and members of the public to view this as a poorly forecast event. We as meteorologists should be open to that criticism and not use the fact that we use probabilities (and to be clear, we should be using probabilities!!) to convey our forecasts as a cop out to deflect from that conclusion.
Rather, we should use this opportunity to double down on explaining to the public why we use probabilities, examine ways to communicate probabilistic forecasts and these challenging forecast situations to the public more effectively, and critically examine our forecast processes and objective guidance to try to find ways to improve the actual forecasts."
