Matthew Cappucci

On the East Coast, it’s not just that there is a higher population to observe storm damage reports, it’s that the landscape itself is loaded with low threshold damage indicators. Trees fail well below severe criteria, often under 58 mph, yet every downed limb or uprooted tree still becomes a “wind damage report.” So when people point to “hundreds of reports” to justify a 60 percent MDT verification, it starts to fall apart under scrutiny. You’re not measuring event intensity in a consistent way, you’re measuring how easy it is to produce reports. Compare that to more prolific wind events like the June 20, 2025 Dakota MCS, which produced objectively stronger and more widespread severe winds but logged far fewer reports simply because the damage indicators and population density were not there. At that point, using raw storm report counts as validation for a forecast stops being as meaningful a metric. It reflects reporting bias and environmental differences as much as it reflects the actual meteorology.

A low-end threat of tornadoes and severe thunderstorms has been identified for Sunday, March 22nd across parts of the Ohio Valley and Upper Appalachia. This forecast initialized on Thursday morning. Follow the page and visit our app for future forecast updates.

Whether it was cyclonic or anticyclonic, Sunday’s tornado in Stuttgart Arkansas heavily reminded me of the 2025 Silverton Texas tornado