Tornado Alert is a scientific breakthrough based upon over 40 years of research. Unlike existing warning technologies, Tornado Alert constantly monitors the skies in real-time for electrical activity, the scientifically proven cause of tornado formation. Tornado Alert will tell you when a tornado, lightning or severe weather is detected within a 30 mile radius of your location, that’s up to 30 minutes warning with live proximity status, giving you with critical time to get to safety, day or night.
Kinda' vague. I'd need to know more before spending $70
I read that that lightning activity can lead to tornado formation but I didn't know it is now a "proven cause of tornado formation".
That's a big difference. I would like to see the track record of this unit in regards to actual velocity data. If this can predict tornado's 100% then that is a huge game changer.
Guess I have to do some more reading on this.
Like everyone here, I am rather skeptical of this device. I would like to see this in action over several years to prove this actually works. Like ocala, I did not know that lightning was proven to cause tornadoes. To my knowledge, an increase in lightning, either in intensity or types of lightning, does NOT always precede the formation of tornadoes. I have personally seen instances of having hardly any CC/CG lightning during a tornado to where one could read a newspaper outside at night because of the tremendous amount of CC/CG lightning before and during a tornadic event.
Most recent instance of this happened last Friday night, March 24, 2017 around 10:30-10:35 pm CDT. A upper end EF-1 tornado passed within 100 yards of my house to my SE. There was some CC/CG lightning with this, but not a lot. There was a Severe Thunderstorm Warning in effect at the time. The tornado was 200 yards wide, traveled 2 miles, and was on the ground for 4 minutes. We had no warning in terms of lead time prior to the tornado. This circulation showed up on 1 radar scan, despite the radar updating every 2.2 minutes.
In short, this device would have NOT made any difference in terms of advance warning. If one had $70 to waste, I would buy one and take it apart and see what's inside. Finding a AS3595 lightning detector or its equivalent inside the device would not surprise me, given their low cost.
John
Edit: Here is a
link for the storm chaser communities' reaction (Mostly about like ours here), but there is a post by Lanny Dean about 3/4 the way down explaining the nuts and bolts of this thing. Interesting read on his post.