The process of confirming and rating tornadoes | News [Video]

If you’ve been paying attention to our weather app, our social media, and our website, you’ve probably seen numerous updates to the number of tornadoes that have been confirmed from Monday’s storm. In fact, at this house behind me was where one of the tornadoes in Mower County started. But what process does the National Weather Service go through to confirm these tornadoes post-event?

Most of us are familiar with the damage surveys that are completed almost immediately after the storms pass. This gives a lot of ground truth to the more obvious tornadoes and are easiest to rate. But some of the smaller and quicker spin-ups end up being confirmed through other means. I spoke with Kevin Skow, lead meteorologist at the National Weather Service office in La Crosse, who explained more.

He says, “We will basically leverage anything we can get our hands on to try and find …