The tornado warning map from 2016 that still pops up every spring

Last week my cousin in Joplin shared a storm alert graphic on Facebook, said it was from the night before. Took me about ten seconds to recognize the county lines and the timestamp in the corner, it was from May 2016, same one that goes around every year when the weather gets warm. I remember that night, we were doing an emergency AC call in a basement, and the radar showed a hook echo right over Route 66. The map had been re-screenshotted so many times the date was blurry, but the old warning polygon didn't match the current storm tracks at all. I flagged it in the comments with a link to the actual NWS archive, and three people thanked me, one guy argued it was "proof" of something. Why do these old graphics keep getting recycled instead of people just checking the live feed on their phone, anyone else seen a stale alert cause a real panic in their town?

1 comments

1 Comment

williamw757h ago

Read somewhere that the NWS actually tracks these recycled alerts and they get shared like 10x more than the real ones. People trust a blurry screenshot from 8 years ago over the live app that's literally in their pocket, it's wild.