Wikipedia:Not all high risks are notable

This high risk on April 5, 2017 only produced 26 tornadoes, resulting in no fatalities or an article.

On Wikipedia, editors will typically rush to start a tornado outbreak article once the Storm Prediction Center (more commonly known as "the SPC") outlines a level 5-out-of-5 severe weather risk, also known as a "HIGH" or simply "high risk". Of course, most of the time an article is warranted, but sometimes high risks end up significantly underperforming. While WP:IAR has been invoked before (that will be talked more about later), it's important to note that not all high risks are notable.

Exceptions

There's a few exceptions to this thought process, and examples of each will be given:

• A "day 2" high risk is issued. All three "D2" high risks ever issued (April 7, 2006, April 14, 2012 and March 15, 2025) have articles. The most recent, in 2025, was predicted to be so volatile that the article was published before the event had started, and WP:IAR was invoked on the talk page. And the move was correct: the outbreak was the largest ever in March and one of the deadliest in the 2020s, taking the lives of 43 people.
• High risks with PDS watches or warnings. A particularly dangerous situation (also known as "PDS") watch or warning indicates that there is, or will be, a potentially devastating tornado on the ground. Usually, the impact of these tornadoes warrants an article. March 15, 2025 is a great example of this.

Notable high risk "busts"

In meteorology, a "bust" refers to an event falling far below what was expected, whether that be in terms of rainfall amount or number of tornadoes. Here's a few notable high risk "busts" that help support why not all high risks need an article:

• June 13, 1989 - Only one F1 tornado was confirmed in this high risk, which doesn't even have a section at Tornadoes of 1989.
• June 3, 1993 - This derecho-driven high risk produced zero tornadoes. That's right, zero.
• December 23, 2002 - This rare December high risk that was both wind and tornado-driven completely busted, only producing 15 tornadoes, the worst being rated F1. No fatalities were reported.
• May 19, 2010 - This tornado-driven high risk only produced 13 tornadoes, the strongest of which was rated EF1. Nowadays, this wouldn't pass WP:TORNADOCRITERIA, let along have its own standalone article.
• March 17, 2021 - While 40 tornadoes were confirmed during this high risk, none were intense (EF3+) and nobody was killed.

This applies to other risks, too!

This conditional level 4-out-of-5 "moderate" risk across the Midwest only produced two tornadoes!

On April 28, 2025, a conditional level 4-out-of-5 "moderate" (or "MDT") risk was outlined by the SPC for the Midwestern United States. This outlook had a 15% hatched tornado risk, which is very high and is rarely seen. Despite the insane forecasting, this setup only produced two tornado reports. A major tornado outbreak was expected, but nothing came of it. If this had been a March 14 situation, where WP:IAR was invoked when it was published, we'd have seen it at the WP:AFD venue. Luckily, it remained a draft. Some moderate risks overperform, though, the best example of this being March 14, 2025. Never invoke IAR when pre-publishing anything under a HIGH risk. Moderate risks actually happen relatively often, and do greatly underperform sometimes.