
This parameter indicates where rotating thunderstorms are located, not necessarily tornadoes. If you wanted to implement tornadoes without relying on messages produced by meteorologists, but instead want to use automated numerical weather model data (which is what the source is for the live weather in flight simulator I'm guessing), you might be able use the "updraft helicity" parameter that some weather models produce. Imagine denting up your plane or smashing the windows flying through some huge chunks of ice. That might be a lot more relevant to aviation and flight simulator. You could implement hail from these warnings too. THE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE IN AUSTIN SAN ANTONIO HAS ISSUED AĬENTRAL BASTROP COUNTY IN SOUTH CENTRAL TEXAS. NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE AUSTIN/SAN ANTONIO TX The cloud types and spatial resolution of the wind fields shown could certainly allow for something like a tornado to be created. It might be possible for a third party developer to create both hurricane and tornado missions. The good news is it sounds like the SDK might actually allow access to the weather system. But believe me, I desperately want to see them in the game! I chase tornadoes as part of my job so you can imagine I've spent a lot of time thinking about this.

Tornadoes are just not a significant aspect of flying. I think it would be out of scope and a waste of development cycles to spend time modeling tornadoes to the level that they don't look cartoonish like a Sim City tornado. General aviation nearly always steers well clear of the parent supercell thunderstorm such that most aviation will never have much of any encounter with a tornado. They're super small, fleeting, and wildly complex.

I think somebody over at Asobo is going to have to specifically model the eyewall's "stadium effect" for a mission if you're hoping to see something like the above photo in game, however. Hurricane eyes can be smaller than that, but you might actually see a large 60-km eye resolved by default. If flight simulator is pulling from that model as its live source, that might give you some idea how large of features its handling. Meteoblue was announced as a partner, and they're running their own 30 kilometer resolution global forecast model.

I'm not sure how crisp and clean the eye would be resolved, however. These are very large storm systems, and it looks like they would be well within the resolution of what we were shown in the weather feature discovery series. I think it's entirely possible you'll see hurricanes handled by default in the simulator using live weather data.
