This is desireable, since a major flaw in purely empirical studies is that it is difficult to know when they will fail. Tornadoes will continue to be a challenge. Even when a storm has been recognized as supercellular, it is still difficult to know whether or not it will become tornadic. NSTs represent a further challenge to forecasting. Until the processes are understood better than they are at present, it is likely that the task of tornado forecasting will consist of predicting the likelihood of supercells and using empirical techniques for the rest.
Severe convection represents a difficult forecasting problem for a number of reasons.
Severe events are rare even in places where they are relatively common. They often are highly localized in time and space, and poorly represented in synoptic-scale data. On the use of mesoscale and cloud-scale models in operational forecasting. On the environments of tornadic and nontornadic mesocyclones. A review of conceptual models.