So here are my thoughts from someone spoiled from being in the number one weather market in the US. Today's storm that sparked the Tornado Warning in the Toledo Metro start back in Central Indiana with a history, as of right now, of at least 4 tornadoes.
National Weather Service in North Webster, IN did an amazing job with proactive warnings and providing great updates on the storm as it progressed. All around great job from those folks.
NWS Cleveland officially issued the warning for Lucas/Wood Counties around 6:55 PM. From my contacts, sirens didn't go off for another 5 minutes. So about this. The warning, I feel could have been done sooner. At the very least, Cleveland needs to look into steps that other offices are taking of issued "Significant Weather Advisories" through the Special Weather Statement products. Pretty much these are meant to advise the public that there is something close or already occurring that is just on the threshold of causing a warning. Something like this may have been good since apparently, Lucas County Emergency Management or whomever is in charge of the sirens completely failed in providing a prompt and immediate delivery of the warning. Warning is issued at 6:55 PM, if someone 1000 miles away has access to that from basic means, a department that is responsible for passing that on should do better than 5 minutes.
I understand that this is an early storm and you may not be prepared, well you lucked out. Now fix the problem that resulted in a 5 minutes delay in public warning delivery.
As far as the TV stations, I can only go off what they choose to broadcast on the web. NBC24 was a completely non-player in this, and pretty much make their case that they are irrelevant in the Toledo market.
WTVG 13 ABC had minimal coverage online. Their banner for showing warnings only had "Flood Warnings and Watches for Northwest Ohio" while the Tornado Warning was active. Live coverage was non-existent except for the feed of their radar. Now this is their one plus. The radar presentation was good, and I am glad that they actually have a higher resolution radar for accuratly delivering what is going on. I would like to have see a live stream of coverage with the OCM so that way I could compare to WTOL.
WTOL 11 CBS had the most complete coverage I could find, but online live streaming did not start until well after the warning was issued. The OCMs, some new guy I don't know and Robert Shiels was pretty lame. Their fixation on scary looking crap clouds, and their radar presentation was pretty week. They stayed on top of it though, which I have to give them that, but they were focusing more on intensity levels more than storm echo formation, velocities, etc. Pretty much looking at their children's radar it was a big green blob with a yellow blob and an orange blob. The radar they use is so horribly smoothed over you cannot make out any cell definition to really get an accurate view. The radar software I use, www.GrLevelx.Com (GrLevel2 Analyst) is extremely more descriptive of what they have, and it only costs a couple hundred bucks.
So the report card.
Lucas County EMA - F (learn to watch for warnings to give the public a better advanced warning)
NWS North Webster - A (can someone please get them to take over all of the Toledo area, not just half)
NWS Cleveland - D (slow to warn, not progress updates, pretty much exhibits their typical attitude towards Toledo of "only if we have to")
WNWO NBC 24 - F (please just shut down)
WTVG ABC 13 - B (can't rate any higher with no online feed)
WTOL CBS 11 - B (you were online, but your radar product is extremely poor and markets much smaller have higher quality items than that)
