The empirical models of the lower ionosphere are used for fast prediction of VLF-LF propagation properties, for the initialization in the inverse problem solvers and as a climatological testbed for new numerical models. We used two widely used empirical models and verify them on the experimental VLF data from Mikhnevo geophysical observatory for 2014 year. Numerical results were obtained by parabolic equation method. The presented results prove the severe limitations of the current empirical models. The main bottlenecks are formulated.