Close, but no cigar

I reconnected with my husband's cousin yesterday, which reminded me of one of my favorite days in weather. It was during a trip I took with my wonderful groom down to Miami for his cousin's wedding. Of course, being in the place where he grew up, he took me to all the places he remembered from when he was a child, and we explored some of the geeky tourist attractions. It was after visiting the National Hurricane Center and while we were exploring Key Biscayne, that I discovered something spectacular in the sky and begged him to "PULL OVER!" with jaw dropped and arm outstretched, pointing toward the sky. There it was, clear as day (not a clear day), a powerfully rotating column of air in the sky!!!Storm Report for June 13, 2008
It was actually reported as a water spout that went ashore. Thanks to a ridiculous amount of curves and palm trees, my view of the best part was obscured, but I saw it reaching down further than in the picture. Unfortunately, this is all I got. What a day though!!! The only other times that compare would be early on while sitting by a field with my boyfriend back in 1989 watching as the skies churned and dropped funnel clouds, 3 tornadoes were reported on that October 1st, causing damage even as close as outside the video store we were holed up in during the worst of the storm.

Conyers-area historical tornado activity is slightly above Georgia state average. It is 89% greater than the overall U.S. average.
OCT 01, 1989 030 1806 F2 247
OCT 01, 1989 031 1830 F1 247
OCT 01, 1989 032 1844 F2 247

The next time was also in June, but it was in 2007, when I was with Peg and Mel and the crew trying to chase naders. We came across a wicked low precip supercell near Murdo, SD, which dropped several needle funnels as we sat and watched. It never dropped anything more substantial for us, but the same system did produce a very picturesque tornado over the Badlands, which we had just passed.

Ahh, yes, SDS is bad.
~Dewdrop

Do tornadoes hit cities?!

SKY WATCH FRIDAY time! Please visit Klaus, Sandy, Ivar, Wren, Louise and Fishing Guy, the team for SKY WATCH FRIDAY (click the word to link and participate!) Thanks to Dot and Tom, who were instrumental in the success of this blogging event. You should definitely come fly with us! Yesterday's sky was a brilliant blue with strikingly contrasting well-defined "fair weather cumulus clouds". I love it when the sky looks that way. It makes you realize the depth of the atmosphere and it really demonstrates the massive expanse of our glorious sky.With all this fair weather and no recent severe weather and no severe weather in the forecast until Monday, I feel like I should catch everyone up on what this year has looked like so far, tornado-wise. If you are thinking that this year seems much less active than last year, you are very correct. Last year, at this time, we were being bombarded with a record YTD total of tornadoes for that point in the year.You see that, at March 18, 2009, we have had 87 tornado reports so far; whereas, last year at this time, we had seen approximately 500 (!!!) tornado reports. The WCM page with the SPC is a great resource for tornado climatology.

This page has charts of the latest preliminary severe storm reports, annual summaries, and links to comma-separated-value (csv) data files from the SPC severe weather database back to 1950.

Looking at the current trend against the averages and against previous years, you see that we are, so far, experiencing a much less active tornado year than in the past.



... which is a blessing for all the non-victims of the would-be potentially devastating storms. Yes, you can clearly see that things are trending well below average. That doesn't mean, mind you, that it won't happen, just means it hasn't.

I was asked a really terrific question yesterday regarding tornadoes and big cities... since we were talking about the Atlanta tornado and the following day's outbreak, being so close to the anniversary (what?! They brought it up!!!) Anyways, my God friend asked if tornadoes generally avoid cities. Here's the scoop on that... obviously, more populated areas are more aware of a tornado happening than rural areas where no one is around, so you will tend to see more reports in the higher populated regions. That doesn't, in any way, mean that populated areas are magnets for tornadoes... it only means that they are more realized in populated areas. Remember that a tornado is rated by the damage that it causes. If no one is there to see it and report it, and there was nothing in the area to be damaged, there will not be a tornado report. Now, back to the question... DO TORNADOES AVOID CITIES??

It is a myth that tornadoes never hit big cities. The fact is tornadoes have a long history of hitting big cities and when they do, they usually cause a great amount of damage because a lot more debris is generated. Tornadoes can form pretty much anywhere at any time...
~source

What I told me friend is that it's a matter of statistics, more tornadoes occur in tornado alley than any other area (they can and do happen ANY WHERE and ANY TIME, though!). The midwest is much less densely populated, so statistically, the likelihood that a tornado would be over a city rather than open land is greatly reduced when compared with the eastern part of the United States... but even in the eastern part of the country, the larger cities don't take up large areas, so downtown areas with tall buildings are a much smaller target making the probability of a direct hit very small. In that same sense though, a house in the middle of an open area has a less probable shot at being struck by a tornado than a large city just because of area alone. We saw this in Boston, GA, on February 19, 2009, when an approximately 400-500 yard wide EF3 tornado missed the house it passed by, by a hair.

Tornadoes can form just about any place. ~source

... and there is a history of them happening in big cities.

Here is just a small list of cities that have been hit by tornadoes:
Dallas, TX
Fort Worth, TX
Miami, FL
Los Angeles, CA (30 tornadoes since 1918)
Oahu, HI
Oklahoma City, OK (F5 Tornado)
Cincinnati, OH
Salt Lake City, UT
Nashville, TN
Birmingham, AL
St. Louis, MO (22 tornadoes in the past 40 years)
Sunnyvale, CA (right smack in the middle of Silicon Valley)
Wichita Falls, KS TX, thanks, Ken!
Washington DC
Atlanta, GA

One could make the argument that tall skyscrapers could affect the air flow patterns needed to sustain a tornado. But it’s probably unlikely that a few buildings which are a few hundred feet in size would have much of an affect on a supercell which can grow to heights in excess of 50,000 feet (9 miles) and be as big as Mount Everest. Even a tornado itself can be as wide as a mile or more. ~source

Basically, do tornadoes avoid cities??? No. Cities are just generally well placed.

Have a great day!
~Dewdrop

Saving for a rainy day

I was just pondering the things that storm chasers ponder when the nearest thing in sight is the slow approach of a very insignificant and mild cold front, which might introduce a little rain into area and likely drop our daytime temps from a ridiculous 83° to a more reasonable 73°... but only for a day... I was pondering saving money for a rainy day. As a storm chaser, I think that I have a different perspective on what to do with a rainy day from how many others might view them. Where some people are saving aside money for various indoor activities, I am pinching my pennies to go out into those rainy days (only those with a great deal of instability, lift and shear...) The slight risks, moderate risks, and the exceptionally rare high risks for severe weather issued by the Storm Prediction Center cause a stir in me. I want to see the fury... yet the destruction humbles me. As a storm chaser, I am fascinated by the science and (yes) the beauty of tornadoes, yet the still untamed seemingly randomness, how it can bounce here, missing some structures because it lifted just in time, destroying others, really horrifies me. This scene from "Twister" sort of touches on the fascination, though going overboard putting a much more complacent spin on the destruction... Haynes describes seeing an (at the time) F4 as "sweet". With tornadoes only being rated by the destruction that they cause, an F4/EF4 would not be "sweet" to me. Seeing an EF4 would cause me serious post traumatic stress. Yes, tornadoes are rated by what they "eat". They are an unavoidable threat to people and property. An EF5 is described as total destruction. They are not rated by their size or appearance but only by the damage and destruction left in their wake.

Joey: [Discussing at Meg's on the tornadoes they have seen so far] No, that was a good size twister. What was it, an F3?
Bill: Solid F2.
Melissa: See, now you have lost me again.
Bill: It's the Fujita scale. It measures a tornado's intensity by how much it eats.
Melissa: Eats?
Bill: Destroys.
Laurence: That one we encountered back there was a strong F2, possibly an F3.
Beltzer: Maybe we'll see some 4's.
Haynes: That would be sweet!
Bill: 4 is good. 4 will relocate your house very efficiently.
Melissa: Is there an F5?
[Everyone goes dead silent]
Melissa: What would that be like?
Jason 'Preacher' Rowe: The Finger of God.
Melissa: None of you has ever seen an F5?
Bill: ...Just one of us. [Indicating Jo]
~source

Also in this part of the movie, they describe the rare and powerfully memorable and tragically devastating F5(EF5), the "Finger of God", which only one of the characters had experienced. Only 52 F5/EF5 tornadoes have been recorded since 1950. Incidentally, 7 of those F5's occurred on the same day, which happens to have an anniversary VERY near our wedding day. It wretches my heart to see the destruction, lives turned upside down, and the horribly tragic loss of life... which is why I have trained in Damage Assessment, why I have been active in the Disaster Services division of the American Red Cross, why I have trained as a Skywarn® spotter, why I have trained as a CERT team member, why I have learned CPR and will continue to learn as much as I can, because if I am out chasing and see something occur, my storm chasing hat will come off, and I will serve to the best of my ability.

As an aside, I did an analysis of Georgia tornadoes over history, and in recorded history, 61 tornadoes (in Georgia alone) have an anniversary within a week of our wedding date (first week of April), one being an F4 in the same county. If the set-up exists on our wedding day, we might have to have a safe ceremony indoors and then, grab the camera crew and go chasing. Wouldn't that be awesome... having a tornado in our wedding pictures?! It is, in fact, true that the largest tornado outbreak in history occurred April 3-4, 1974... with 148 tornadoes in 13 states, including the one F4 I mentioned above. Alabama Mike had warned me that we had chosen a particularly volatile weekend...

Have a fantastic day!
~Dewdrop

Tornado history, and trying to escape the risk

I had a comment from Kathy in Oklahoma, who said that she would like to live somewhere where there are no tornadoes. I sort of laughed at that since I know that there is not one state in the United States that hasn't had a tornado. In fact, this morning, I learned that on February 11 this year, there was a destructive tornado in Hawaii. It got me to thinking I should do a post about tornadoes... (like I haven't been doing that already, right?) The graphic above is linked to the Tornado Project website, which is a site dedicated to compiling historic data about tornadoes in the US and Worldwide.

Tornadoes have occurred in every state.~

Actually tornadoes have also occurred on every continent, except Antarctica; however, the United States has the highest tornado incidence of any country, quadrupling Europe's total.~ Yesterday, I posted the fujita scale. The rating determination is based on the level of damage with regard to the quality of structure. As far as the data goes, if a tornado occurs, and no one sees it, and it didn't cause any damage, it does not get recorded (if a tornado happens on open ground, and no one's around to see it, did it really happen???) The doppler, as it is, does not give an image to the ground, which is why storm chasers and spotters are instrumental in letting the National Weather Service know what is actually occurring on the ground. In the Enhanced Fujita scale, the rating system for tornadoes, the highest and most powerful rating is an EF5. Prior to that, it was an F5, enhanced by the quality of structure analysis built into the rating system. Since 1950, there have been 52 F5/EF5 tornadoes, including the Parkersburg, IA tornado last year, which devastated over half the city. An EF5 is described as causing total destruction. It is a catastrophic tornado.

The deadliest tornado was the Tri-State tornado on March 18, 1925, which took the lives of 695 people. Fortunately, warning systems and weather forecasting technology have improved greatly, and many lives have been spared. In Parkersburg, IA, only 7 perished, which is amazing.

One very interesting tornado story to me in one (well two) that struck in Gainesville, GA, on April 6, 1936, earning the 5th position on the deadliest tornado list, stealing the lives of 203 (with 40 still unaccounted for...)

A massive pair of tornadoes moved east-northeast through downtown Gainesville, Georgia, at the start of the work day... after a smaller tornado hit north of town. The course of one of the funnels led into the city from the southwest, just west of the Atlanta highway. The other came in from the west along the Dawsonville highway. These two paths came together west of Grove Street, and a four-block-wide area was laid waste across the entire city, beyond which separate courses of destruction appeared again. The wreckage was astounding, with debris filling the streets up to 10 feet deep. About 750 houses were destroyed and 254 were badly damaged. Damage totalled $12,500,000. The largest death toll in a single building for any US tornado occurred at the Cooper Pants Factory. The multi-story building, crowded with young workers, collapsed and caught fire, killing about 70 people. At the Pacolet Mill, the funnel was seen in the southwest, and the 550 workers ran to the northeast corner of the building, thus averting an even greater tragedy. The wreckage was so deep and swept by fires that it was not possible to determine how many people were killed in which buildings. At the time that the 203 person death toll was listed, 40 persons were still missing. ~source

The tornadoes actually collided in an explosion of catastrophe and then continued in opposite directions, continuing to wreak havoc...

The largest outbreak occurred on April 3-4, 1974 (Yikes, the first week in April... I think I know what Mike was talking about when he said that April 4 is a bad storm day!). The SUPER TORNADO OUTBREAK of 1974 was the largest outbreak of tornadoes in a single severe weather event. A total of 148 tornadoes touched in 13 states, including one in Canada. As many as 16 tornadoes were on the ground at once during this phenomenal deadly outbreak, which stole the lives of 330 and injured 5,484 people. Six of those tornadoes were rated with an F5 intensity, and twenty-four of them were F4 tornadoes. 48 of those tornadoes were deadly. Amazing.

Back to my point though, Kathy is going to be hard pressed to find a place to live where there are no tornadoes. Granted, she is not doing too well with that objective living in Oklahoma, which is conveniently located in tornado alley. I will cover current weather in a separate post. We are expecting some absolute CRAZINESS!

Have a blessed day.
~Dewdrop