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Surviving Tornadoes
SharkJumper writes "We here in central Oklahoma, USA are just climbing out of the wreckage of another series of tornadoes. Unlike the tornadoes of May 3rd, 1999, which killed 47 and injured more than 800, we now have much better tornado information and prediction technology. Largely because of this, there have been far fewer injuries, and (as of this morning) no reported deaths. Here in the greater Oklahoma City area, we can even register our storm shelters with the city. After a severe storm, GIS technology is used to create a map for rescuers detailing location and type of the shelter as well as emergency contact information. Rescuers can then use these maps to search for survivors that may be trapped by debris in their shelters."
These things can survive just about anything short of a direct hit with a nuke.
A program that has helped (even in the network age) to speed warnings is SKYWARN. SKYWARN is an adjunct program of the National Weather Service that trains spotters to deliver real time, on the ground, info to the NWS.
First: I live in the NE (upstate NY) as much as I bitch about the cold, the snow, and shoveling my damn driveway, everytime I see something like this (or a hurricane, or an earthquake, or a tidle wave, or flooding) I thank my lucky stars I am where I am.
That said....
People live where they do for many reasons. Number one is economic. *something* drew enough people to the area (this is "any" area", not jsut tonado alley) for it to be "profitable" to live there... either a scarce resource (like gold, which drew folks to eathquake ridden cali) or an environment... the flood ridden mississipi (-sp?) delta is sure as hell prone to floods.. but that's how it got it's amazing soil, which is why farming there is "worth" the risks.
Once a sufficient population has developed in said areas, willing to take those risks, then another population grows to support them... those running the stores, restaraunts.. etc.
Then a strange thing happens.. a "community" forms.. and people have family ties, etc. to the area. This makes it hard to leave. How many times have you packed up an moved to a new part of the country? It's not easy. Esp with [insert rant about GW here] today's economy. It COSTS to move.. both financially and personally.
Do yourself a favor, and trace every product you buy, and where it came from. If *none* of them come from areas that have natural disaters "regularly" then bitch and moan. Until then, pay your taxes and pray for the folks who's lives are ruined by this and other events.
Department of Homeland Security: Removing the rights real patriots fought and died for since 2001
Wow... callous isn't quite the word I'd use...
a ts.html )
a do.html ) Just take a look at the map of the data (which is over an entire century, I remind you) and tell me that people are "expect{ing} taxpayers to buy them new trailers every few years"...
Let's do a little estimation, shall we? Let's call the "average" tornado as about 200 meters wide with a 10 kilometer path. That's actually a pretty big average, but let's take it for argument's sake. There are 1000 tornadoes in a year, on average. So, that's 2000 km^2 of damage per year. That translates roughly into a square patch of damage 9 miles on a side (80 mi^2).
Let's then further assume that all this damage happens in only Oklahoma proper. Again, a limiting and fanciful assumption, but one useful for these purposes. The area of Oklahoma is nearly 70,000 mi^2. So, the chances that your house will fall in tornado damage will be 80/70000, or 0.11% per year.
Of course, that percentage drops dramatically once you add in Kansas, northern and western Texas, western Missouri, and Nebraska (i.e. the rest of the traditional "Tornado Alley"). Think on the order of 0.01% chance per year.
Now take the Gulf and Atlantic coasts where hurricanes can be prevalent. I'd be willing to bet that the probabilities are higher since hurricanes are much bigger. Or how about damages related to massive snow and ice storms that can plague the northern states? (You live in Colorado... you surely saw the damages that the blizzard there this year caused.) How about those massive forest fires in the western states driven by weather also? Or maybe the floods that happen in the US every few years or so? Gods, how can we live anywhere in this country?
The point is that extreme and dangerous weather is not limited to the central US. What happened there this week was an astonishing and record-setting week in terms of tornadoes. Just put it this way... according to the preliminary tornado data, the US has had, in the first 8 days of May, the climatological average for tornadoes in the entire month of May. Yes, we've reached (and surpassed) the long-term average for a month in the first 8 days. (http://www.spc.noaa.gov/climo/torn/monthlytornst
Oklahoma City is the most hit metropolitan area, and even that is underwhelming when you examine the data for it all. (http://www.srh.noaa.gov/oun/tornadodata/okc_torn
The southern plains are not as bad as you think. What has happened there is a pure fluke of weather... the same area of a city gets hit by a significant tornado twice in five years... and the same area of the nation gets hit by two or three batches of tornadoes in the same week. Set your integer random number generator to pop out random integers between 1 and 100 and tell me that you wouldn't expect a number to be repeated three or more times in a row in a sample size of 3 million. Streaks happen in randomness or even psuedo-randomness. The OKC area has probably the similar chance of not being hit for ten or more years than they do being hit again in the next three. Do some research into independent probabilities and such before going off on your stupid and inane rant.
Besides, as a storm chaser, I find that area of the country quite pleasant. Granted, I wouldn't want to live out there since, well, it's a little dull outside of storm chase season, but it's still a nice place to live. It's no worse weather-wise than the subtropical southeastern US with the hurricanes, or the northern states with their ice and snow storms, or the western states with the forest fires and flash floods. It's just different phenomena.
-Jellisky
Perhaps the fact that '99s tornado was an F5 and this one was a F2 to low F3 has a little to do with the difference in damage/causualties?
I though that the F ratings were a measure of the damage caused. If so, then what you said is a tautology.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
My next house will certainly have one of these.
Peter
Downsize DC Today!
Tornados have been recorded on 6 of 7 continents, and in all 50 states. If you've had a thunderstorm, you can have a tornado. Granted, they take a very specific set of conditions to form, and even then you've got no guarentees. Move to Antarctica if you want to avoid them.
Here in SE Michigan you can get a very easy feel for what storms you can watch from the porch, and what storms you should watch from the TV in the basement. "good" storms track West to East. A high percentage of storms come off of lake michigan, track across the state, then split north or south when they hit Ann Arbor.
(The city's a heat island. 10-ish square miles of concrete and asphault that forms a giant column of rising air that tends to split all but the biggest storms. Once the storms hit Ann Arbor, they either go north and hit Oakland county or Head south and slam Monroe. Ypsilanti, which is just west of Ann Arbor, seldom catches the full force of a storm.)
"bad" storms are the ones that trace South to North. Theres nothing south of us (except ohio farm fields, ideal storm breeding grounds) to protect the urban areas. The worst storms I can remember have all run South - North.
Moral of the story; know your local weather, your TV weather man is a dipshit, weather.com radar is your friend, and when in doubt, go for the basement. (if you have one, you insensitve clod)
There are some people that if they don't know, you can't tell 'em.
I saw somewhere that the 1999 Moore tornado had its windspeed measured with a doppler radar, and the number they came up with was one mph below F6 status. It would have been the first F6 tornado ever documented.
It was truly a monster...
!Sig
I though that the F ratings were a measure of the damage caused...
Nope. An F5 could pass through open prairie and cause very little damage. An F3 can plow through a densly populated area and do lots of damage.
--
As a matter of fact, I am a lawyer. But I play an actor on TV.
But the area of potential tornados is a VAST area. Are you seriously suggesting that nobody should build anywhere in all of Oklahoma, Texas, Nebraska, etc?
Other than that, I agree with your sentiment. I felt the same way when the mississippi river flooded and wiped out all those farmers - tough luck. You built right next to a huge river that is known to flood every 50 years or so. You knew it was a flood plain because you liked the rich farming soil it provided - people told you the Misissippi river has one nasty flood like that once every 50 years or so. So tough. Live with it. Taking into account the fact that you might get flooded out one year should have been part of your risk assessment when deciding if the rich soil of a floodplain was worth it.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
Tornados are a bitch. People would be well advised to learn about them and learn how to protect themselves before they have to adlib.
The Fujita scale categories are listed with both wind speed and typical damage produced. The 'official' Fujita rating of a given cyclone is still determined by damage assessment. With modern Doppler radar providing accurate wind speed measurements from a distance, the 'F' rating can be estimated for locations where damage measurements are problematic (open farmland, etc.).
Related note: the record-setting May 1999 Bridge Creek/Moore/Del City/Midwest City tornado had the most accurate wind speed measurement to date, thanks to special portable Doppler units.
Moore High School, Class of 1988 -- Go Lions!