NASA Satellite Shows Southern Tornadoes From Space

gabbo529 writes "Like it has done previously with earthquakes, hurricanes and tsunamis, a NASA satellite has captured a devastating natural disaster from a space satellite. An image acquired by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) from NASA's Aqua satellite on April 28, distinctly shows three tornado tracks in Tuscaloosa, Ala." For those not following the news, a cluster of tornadoes and close-enough storms earlier this week caused the death of hundreds across several US states.

Comments

Insurance loss

[Joce640k]

FTA: "experts estimate insurance losses at up to $5 billion"

So...it's not called "damage" any more, it's called "insurance loss"?

The insurance company's bottom line is more important the the people without homes?

Re:Insurance loss

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the reason for using that figure is that it is data which is relatively easy to gather. Actual damage would include insurance losses plus anything else which was either not claimed or not covered.

Besides, I'm not sure how it is in your state, but most mortgage lenders require that you have homeowner's insurance. Since the bulk of the insurances losses come in the form of home insurance claims, it's a reasonably repeatable (if not technically accurate) figure to use.

Re:Insurance loss

[DRJlaw]

FTA: "experts estimate insurance losses at up to $5 billion"

Traditionally, when you use those pesky quotation marks, you do not change the text within the quotation marks without indicating that you have done so. You also do not quote so as to change context.

"Catastrophe risk modeling company EQECAT said that with initial reports of nearly 10,000 destroyed buildings, property insurance losses were expected to range from $2 to $5 Billion."

Destroyed buildings is a reasonable substitute for damage. Property insurance losses refers to the loss of insured property by the "people without homes" (residences, vehicles, commercial buildings), not the insurance company's bottom line. And nevermind that the 11 preceding paragraphs focus on deaths, missing persons, and general damage.

You'll forgive me for thinking that you're just as low, if not worse, for turning "the people without homes" into mere prop for your personal hatred of insurance companies.

Re:Insurance loss

[theshowmecanuck]

OK, so tell us how you would quantify damage for a news report other than using a dollar figure, smart guy? How about, the damage was REALLY REALLY BAD and SCARY! Does that convey anything to the average person? NO.

They already said in the article that over 300 died and maybe more, and that a lot of towns and homes were damaged. Do you want them to go out and get an exact count how many vehicles, homes, cats, dogs, chicken coops, businesses (broken out by number of employees they have), trailer parks, trailers, telephone polls, were destroyed and report back in tabular fashion... all in the first few days since it happened. What the fuck is wrong with retards who want to news reports to empathize instead of provide information and "fight the man" because someone gave an estimate in the amount of damage in terms of dollars.

If you are at least reasonably intelligent you will figure out that if the insurance damage was 5 billion, there might be close to that in uninsured damaged. But how are they or we supposed to know that if the items were never valued to begin with.

They are telling us what they know. They can't tell us what they don't know. Get a fucking grip for fuck's sake.

I for one am sick of reporters and talking heads telling me what they think and putting a "human perspective" on the news. I don't give a shit what THEY think. I prefer to think on my own. News and its reporters should just tell us the FACTS (i.e. not like Fox) about a story and let us figure out what it means on our own. If someone wants to analyze it, do it somewhere else but not on actual news sites and broadcasts.

[End of touchy feely rant /]

Re:Missiles?

[maxwell demon]

fire missiles with heavy warheads (conventional) to the already developed tornadoes?

I wouldn't feel comfortable allowing a tornado to throw bombs around.

Re:Meh.

[ChartBoy]

And these pictures show the phenomena on a larger scale... sometimes it's interesting to look at the forest as well as the trees.

Re:Global warming?

[formfeed]

Likely. But, a single outbreak will neither confirm nor disprove any influence of climate change on tornado activity. - But that's also true for all these anecdotal examples of really warm summers and past bad weather the head-in-the-sand climate change deniers will come up with.

Increasing temperature and higher humidity will make existing storms (hurricanes and tornadoes) more violent. The insurance industry knows that prognosis already. But for real good statistics we'll have to wait another 20 years. Even then, some idiots will deny it, like they deny current climate data.

Unfortunately, the way it works in the US is that if the industry gets caught unprepared for a crisis, they convince the public that science is wrong. That buys the industry enough time to restructure their resources.

Re:Global warming?

[Simon Brooke]

It really doesn't matter whether current global warming is man made or not. That's a side issue. The real issue is that as global temperatures rise, the areas where we now grow most of the world's food will get drier and more arid, with desertification spreading. The areas which will benefit from improved fertility are smaller anyway, and are quite heavily developed. So we get a fairly large net loss in agricultural output. This at a time when the planet is already carrying a larger human population than ever before, and it's still growing.

Regardless of what is causing global warming, if we don't do our best to slow it or stop it there is going to be global starvation, war and economic disruption on a scale never seen before. Saying 'but it isn't our fault, it's the sun' isn't going to save your life.

Re:Meh.

[hcpxvi]

Mod parent up. His link is to the same MODIS images as in the IBTimes page linked by the original submitter. But as parent's link is to earthobservatory.nasa.gov it has the images at higher resolution and with more useful information.

Oh Look There's My House....

[DanielRavenNest]

Oops, not any more. (My heart goes out to all the people that lost lives and homes, but sometimes humor is a way to cope with disasters).

The tornado spawning supercell that devastated Tuscaloosa and Birmingham did in fact go right over my house. But I am an hour NE of Birmingham, so by that time it was down to winds strong enough to break 1 inch branches off the trees, the occasional roof shingle, and "your entire yard is underwater" strength rain.